A pinhole camera is the simplest medium in the art of photography. The pinhole camera is also very unique camera because it takes pictures without using any lens. Interesting, isn't it? You see, the small hole in the pinhole camera actually acts like an ordinary lens. A clear discussion of why this is so is found in this article. The simplicity of the how a pinhole camera works is amazing. One can't help but be blown away by it.

What Does a Pinhole Camera Look Like?

Before we discuss how a pinhole camera works, we need to know what a pinhole camera looks like. A pinhole camera is a box with a very small hole in the middle. Any box made of light material will do. The box should be light-proof. So that light can't enter except through the small hole, you can cover the box frame using black tape. But you need to put on the opposite of the hole inside the box first. After that, you can make a very small hole by using a pin going through a piece of aluminum foil and then taping it over the hole in the box. A small piece of cardboard taped on one side over the pinhole can be used as a shutter. When everything is ready, pick any object or scenery, put the pinhole camera in front of it, open the shutter, and briefly expose your film to take a picture.

How A Pinhole Camera Works - The Facts

The secret behind how a pinhole camera works lies in the small hole in the middle of the box because the smaller your pinhole is, the sharper your picture would look. According to Wikipedia.com, rays of light enter through the small pinhole and is projected to a certain area on the film. Furthermore, if the pinhole is very small, finer and thinner beams of light would be captured. However, thin streams of light tend to bend when they make contact with the film. Even if the lines of the image look sharp, the overall picture can be a little blurry.

So how does the pinhole camera actually work? Now, let's say that you want to use your pinhole camera to take a picture of a flower. The flower bounces off a certain amount of light so that it can be seen. The very small hole in your pinhole camera captures all the streams of light that the flower emits and projects it upside-down into the film.

You need to use mirrors to have the correct perspective. Howstuffworks.com states that the very small hole in your pinhole camera functions like an ordinary lens. In other words, it is not really accurate to say that a pinhole camera has no lens because the small pinhole actually works like a lens.

Now you know how a pinhole camera works - by simply capturing light and projecting it to specific areas on the film. This simple concept is also used in digital cameras which use high-powered lenses.