Lauren and Craig Make Pinhole Cameras

Background Information

The first cameras were used by artists to help them trace the outlines of things they wanted to draw. In 1558, Giovanni Battista della Porta described how you could project an image onto the wall of a darkroom by letting in light through a tiny hole. Later this idea was used to make a box which projected an image of a brightly lit object onto a glass plate. You could put a piece of paper over the glass plate and trace the outlines of the object. There are notes for how to make a camera obscura like this in the Ideas to Try section of these notes.

Later, people experimented with a chemical called silver nitrate, which changes colour when placed in sunlight. Plates of glass spread with silver nitrate were put into a camera obscura. But the images made like this quickly faded away in ordinary daylight. In 1833, William Henry Fox Talbot used paper containing silver nitrate to make some of the first black and white photographs. He found a way of fixing the image, so that it did not just fade away.

Since then, we have learned to make colour photographs. New kinds of camera have been invented, such as Polaroid and digital cameras.

Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day is on 27 April 2003. People all over the world will make a pinhole camera and take photos on this day. You can find out more in the links section of these notes.