pinhole digital camera ?????????

Of course it is...

It is also possible to put a lawnmower engine in a Cadillac...

The pinhole is just a VERY small lens.
The lens on a mobile phone camera is pretty small....
Del

Short answer, yes. http://www.google.com/search?q=digital+pinhole+camera

thank you

i didnt think it was that easy

xox

How do you find your distance for the pinhole if you have a chip on a circuit board you scavenged from an old web cam?

I took an old web cam apart to try and use on my telescope and it works but I don't know the distance I should use for a pinhole.

I have been immediately busy here with my duck tape and scissors and wrapping paper cores. Very nice and lots of fun but I could not produce an image with the best will in the world whereas on the telescope it worked almost immediately as soon as I had the chip in roughly the same place in my eyepiece tube as the original ccd.

Is there a way to check?

I gave you a GA for a perfect and correct answer.

Yanis,

A few things to consider:

(1) If you make your pinhole much larger than the pixel size on your chip you will be sacrificing image quality.

(2) The greater the distance between the pinhole and the chip the less light you will have per pixel. This will increase contrast / reduce the depth of color and the details in the shadows.

(3) Figure out what field of view angle you want. Place the chip at the distance from the pinhole such that lines drawn from two opposite corners of the chip through the pinhole will be intersecting at the desired field angle.

Just as a matter of interest... a pinhole is not a lens in the true sense. Although a pinhole appears to focus light, the focus is achieved by diffraction, not refraction, as with a condensing lens or multiple lens system. A pinhole is a circular diffraction grating.

The reason that the image is dim is simply because a tiny hole only allows a small amount of light through!! Nothing more, nothing less!!!

"i asked her if it was possible to make a digital pinhole camera" YES.

Pinhole cameras are just like film cameras. The focal length is whatever you make it. There is an optimum diameter of the pinhole for a given f.l.

Using a digital device requires a short focal length, a very small pinhole, and longer exposures due to the small size of the sensor.

I would suggest a web search on the topic of "pinhole cameras" and perhaps a trip or call to you local public library for books devoted to the subject or a photo encyclopedia or handbook with chapters or articles.

Hello yanis,

from what I have read below by other contributors, it does seem you will be able to build a digital pinhole camera.

That being said, by definition a 'pinhole' 'camera' is just that.........a pinhole in card or very thin wood or metal. Theres no lens. So strictly speaking it will be a 'modified' pinhole camera.

I understand something of photography and theres some very useful info from other peeps!. Good luck and let us know if you or your friend does it please.

jfmfit

I think he did mean to take the lens of it first and just use the body with chip and electronic controls. At least that is what I understood from it but I may be wrong.

For anyone (like myself) who has to wear glasses, it does not matter if you have long or short sight by the way, and you have forgotten or lost your glasses and need to read something, a piece of card, with a tiny hole in it, given reasonable lighting, will allow you to read any printed matter.......

Many do not believe it, but try it yourself, it works fine. This is the principle of the pinhole camera again.

You can even fold up your forefinger (crooking the finger I believe its called), with the aid of the thumb on the same hand, to make quickly a small aperture, look through the hole and make it smaller till you can see really clearly! it does not need to be perfectly round either surprisingly enough!!!!

(Very good/useful for "vain" Ladies who leave their glasses at home and cannot read the menu in a Restaurant!!!)

By the way, as some one else also mentioned, the principle applies ONLY to holes, not holes with any sort of glass lense in them!!! No matter how small!!

In a way it is the same principle as "squinting" when you are too vain to wear your glasses.

Still does not make good enough eye sight to drive your car or bike though

Squinting is not the same as pinhole views.

With a squint you press on the eyeball and change it's shape. With a little finger pressure on your eyelids from top/bottm or left/right you can easly try this. It allows short sighted people to gain sharpness at a distance.

Pinhole lens. With a very small lens or aperture, on the order of a pinhole, you gain great depth of field = objects are in focus over a wider range.

The same factor operates in bright sunlight when you read a paper. Your eyes contract to a small aperture and you get great depth of field and even people with short sight and dissimilar eyes can read in this bright light, often with no glasses.

I have this problem, and use dental lights as reading lights fpr large drawings etc = a big help.

pinhole round glass lenses were a little like this

Now Antony van Leeuwenhoek, http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/history/leeuwenhoek.html,

Greetings, aurizon,

With all due respect I must beg to differ with you. Squinting is not the same as pinhole views, but it is a similar effect, being that squinting produces a narrowed slit aperture for the eye. When one squints he or she is just chopping off the vertical meridian in the eye's optical field, same as a pinhole. This is not equal to a pinhole, which chops off all meridians, leaving the unadulterated light rays to pass into the eye. Squinting has a greater effect (improvement) in temporarily improving vision in an eye with astigmatism power that is orientated in the vertical plane, the axis of which lies in the horizontal plane.

Also, the eye is too rigid, and the lids are too flaccid, for the eye to be affected by a forced squint in order to change its shape to change its power. I might add that it is not a good idea to attempt to alter an eye's power by manipulation with fingers.

Yeah I actually knew that, stupid conclusion on my part, too quick on the trigger I guess.

Yes that is what I meant.

A piece of glass (if not flat) is a lense, other optical laws apply to that than to a pin hole!!

Good test making yourself short sighted......

Most people who try it are amazed that it works for both long and short sighted people, but once they understand fully why, then the amazement disappears!!!!

Hello Andy Germany.

thanks for your post although it was not my 'original' one. I have tried as you say fisting my hand leaving a tiny hole to look through and, it does make my vision clearer! I need spectacles and this does help for sure.

jfmfit

thanks you guys are a blast

my friend will be at it some time soon

once again i enjoy your interactions

y.e.

Hey there

(presuming your friend has an SLR digital camera...)

Grab your friends body cap & drill a 1/2" or so whole in in the center of it.

Go to a hobby shop & buy a small piece of the thinnest piece of brass foil you can find, say .005" and the smallest drill, say .013"

carefully drill a hole in the brass with the drill.

carefully polish the foil with real fine sand paper to remove any burrs.

mount the foil with the hole centered in the inside of the body cap hole.

color the brass black with a felt tip pen making sure you don't hit the hole.

put the camera on Aperture control, aim the camera at the subject & take a picture.

If you squint thru the view finder, your eyes will adjust & you will be able to aim the camera more accurately.

have your friend scoot over to www.f295.org for more info.

Enjoy!

You will need a smaller hole than a #60 drill for a pinhole camera with a small raster as in a digital camera. Take several thickness of the thinnest aluminum foil you can find. Take a very sharp needle and press it into the center of the stach and have a selection of pinhole of various sizes. The best size is dependent on the distance from the raster.

Why ruin a good camera when almost every junked cell phone these days has a readily available small digital camera.

Unless you like the appeal of pinhole photography and fuzzy photos at best go the cheapest way to experiment.

Look up pinhole photography on the web in addition to DIY digital pinhole cameras.