Pinhole Camera Images - Evaluation

For our first photography project, we went out to different locations inside and outside around the college, to be able to produce photographs using pinhole cameras.

These are the pinhole camera negatives, which I developed.


This first image is of the college balcony looking down into the Atrium. The exposure time for this photograph was 2 minutes. I was pleased with this photo the most, because I managed to expose the light for the right amount of time, which produced the shape and detail of the room very effectively. I think the various tones of grey highlights the detail very well. Although, I do not like the black dots in the image, as it makes the photo look untidy. If I was to produce this image again, I would definitely make sure I sat the camera on the floor instead of holding it. The black dots were mostly caused by slightly moving the camera.

In this second image, a row of trees and part of the college was meant to be shown. This photo was the one I was most disappointed with, because there is a lot of white space shown and a big blotch of black floating in the middle of the image. The exposure time for this one was 10 seconds, but I think I needed to expose the light a little bit longer to prevent so much white space. I also managed to get my fingerprint on the photo paper too, which didn't make it look any better. Overall, I think this image is very messy. To make this image come out better, I would need to expose the light a little bit longer and again place the camera on the ground, to prevent camera shake.

This image is of some bikes outside the college building. I really like this photo as again I managed to outline the shape and detail of the scene very well, by exposing the light for the right amount of time. The exposure time for this pinhole image was 12 seconds. Although there is a few bright white spaces, but I think it makes the image look more interesting because it adds vibrancy to the photo, which does not make the image just seem grey and boring. To outline the bike even better, I would point the camera closer to the bike.

This last image was the very first photo I produced with the pinhole camera. It is fair to say that this image was a disaster, as it is obvious that the whole image is just black. I exposed the light from outside for 30 seconds, which was too long. That is why the image is covered in black. All I needed to do to produce this image correctly, was to expose the light for a shorter amount of time.

These are the images after I edited them on Adobe Photoshop.

I really like this edit of the first image because I swapped the colours around, so there is more black than white. This also made the image look as if it was taken in the evening, so not only the colours changed, but gave the image a whole different time phrase. Swapping the black and white colour over, has also produced the black dots, white. Although I didn't like the black dots in the original photo, I really like the white dots in this edit, as it looks like light is being reflected off the windows.

I thought this edit was the most interesting out of all of them because, swapping the tones around visualises the trees more clearer. In the negative, the trees are not very clear at all. Although by swapping the tonal colours around, this made most of the photo look like its been over exposed.

This was my favourite edited image, because changing round the tones made the whole picture seem more understandable and clearer. It neither changes the time of day or look under or over exposed.

In conclusion, I thought the pinhole photos I developed were both good and bad because, some of them had an understanding of what was portrayed in the image, whereas some did not from under or over exposing the light.