CHAPTER 5

The Basic How-To of Pinhole Photography

One of my teachers recalled a memory of a discarded refrigerator box. Climbing inside the box and closing up the flaps, he and his brother found images of an upside-down world. Soon they had all the kids on the block assembled to view the spectacle, for a penny, and then jump up and down outside for the benefit of the other viewers.

Harry Littel, personal letter to the author, 1990

The pinhole is one of the two natural systems that form an image (Figure 5.1). The other system is a lens, as in our eyes. One animal uses pinhole eyes for sight, the mollusk Nautilus (Figures 5.2A and B), which has been a species on this planet since the dinosaurs. The open aperture in each eye can accommodate ...

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