Make an Easy Pinhole Camera

A woman posted this experiment on an e-list and said it was a lot of fun.  You tape black plastic over a window in a small room and then poke a small hole in it and it will make an image from the outside appear on your wall upside down, just like in your eyes and like in a camera.  Then it goes on to show you how to make your own pinhole camera.  Very cool!  If you try it and can get a picture of it, we'd love to post it here.

Click on the image above to start.  First click on "making a camera obscura".  It will show you how to make an outside image appear upside down on your wall.

Then click on "making a pinhole camera" to make your own images.  Awesome!

We made ours in Ethan's room.  I taped black plastic over the window and the covered that with the curtains since a lot of light still came through but left a little hole in the plastic and curtains to allow a tad bit of light.  The image we got was too faint to see all the way across the room so I brought in a poster board and we took it near the window and the image appeared on it.  I tried to take pictures of it but without a flash, it didn't show up.  Mine was not near as bright and wonderful as the other website showed but it still did the trick and the kids thought it was cool.  We're going to try the pinhole camera sometime soon.

We also want to try sun printing.

Make a Pringles Pinhole Scope (Martinzoo did this experiment - it can be seen here)  Cool!

Make a Cardboard Tube Pinhole Scope

Make a Juice Can Pinhole Scope

Light & Color Experiments

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