Now that spring is here – spring fever is here as well. Part of spring fever means that everyone wants to get outside and do something. Photography is a great way to get outside and explore. With digital cameras readily available – we don’t necessarily think about how cameras work any more – we point and shoot. But camera technology is built on fundamental physics and whether or not you are using a traditional film or digital camera the physics is much the same. The only real difference is how the image is recorded and stored.
Light still passes through a hole and is projected on the recording surface. Lenses are used to help focus the light onto our specific medium. To help study the concepts of physics used in cameras – building a pinhole camera out of simple materials that you can find in your home is a wonderful activity. Depending upon how complex you want to get – you can even make a working 35 mm camera out of a match box. Here is a link to 23 different pinhole cameras that you can build at home.
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