Shoebox Pinhole Camera
No lens, no battery, no screen — just a box and a pinhole, projecting the outside world live onto paper.
Never point the camera at the sun — the concentrated spot can damage eyes and scorch paper. Use bright landscapes, not the sun.
Materials
- A shoebox with a lid
- Aluminum foil
- A pin or needle
- Tape
- White paper or tracing paper
- Scissors
Procedure
Make the screen end
Cut a 5 cm square hole in one short end of the box. Tape white paper over the inside of the opposite end — this is your screen.
Make the pinhole end
Cut a 5 cm square hole in the center of the other short end and tape foil over it. Poke one clean, tiny hole in the foil's center with the pin.
Seal out stray light
Close the lid and seal every light leak with tape. The box must be dark inside except for the pinhole.
Project the world
Point the pinhole at a bright outdoor scene and look at the screen through a small viewing flap cut in the box's side (cover your head with a cloth for a better view). Describe the image.
Compare hole sizes
Make a second pinhole twice as wide in fresh foil and compare. Which image is sharper? Which is brighter?
What to observe
A dim, upside-down image of the bright scene appears on the paper screen.
Covering part of the pinhole dims the image but does not cut it in half.
A smaller, cleaner hole gives a sharper picture.
Why it happens
Light travels in straight lines, so each point of a bright scene sends one ray through the tiny hole and lands on a matching point of the screen — building the whole image dot by dot, upside down and reversed. A smaller hole makes a sharper image (less overlap between neighboring points) but a dimmer one (fewer rays get through). This is exactly how the first cameras worked, and your eye's pupil plus lens does the same job with living optics.
Try variations
Try three pinholes side by side — how many images appear, and why?
Point it at a tree on a windy day. Is the moving image sharp or blurry?