So, let's see if I get this right. They rediscovered something, that everyone from the 1990's and 80 years prior learned to make as part of science class...and simply applied modern technology to it.
No. They applied new technology to something they already knew about.
A pinhole camera is educationally interesting but not much use for practical purposes. You simply don't get enough light coming though. It's easily solved by optics. Most cameras use a lens to squeeze more light through the aperture. But this requires a certain thickness. Not a problem if you can afford a few CM of thickness, but unsuitable for flat cameras.
You can also solve the problem by using lots of pinholes. But if you use a single CCD, you get interference from lots of similar but different images. So you need to use some pretty sophisticated computer processing to unmerge these images.
A pinhole camera is more than adequate for taking pictures of eclipses of the sun, etc. It's also good enough for taking stills (longer exposure time) or objects lit with a very bright light (like a flash, maybe?).
Single pinhole cameras have severe quality limits. Make the hole too big and sharpness is inversely proportional to the diameter of the hole. Make the hole too small and sharpness is proportional to the size of the hole, and the amount of light is reduced also. For best sharpness there's an optimum pinhole diameter { 1.9 * sqrt ( f * l ), where f is focal length and l is wavelength }, and the results even at the optimum aren't very good.
Multiple pinholes offers a theoretical way around the diffraction limi
They're stylistically interesting, but don't have constant brightness across the image and have some pretty quirky distortion; which I appreciate looks good, but is usually the sort of thing photographers want to avoid.
When it is not necessary to make a decision, it is necessary not to
make a decision.
I must be missing something... (Score:0, Troll)
So, let's see if I get this right. They rediscovered something, that everyone from the 1990's and 80 years prior learned to make as part of science class...and simply applied modern technology to it.
Re:I must be missing something... (Score:2)
A pinhole camera is educationally interesting but not much use for practical purposes. You simply don't get enough light coming though. It's easily solved by optics. Most cameras use a lens to squeeze more light through the aperture. But this requires a certain thickness. Not a problem if you can afford a few CM of thickness, but unsuitable for flat cameras.
You can also solve the problem by using lots of pinholes. But if you use a single CCD, you get interference from lots of similar but different images. So you need to use some pretty sophisticated computer processing to unmerge these images.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Single pinhole cameras have severe quality limits. Make the hole too big and sharpness is inversely proportional to the diameter of the hole. Make the hole too small and sharpness is proportional to the size of the hole, and the amount of light is reduced also. For best sharpness there's an optimum pinhole diameter { 1.9 * sqrt ( f * l ), where f is focal length and l is wavelength }, and the results even at the optimum aren't very good.
Multiple pinholes offers a theoretical way around the diffraction limi
Re: (Score:2)
and the results even at the optimum aren't very good.
You might be surprised if you do an image search for "photos taken with a pinhole camera."
Re: (Score:1)