pin hole effect images

Pinhole images are images which are created with the use of a pinhole camera. Pinhole cameras work without the use of a lens and instead a small hole in the front of the camera which lets light pass through to project an image of what is in front of the camera onto whatever is on the other side of the hole made in the front. This phenomenon is known as camera obscura and was first referenced between 470 and 390 BC (years 284 to 364). When the image is projected, the image will be inverted as light only travels in straight lines resulting in the projected image being upside down. Pinhole image have a few distinct characteristics which make them stand out from other photographs. One of these characteristics is long exposure times. This is because the pin hole in the front of the camera is so small that it only lets a very small amount of light through it this means that a longer exposure time is required in order to get a good and visible photograph. other characteristics of pinhole photography include wide angle views, soft focus, lack of focus towards the edges of the photograph and vignetting on the corners of the photograph (darkened corners). As pinhole photography has these characteristics, it means they have their own look which can be replicated digitally within Photoshop. Below, I have done just that and taken some architecture images and edited them within Photoshop to make them look as though they were taken with a pinhole camera.

This is one of the images which i created. this is a photograph of Seville cathedral which I took whilst on a trip there around 2 years ago. in order to create this image i first edited the colour slightly by adding grain to the image in order to make it look as though the photograph was taken using film taking some of the colour out by lowering the saturation slightly then upping the contrast as this is the effect that pinhole images usually have. After this i added a radial blur to the image to make the edges of the photograph blurred and making the focus drop more and more towards the edges of the photograph, the last thing i did was darkening the corners. i did this by creating a small border then changest the lightness to the darkest possible setting. this made the edges and corners of this photograph slghtly darker, once i had done this, the pinhole effect was created within this photograph and i am very happy with the way this pinhole effect image looks.

This is another image i edited within photoshop to create the pinhole effect. This was edited in the exact same way as the previous one however i dont feel that this one worked as well as the last as the bright white sky makes the darkened corners a lot more prominent and i feel that the edges and corners may be a little too dark for this effect to properly work and look fully effective. had the edges and corners been a little softer i feel that this would be a lot better.

this is another image which i edited in the pinhole style within photoshop. this was edited in the exact same way as the others and i think this is my favourite out if the photographs i edited in this style as i feel that this one looks the most natural and it looks as though it has not been overly edited and looks as though it could have been taken using a pinhole camera. i am very happy with the way this photograph was edited and they way it turned out.

this is another photograph i edited in the pinhole style within photoshop, again, this photograph was edited in the exact same way as the others but again, the corners and edges are too dark for this photograph and this has resulted in the image looking overly edited and less like a photograph which was actually taken using a pin hole camera. The corners and edges of this photograph are so dark as i added 2 layers of the border as when i added the first border i felt that it was not dark enough and did not make much of a difference to the image so i chose to add another. looking back at this photograph now that it had been fully edited i realise that with this effect and the vignette at the corners, less is more and the vignette is supposed to be subtle rather than too obvious like this is. I feel that had the vignette on this image not been as strong and slightly more subtle this image would look a lot better and work a lot better as a pin hole effect image