it started with a can of baja blast. when i was done with it, i thought of cutting the can open so that i could have one flat piece of aluminum. and that worked! its amusing reducing a soda can to a flat plane of material.
and then in my infinite wisdom, inspired by homemade solutions for viewing the eclipse, i thought of poking a hole in it and seeing if i could get an image from it.
because its a pin hole camera. its in the name. this is a project kids do for fun. so surely when i poke a pin in this flat sheet of aluminum i can just get a picture on the other side of it. right?
i did not research this whatsoever.
the only thing i knew could poke a hole in this without getting damaged was this 0.5mm mechanical pencil, which has a metal tip. i didnt actually stab the sheet though. what i did was i pressed the pencil down on the sheet and spun the sheet itself around, which slowly drilled a tiny hole through the aluminum.
so great! cool! i have a sheet of material that blocks all light except through a tiny little hole!
now the problem is creating a dark enough environment to actually be able to see a picture on the other side. the idea i had? ok, listen closely, cause this is wild
take the spare cardboard boxes taht i need to recycle, shove them into my doorway, tape all the holes with gaffers tape to seal the light, and then cut one more hole in the cardboard to fit this sheet of aluminum into it.
so its like taking a little piece of tin foil and taping it on a hole in a piece of paper to view the eclipse.
except bigger.
i used up the rest of my gaffers tape to put this up, and when i was done i was left with the slight issue of now being trapped in my room. but i thought ahead! for all i did was leave one corner untaped so i could squeeze through it to get to the other side.
this leaves my room as one big box filled with light, and the hallway as a controllable environment where i can shut all the lights off, aka a dark box. the hallway would be dark enough that i could take a bed sheet, tape it to the door across from my room, and set my phone for a 30 second exposure so that i can tell if it worked or not.
and guess what.
it didnt work.
i dont think it was really because of light leaking through either. even though the cardboard door i created looks like some shit you would build in rust (game), it still blocked enough light to tell me if this would work or not. you know how i could tell? up at the top of that door is one tiny little dot of light on the sheet. from the pinhole.
my next great idea was to take the bedsheet INTO THE ROOM ACROSS FROM ME and have the pinhole shoot light through the door into the room onto the bed sheet. just to see if a further distance would somehow magically let this work.
and the results were equally disappointing.
i am now very bummed out from this because i spent the last 3 hours fiddling with this experiment and getting it set up and trying it out and yeah thats not how pinhole cameras work. i even got thid little guy posed and everythang x_x gghrddhhhgh LOOK AT HIMMMM
what i probably actually need is a lens on the dark side of the pinhole to spread out the light across a larger area than just a little dot. unfortunately, i dont have any lenses to use. i wouldn't even know how to get them aligned correctly. the best i would be able to do is just tape it right on top of the pinhole and hope taht works somehow.
oh wait thats right i have this broken camera i paid 20 bucks for.
