Camera Obscura for Canon PowerShot ELPH115IS

myminifactory

Just in time for me to use it for Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day, here's a rather large attachment that allows a Canon PowerShot ELPH 115 IS to be used to capture pinhole images. To be more precise, it allows that little Canon to capture whatever image is projected onto the 150mm diagonal screen built-into the unit, and the front section described here makes that screen the target of a pinhole obscura. Now you're probably wondering why use that Canon compact. Well, pinhole resolution is fundamentally limited by the size of the image, so this big screen (roughly the size of a 4x5 film sheet) offers much better resolution than you can get directly using a pinhole with a small digital sensor. However, this particular Canon has the extra benefit that despite being a cheap and tiny 16MP camera, it can run CHDK -- which means it can be programmed to do an HDR capture sequence that can easily handle the huge dynamic range caused by light falloff in an ultrawide pinhole image. The photos of the pond, dandelions, and my 101-year-old aunt were all HDR sequences done with this rig.