A Homemade Multipoint Pinhole Camera Made from 32,000 Drinking Straws

 

Using 32,000 black drinking straws, collaborators Michael (Mick) Farrell and Cliff Haynes created the Straw Camera, a homemade camera they began experimenting with in 2007. Despite the connection one might draw to a pinhole camera, the Straw Camera actually functions quite differently, producing a multipoint perspective from an array rather than a single point perspective.

The direct analogue process records the light collected from each straw onto a piece of paper secured to the back of the camera. The camera gives a direct 1:1 view of the subject that is placed before it, however it translates the image to one that mirrors that of pointillist painting, breaking the subject into thousands of little dots.

“In a world beset by selfies with their immediate gratification, and HD television in all its glory feeding our visual appetite, a Straw Camera image of an individual, with its engineering projection and disappearance of the subject into the near fog of visual capture, gives the viewer a glimpse of just how transitory perception is,” said Cliff about the camera.

To read more about the project, check out the photography duo’s website for the Straw Camera, or their book which was published earlier this month. (via PetaPixel)