Notes

on pinhole camera

pinhole camera Plate scale. Suppose we take d=1cm (=104 microns) and =1 (=
4.85x10-6 radians). Then on the camera the distance between two sources 1 apart is 4.85x10-2 microns. The plate scale is

m d 4.85 10 2 arcsec 1cm

 D d Width of pinehole w n

pinhole

camera

Angular Resolution
Image is smeared by angle n=w/D. The diffraction limit gives an angle d=/w. Whichever of these is larger gives the angular resolution. 1mm 1mm 4 d = 5 10 radians = 100 500nm w 500nm w

w 10cm w 10cm n = 0.01radians = 2000 1mm D 1mm D

Based on these values, it is unlikely that we are diffraction limited.