[CraigMac]

Originally Posted by FocalFrenzy

In a dimly lit room, clear off a table and put 3 or 4 candles on one end of it. Then place a sheet of construction paper upright (with a shape cut into the center), at the halfway point of the table. Then hold a white sheet of construcion paper a few inches further. You should be able to see the shapes projected through the black paper, onto the white paper. If you could draw a straight line from each candle, through the mask, it would line up perfectly with the light spots on the white paper.

In this example, the white paper represents your cameras' sensor. The black paper represents the mask, and the candles represent the X-mas lights. Being able to see an object placed between the lights and the mask, is possible as long as that object is not a lightsource itself. Focusing on that object helps to put the lights out of focus, thus creating your image. I hope this helps, and I had a fun time demonstrating this for my son. It actually helped cement the whole concept for me as well.

you are a genius. this makes perfect sense!! wow its like everything just focused in for me when reading this. it just sort of snapped in place. it was all blurry for me before.. ok ill stop with the crappy puns now...