Camera Obscura Fun

So as most know I have returned to full time studies n the form of a diploma in Visual Arts!

Last week in my photography class we spoke about a Camera Obscura aka a Pin hole camera and it intrigued me more so than anything else last week. However what intrigued me the most was the fact that you can do this to any room in your house as long as it has a window and is able to be removed of all light!

With this in mind I was on a mission I wanted to see this myself and work out how this works for myself! So what did we do on the weekend??? You guessed it made a camera obscura in my house specifically mine and hubby's bedroom.

So we set to work getting the supplies we needed;

• Gaf tape
• Thick garbage bags
• Scissors
• DSLR camera
• And a sunny day!

So little miss and I set up my room with the thick garbage bags and taping everything off as we went. Once the entire window was covered (please note that if you have more than one window in your seal-able room you must cover this one completely also) we closed the door and blocked out as much light as we could from the door and looked for leaks of light coming through the plastic and rightfully patched them up with the gaf tape.

 Once this was done we chose the spot for our pin hole or in our "camera" our 1cm wide hole in our plastic and cut out the so called hole. I did note that we didn't actually have a perfect circle for our hole which suited us but if you are a perfectionist please feel free to cut this out in your own way.

Now that the window is covered and our "pinhole" created we closed the door, killed the lights and put towels/blankets to get rid of the light from below the door and waited.
At first it was really intense and Liah and I were feeling the pressure of our creation worrying that it won't work. After a few moments of our eyes adjusting though, the outside world started to adjust to our walls only upside down! Which is exactly how the Camera Obscura works! If we happened to have a 'lens' it would be clearer.

This is where your DSLR camera comes in set that baby up on a tripod or if you can't find your tripod like myself find a shelf, table or some form of hard surface in which your camera will not move and set your settings to a long exposure adjusting the other settings as you see fit to capture the image you are wanting and photograph the hell out of this magic!

I do need to warn everyone though, I was expecting perfectly clear images on my walls with amazing colours etc however to the naked eye you will just make out the shadows and anything that is extremely light in colour outside ie you will see that white car parked on the street or that white fence across the road. Also DO NOT hesitate to go up closer to get a better look it may help you see everything clearer.

 
After a while we didn't want to leave the room we watched the birds fly from the trees to the electricity lines and the cars drive past it was short lived though as our tummies started grumbling signalling that we had spent over 3 hours in my bedroom rejoicing at our creation!

For those who think their kids are too young, Liah is 4 years old, I'd say 3 and under wouldn't really sit there for it unless you have a miracle child who is obsessed with new discoveries!

Let me know what you guys think! I'd love to hear that someone else has done this after reading my blog and if you do feel the itch to do this please, please, please send me links to pics, blogs etc and in saying that if you have any problems recreating this please feel free to message me on my facebook business page Liah's Toy Box.

♥ Lor ♪♫♪