I had great fun this afternoon working on a project: I made a camera obscura using two cardboard boxes, electrical tape and a sheet of white paper.
This is the camera, sitting on my dad's tripod and pointed at the sun.
I could see the sun on the paper (it's that white dot in the center of the 'focus screen'), but the image of the neighbor's trees was too dim to be seen in the light.
I futzed around for a while with a Loden coat trying to recreate those black cape-thingies the really old time photographers used in order to see the focusing screen on the backs of their view cameras. Man, must those things have been HOT! And not in the hottie sense, but in the sweat-pouring-down-your-back, bring-me-a-pitcher-of-ice-water sense. And then to have to develop the wet plates on-the-spot??? Those people were strong!
After looking like an utter loon in the backyard with an ankle-length Loden coat over my head in July and a white square poking out the neck of the coat (think Jason and Quincy), I remembered how Dad's old Speed Graphic had pop-out shields on all four sides around the focusing screen, and a bright idea light bulb went on in my head (which only added to the heat -- it was in the 90s again today). So I unearthed a cereal box from the recycling and made my own shield. It helped, but I still couldn't photograph the image I could see under the coat because there was still too much light. So I made another shield for the 'mouth' of the initial shield, but with a hole for the camera's lens.
The camera with the hood I 'developed.'
And, whaddya know, it worked! Now I could make out the neighbor's trees along with the sun, and, surprise-surprise, the electrical cable to the house. I hadn't expected to see the electrical cable. All this was upside down in the same way all cameras without internal mirrors project the image.
For anyone with an interest, the camera was set on ISO 1600, f4.5 with an exposure time of 3 seconds. That's how dim it was inside my little camera obscura. But it worked, and I'm tickled pink.
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