Camera Obscura
I decided to construct my camera obscura in my bedroom, as it is the only room in our house that has the closest thing to a view, and has a flat wall that the image could be viewed on. Unfortunately, it also just so happens to be the room with the largest window our house has to offer—so blacking it out was a bit of a chore. Initially, I planned to use flattened cardboard boxes to black out the window, but I fortunately found a black plastic tarp in our garage that was a much better alternative in terms of setup time.
My major takeaways from blacking out that window were the following: it is very difficult to black out a window when your house is made of stucco and all you have is duct tape, and you shouldn’t attempt to do this on the windiest day of the year. I knew the light seal was not going to be perfect, a la stucco-duct-tape-combo, so I taped the edges of the curtains in my room to the window for good measure.
Once the tarp was hung, my next task was to construct the lens. The reason I had originally planned to use cardboard was because I knew it would be a much easier material to cut a circle into, instead of a flimsy plastic tarp. I modified my plan by cutting the lens into a piece of cardboard, and then I cut a hole the size and shape of the cardboard in the tarp. I then realized that I needed to secure the lens to the window, as the tarp was quickly becoming a sail in the wind. The combination of a lens that is moving around, and a long exposure from a station camera was going to produce blurry projections.
As for the lens itself, I chose to shove a few filter step up rings (which are used to adapt filters to lenses with smaller filter ring sizes) in the hole I had cut, because I figured that I would want to have as round of an aperture as possible to keep some semblance of uniform focus in the projection. After blocking out a couple more door sills, I sat for a moment in the dark and thought I did something wrong. To my surprise an image appeared on the wall in front of me. At first I was admittedly disappointed. All I could make out was the roof of our neighbor’s house and the tree in their front yard—and my roommate couldn’t even see that. I proceeded to take a few test shots with my camera, and was shocked by the results. I showed my roommate and we both exchanged glances at the camera monitor and the wall, both befuddled by the disparity between what the camera saw and what we did. The camera picked up an incredible amount of color information and detail that I was unable to see with my eyes. I made a few more tweaks to the camera—namely patching some light leaks, and making my aperture smaller to try and gain some more clarity in the image. (This new aperture also invalidated the use of the filter rings as it became a square and not a circle.)
I began shooting photos of the room, dialing my shutter speed in with each exposure. The effort in tenting out the window really paid off as the blank wall provided a perfect screen for the projection. The more time I spent in the dark, the more detail I began to see— my car began to appear and the tree appeared to have layers of branches and color. I was equally impressed with both how far photographic equipment has come to the point where I can get an exposure that would have taken hours or minutes in mere seconds, and how adaptable my eyes were to the dark. Though the exposures were a matter of seconds, it did slow me down enough to admire mind bending image that was appearing before me. It wasn’t long before the rest of my housemates wandered into my room out of curiosity about why I had decorated the front of our house with a garbage bag. They were equally bewildered as the image was slowly revealed to them.
One of the compositions I created, and enjoyed, was framing the projection as such that the wall would be the frame for the projection. Having the projection take up the entirety of the frame was reminiscent of a diorama, and the play between the projection of the outside world and a blank wall was intriguing to me. I find how the effect of the camera obscura challenges your brain’s rendering capabilities in two ways to be fascinating. It forces your brain to reconcile that the image you are seeing is upside down, and realize that the image you are seeing is in fact a projection, and the wall is still physically there.
Overall, I enjoyed the experience of building a camera obscura. It reminded me of being a kid, and my dad showing me the wonders of Coke and Mentos in our backyard. It was also humorous to me that what was the result of years of trials and experimentation for scientists centuries ago, was just an afternoon for me. It’s easy to take these innovations that got us to where we are now for granted.