Giant Pinhole Camera Is Three Stories High

[n2doc]

By Charlie Sorrel May 23, 2011 | 5:39 am | Categories: Cameras

The Great Picture team turns an aircraft hangar into a giant pinhole camera
This is the world’s largest camera. You won’t be using it to take holidays snaps or to send pictures of your dinner up to Instagram, and you won’t be able to carry the resulting photograph in your wallet. In fact the massive photo — of a dull scene of a scrubby Californian land — is rather unimpressive save for its size. What this giant camera is about is numbers. Big, big numbers.

The Great Picture was carried out back in 2006 as part of the ongoing Legacy Project, and turned an airplane hangar in Marine Corps Air Station El Toro, California into a pinhole camera. The camera measured 13.71 x 48.76 x 24.38 meters (45 x 160 x 80 feet) and produced a photograph of 9.62 x 33.83 meters (31.6 x 111 feet). And that’s just getting started.

How do you turn a drafty, cavernous hangar into a light-tight box? With lots of hands. Six artists used 24,000 square feet of black plastic sheeting, 1,300 gallons of foam gap filler and 1.52 miles of black tape to seal out the light, and spray 40 cans of black paint around to cut out reflections.

The “film” was a giant sheet of muslin hand-painted with 80 liters of Rockland Liquid Light emulsion. This was done under safelights (the film was black and white).

http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2011/05/giant-pinhole-camera-is-three-stories-high/

[randr]

1. What an incredible waste of resourses

[RT Atlanta]

2. Sounds like the show 'myth busters'

what a waste of time/energy...

[laconicsax]

3. There's got to be an easier way to make picture postcards. n/t