HOW TO CREATE A PHOTO CAMERA WITH YOUR ROOM

Or also known as: how to make a pinhole camera with your room (or other ways to entertain ourselves this summer).

For those of you who don't know, a pinhole camera is one of the most primitive ways of taking photos. It consists of a box (it can even be made from a shoe box) with a very small hole through which light enters. Inside this box, a photosensitive or light-sensitive paper is placed inside. This paper is exposed to light for a few seconds through the hole and that's it (or more or less, taking into account all the subsequent chemical processes that have to be done afterwards so as not to lose the image and fix it to the paper itself).

And, if we think about it, a room is a camera. It's a box, which if it has blinds we can make it practically light-tight (no light enters). But how do we get an image projected in an entire room without a projector or photosensitive materials, Dew?

Easy! Let me explain:

We will need: cardboard, aluminum foil, adhesive tape and garbage bags.

1. The first step is to choose our light source. If there is more than one window, we should close all the blinds on the rest. We need to get a space with as much darkness as possible.
   

2. If you don't have blinds, or if you still get some light, I recommend that you use garbage bags to cover all the places where light can enter. In this way, we will get a completely sealed "box", making the final image look much better.
   

3. Once we have everything isolated, we will need cardboard to cover the window that we will use, and to which we will make a cutout in the center. There are two options here:
   

   1. Make a small hole on the cardboard and enlarge it.

   2. Using aluminum foil. Inside this cutout, we will stick a piece of aluminum foil and with a needle or pencil, we will make our hole in the center, little by little bigger, until we see the clear image. It's a method that I find much easier than having to cut the cardboard with a cutter. The bigger the hole, the more light will enter but the less sharp the image will be, and vice versa, so it's important to go little by little, and find the perfect balance.

Camera Obscura: Manhattan View Looking South in Large Room, 1996

And wow. There we have it. Our room as if it were the inside of a camera. You will notice that the image we get will be inverted from top to bottom and from left to right and this always happens and will happen, even in our cameras. However, our camera is responsible digitally (or through a set of mirrors, hence the name "reflex" camera, to reflect) to put the image right side up. This method to create and project images was widely used even before the appearance of photosensitive materials to, for example, draw landscapes or other images.

And you? Have you ever tried it?

Camera Obscura Image of Times Square in Hotel Room, 1997 by Abelardo Morell