Sunday 24th April - forget new lenses- Worldwide Pinhole Day

[Glen]

Think you could get a better shot if only you had a 70-200VR? Read on


press release below



Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day
While more than two million of the latest high technology digital cameras will be sold in Australia this year, we are now being encouraged to abandon technology temporarily and join a global movement to celebrate the fun, fantasy and art of taking photos using only a simple box with a pin hole for a lens.

Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day will be held this Sunday, April 24th.
Believe it or not, photos can actually be taken by cameras made from ordinary materials such as shoe boxes, peeled tomato cans or tea boxes.

All you need is a light-tight container, namely a box or a can with a tiny hole in one side, and any photo-sensitive surface inside. No transistors, light emitting diodes or chips are involved!

The principal goes back to the Camera Obscura, first recorded in the fifth century BC, used by Aristotle in 384-322 BC to study the physics of light and popularised by Leonardo Da Vinci in the late 1400s as a drawing aid.

Camera Obscura is Latin for a dark room. When a bright ray of light penetrates a tiny hole in a wall, a large, colorful, inverted image of the view outside forms on the opposite wall.

In the 1800s science moved on and found a way to permanently record such images on light sensitive film. Thus photography (another Latin word, meaning drawing with light) was invented. Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day is open to happy snappers of all ages everywhere.

If you have never built a pin hole camera, a web site set up specifically for the occasion - http://www.pinholeday.org - will show you how it can be done. The rest is up to your imagination.

Those who participate can even post their photographs on the same web site. A photo by each "artist" will become part of the international web gallery.

Last year more than 1,500 people from 43 countries took part and numbers are expected to grow in 2005.

The Executive Director of the Photo Imaging Council of Australia - the peak body for the photographic industry - Paul Curtis says Aussies are often seen as being more adventurous than other nations and this global event is a way to show off our array of pinhole photographic talent on April 24th.

"All you need is the spirit of enterprise and fun. Anyone from primary school students to serious photographers can participate.

"Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day stems from the spontaneous work of a group of volunteers scattered worldwide, so let's show them what good old fashioned Aussie ingenuity is all about," Mr Curtis says.

[sirhc55]

Talking of camera obscura many years ago I was involved in an idea re using a photosensitive paint that you apllied to a wall in a dark room. You then projected a picture from a slide projector onto the wall and then washed on a developer - I don’t know if it ever happened or is just lost in time

[Glen]

Interesting idea Chris, would make murals easy