Mike Murray's Camera Obscura: Building the camera & Using it on Location

Phase 1: Materials used to create my camera obscura: A cereal box, a smaller box, a plastic bag, a magnified glass, a knife, and tape. Phase 2: Cut appropriate hole in smaller box and cut piece of plastic bag and taped it to base of box as the film.

Resultant camera obscura images:

Swan gracefully swimming in peaceful loch, Sunday June 19, 2011 University of Stirling

Loch with Wallace monument in background, Sunday June 19, 2011 University of Stirling

The main trouble I had with the camera obscura was keeping the film inside the corridor taught and not loose. It was difficult to keep taught because the box inside was somewhat flimsy. I tried re taping it many times and finally realized it was the best I was going to see. Also, I had trouble keeping the corridor dark at first; light kept coming in and I was not getting a good image. I went back and closed the inner box slightly with cardboard and it seemed to fix the problem. Also, it seemed that I could not get as good of a picture as I wanted to. When I looked through the obscura I could see the image perfectly, but when I took the picture it always seemed to come out blurry. Other than that it went over well.