[PLUG-TALK] Art Institute of Chicago exhibit

[Brent Rieck]

Russell Senior wrote:
> I was recently at the AIoC and saw an interesting exhibit.  Who here,
> without looking it up, has heard of "camera obscura"?  I hadn't,
> although like many things it is obvious once someone points it out.

I had, but not until now did I realize this random bit of trivia - I
believe the camera obscura "method"(?) was used in an episode of "The
Bloodhound Gang" (the kids-as-detectives show within a show on 3-2-1
Contact).  The details are fuzzy but I seem to remember the gang had
somehow gotten caught inside a locked u-haul-ish truck that was driving
around the city, for some reason they had to find out where they were
going so they were somehow able to make a small "pinhole" or use an
existing hole in the side of the truck and project the image onto the
opposite wall (or a piece of cardboard, it was on tv 20+ years ago)

> [1] Is it possible to do interesting long-exposure stuff with digital
>     cameras?  Or do the stupid embedded computers and their
>     programmers get in your way?

A digital camera that supports a shutter speed setting of "Bulb" or
"Time" can probably keep image capture going for 8 or so hours,
particularly if that camera is one of the fancier DSLRs.  Amongst other
things you might need to get an AC adapter for the camera, I'm not
particularly familiar with how CCDs or CMOS sensors work but 8 hours of
image capture might run the camera batteries out.

--Brent