Camera Obscura and Chaos

I had an idea that I could set up a camera obscura in my back room at the weekend. It should have been easy I reasoned, as I tried to black out the (mainly glazed) back door and pin the large curtains back as best I could. Achieving a black out is quite tricky I discovered as the hours passed, and the navy blue plastic table covers I thought would do the trick weren't up to the task. I had to pin layer upon layer of blankets all over the place. The drawing pins were straining at the task, and just as I stepped down from the ladder for what felt like the millionth time, the blankets fell in a crumpled heap on the floor and I was left in bright sunshine again. After quite a lot of grumpiness, but with a strong, 'I've started so I'll finish' mentality, I managed to get the room mainly dark. I then realised I'd have to bore a hole through a blanket to get the pin hole that is needed. That didn't seem sensible, so it was back to pinning bits of blanket up in a rough 'hem' and trying to jigsaw puzzle bits of cardboard to the relevant cracks. This was further complicated by the fact that as the room did become darker, I kept losing the scissors, drawing pins and sellotape. The room might not have been going black, but the air was certainly going blue.

At last I was able to make the pin hole, and realised with dismay that the sunny side of the house is actually the front. The sun did come out for a few minutes and I was able to see a very small, and admittedly rather disappointing, image of some clouds on the side of my bookcase. The next stage should have been to get a mirror to reflect the image through a lens onto another mirror on the floor. By this time I was feeling quite depressed and decided to just admire my 2p sized image of clouds. The only good thing about this, I thought ruefully to myself, was that at least you couldn't tell they were upside down.

Apparently Leonardo Da Vinci used this method to paint some pictures. Sadly the clouds were in fuzzy vision, so that combined with my limited artistic skills, wasn't going to produce a 'master' anytime soon - Leo can rest easy in his grave.