Camera Curiosity

By now my kids are well accustomed to me chasing them around with a camera.  They also like to turn the camera around and take pictures of me by themselves.  Since the camera is a mainstay in our house, I figured I should teach the kids how it works.

We start by making a pinhole camera.  This is super easy to do. 

1.      Take a cylindrical cardboard oatmeal box (any empty cardboard box should work).
2.      Poke a hole in the center of the bottom of the box with a pencil.
3.      Put wax paper on the other end (the open side) of the box

Done. 

We sit in Briana’s slightly darkened room (rainy day about 5pm) and turn on her princess lamp.  We pull a blanket over our heads and stick the side of the camera with a hole in it outside of the blanket.  I tell Briana that if she points the camera at the lamp then we can see a picture of the lamp on the wax paper.

As an aside, a better way to make a pinhole camera is to cut the cardboard box in half, then put the wax paper on the part with the hole in it and tape it back together (preferably with black tape).  Then you can put your face in the open side and you don’t need the blanket.  In our case, I only had one oatmeal container and two girls.  Doing it the way I did, we can all see the “picture” at the same time.  Plus I figured that if the blanket didn’t work, I could always cut the box later.

Sure enough, there it is – backwards and upside down…kind-of.  In reality we see  the bright spot from the light enhanced, and the window light as well when we try that, and some lines from the blinds, but it’s very faint.  It’s a little bit too light at 5 in Bree’s room, but it’s always darker in Abby’s room so we head there to try it again.

In Abby’s room we don’t even need the blanket to see a good image of her nightlight.  Yeah!  Everyone, myself included, is pretty excited.  I promise that we can use our camera again before bed and see if it’s even better then when it’s really dark in the room.  We move our camera around and “take pictures” of the headboard to Abby’s bed, which shows up nicely in  black and white because of the slats, and her desk.

I tell the girls that this is exactly how a real camera works.  A real camera uses film where we use wax paper and the picture gets stuck to the chemicals on the film and we can print it out.  Where we poked a hole is called the lens.  In a real camera there is a mirror in the tube.  A little bit of light comes through the lens and bounces off of the mirror to go to the eyepiece where you can see it.  When you push the button, the mirror comes up and the light goes straight back to the film and the picture gets stuck in the chemicals on the film.  If your camera doesn’t have an eyepiece, like the one we made, then you don’t need a mirror and the camera can be smaller.

I have an old camera than uses film (vs. digital) and I planned to take it apart with the kids and show them what the inside of a camera looks like.  When the kids started running around excited while I wielded tiny screwdrivers though I had a flash that this was a terrible idea and put everything away.

I tell the kids that when they grow up they could be professional photographers who take pictures all day.  I ask them if they remember meeting Mommy’s friend Gwynne.  Briana remembers that we made her lemon squares.  We did and they were terrible and inexplicably salty (since there was no salt in the recipe) but we all ate them anyway like we didn’t notice – that’s what I remember.  Gwynne is a professional photographer.  We head downstairs and I pull up my friend’s website on my Nook and show the girls her pictures.  I tell them that she shows these pictures in frames in giant galleries like when we went to the art museum, and people buy them.  We talk about what pictures we like and why.  The kids agree that their favorite picture was one of a car buried in the snow with the wipers sticking up because they have “never seen that before”.

Briana tells me that she wants to be a real photographer when she grows up.

We use Briana’s kid tough camera to take some real pictures and look at them.

  

Sadly I let Abigail use my camera while Briana used the kid tough camera.  My camera is not kid tough.  Now my camera is broken.  Good thing we have more than 1.  And THEN Abby reminds me that she has her own camera – a toy one that plays music.

Back in the business of photography.  By the end of the afternoon, Briana’s camera has 597 photos so there’s no way I’m downloading those to pick one to show her “work”.  Next time I might have to teach her how to be selective.

<3 Pedigreed Housewife