We were at the Moseley Folk Festival this weekend and it was tremendous fun. Full report to come soon but we tried something new, sticking a little digital camera inside the camera obscura to record what it saw.
Here’s a nice representative clip from early Saturday of the mirror being attached, the view playing out and then, two minutes in, Pete’s friend Ian being given a tour. Watch for his hairy head.
Later we moved the camera away from the stage (the view of people standing watching the bands wasn’t particularly interesting) and plonked it on a small hill overlooking the “fairground” bit. Here’s a timelapse from a lazy Sunday morning of 1 hour compressed into one minute. The flashes are when the hood is opened for people to look in.
Finally, towards the end of Sunday we’d taken the camera out of the camera and one of the many gangs of feral festival kids formed a surprisingly orderly queue to stick their heads in.
The camera-inside-the-camera has been a particularly intriguing development, particularly when it can be connected to a smartphone allowing us to monitor what’s going on inside. The resulting footage doesn’t compare to the magic of seeing the images with your eyes but it does open up some new possibilities which I think we’ve only just scratched. Look for more of this stuff soon!