Camera Obscura March 15, 2010
Posted by Chris in : Edinburgh , trackbackToday we took a day trip to Edinburgh to visit the Camera Obscura. We had a great time in the galleries and taking a different kind of tour of Edinburgh in the top floor of the building.
The Camera Obscure is located just down the Royal Mile from Edinburgh Castle and across the street from The Scotland Whiskey Experience.
The show consisted of a tour of Edinburgh, having some laughs with the hostess, and learning how camera obscura works. We were very fortunate that today was not very rainy since the show is apparently fairly lame if the weather’s bad (the mirror fogs up or low visibility due to precipitation). That was not the case for us and it was amazing!
The Camera Obscura is one of several around the world, they are each large pin-hole cameras that project an image in a manner similar to an old film-style camera.
The tour feels like a cross between seeing the city from a low flying plane and being an omnipotent being. We got to see all the major sights in the city plus (since it was a clear day out) we saw islands and the hills outside of the city! And since it’s a real image that’s constantly changing, we got to see the people moving around the city. This is truly people watching in style! We pretend to pick people up off the street with a piece of paper, give them a shake, and put them back (those poor pedestrians, if they only knew).
The galleries are three floors of purely interactive exhibits.
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The first floor of exhibits consisted of all sorts of demonstrations of light play, from holograms to pin-hole photography. 
One of the most visually stunning parts of this floor was the room of lights- a room with a transparent wall blocking a lot of lights, causing the light points to move outward to infinity. Another fantastic aspect of this floor was the stairway to Australia!
The second contained varied optical illusions: everything from Escher prints to ways to visually exchange facial components/faces.
The third floor of exhibits had many fun gadgets and devices including a gigantic lightning ball and other fun toys! There was a crackle ball and a flat lightning ball like thing that responded to noise.
The exhibits mentioned above were fantastic but are merely a way for you to pass your time until your show on the top floor is ready to begin, the camera obscura.
Click to learn more about Camera Obscura.
Camera Obscura gave us free admission to write this review.
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