The Daily Book of Photography

DAY 128

PHOTOGRAPHIC CURIOSITIES

World’s Largest Camera

AIRCRAFT HANGARS AND CAMERA TRUCKS

If the category of “world’s smallest camera” involves cutting-edge technological innovations, the largest cameras are still grounded in continuity with time-tested techniques.

In June 2006, an entire aircraft hangar in El Toro, California, was transformed into an enormous pinhole camera, based on the same principle as the 14^th-century camera obscura (see page 9). Measuring 215 × 160 × 80 feet, the darkened hangar created a photograph on a muslin canvas three stories high and 10 stories wide; the image was developed in a “tray” the size of a swimming ...