Travel kit for camera obscura experiments

My "main life" is at the moment overwhelming the part of my life that I
enjoy - photography and pinholing. (I am 1/3 of the way through
building a panoramic pinhole camera, and holding for the last two
months...) I'm trying to think of ways to productively and enjoyably
use the hour or two that I often get in the evening (or early morning)
in some strange hotel room in some awful industrial campus area.

Besides black plastic and gaffer tape for blacking out the windows
(let's see what Homeland Security makes of that...) what else should I
carry to allow me to experiment a bit with camera obscura work?
Besides, of course, a camera to record the results, I always have a
digital SLR and a few lenses everywhere I go.

I have to admit I'm completely unfamiliar with even the most basic
concepts of giant pinholes or camera obscura. For the average size
hotel (or suburban motel) room, what in general would be a reasonable
size aperture? I figure I could make up a few with nice clean sharp
edges and slip them in the back of my suitcase. Are we talking about
apertures measured in fractions of inches, or inches?

How about the concept of creating a camera obscura with a pinhole sieve?
    If I make a few sieve images on transparency film, what are some
rough guesses as to size of the central area, size of the sieve holes,
and overall size? I love the sharp/glow look of pinhole sieve images.

I'm terrified that a few of you will generate some elaborately precise
equations that will shame me (I do large economic models by day, but
still struggle with pinhole math, go figure.) Since I have three to
four evenings and mornings a week in hotel rooms I can afford to
experiment a bit. A few "try this diameter" messages will help me more
than formulae - other than my main life, I'm fairly math-phobic.

Thanks.

Ed
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Received on Tue Sep 4 16:40:53 2007