In an age where TV makers and the like are constantly outdoing one another with new “world’s largest” claims, it’s refreshing to discover that something so analogue – a pinhole camera’s photo – is still the world’s largest, five years on.
It may not look like much, but the photo’s eery landscape of the El Toro Control Tower, runways and San Joaquin Hills was created after being exposed for 35 minutes to light from a 6mm hole in an empty aeroplane hangar’s wall in Irvine, California.
The abandoned aeroplane hangar – which also holds the record for being the world’s largest pinhole camera – held the photo canvas, which measured 9.4m x 2.1m x 33.8m, and weighed 544kg.
As virtually anything can be turned into a pinhole camera, there’s the obvious opportunity for someone to usurp this Guinness World Records-breaker, but five years on “The Great Picture” by The Legacy Project still holds the title. The digital photo ante is regularly being upped with many-gigapixel photos of stadiums, cityscapes and monasteries, but given they’re shot digitally and stitched together, there’s really no comparison, is there? [The Legacy Project via Pixel Analogo via PetaPixel]
