This is the first Holga image from the edge of space!
posted Monday, September 9, 2013 at 2:20 PM EDT
It's been a great couple of days for space photography! NASA's on Instagram, and this shot of a rocket launch against the Empire State Building is incredible. And here's another incredible feat: a class was able to send a toy camera up into the stratosphere, capturing the first Holga shot of the planet Earth.
The project was lead by Dirk Fletcher, for his Summer Modern Alternative Photographic Practices class at the Harrington College of Design in Chicago. Sending a camera to the edge of space with a weather balloon isn't exactly a new idea, but doing it with a toy camera presented a raft of new problems for the class. Usually, with these mini-launches that we've seen, they either use a video camera or a digital camera capable of taking photos every couple of seconds in order to capture the perfect photograph. With a toy analog camera, there isn't that luxury.
Over in his blog, Fletcher discusses how they got around making sure the 4 Holga cameras were able to fire in the freezing cold conditions, and how they managed to keep the GPS pointed upwards even when falling, so that the balloon could be tracked. And even so, they only managed to capture one photo, and it was more radiation fogged than they predicted. But still, that's a mighty impressive feat, to have sent a Holga toy camera to the edge of space, and successfully captured an image of Earth!
(via PetaPixel)
