Grab Your Camera and Venture into the Darkroom if You Dare

An eerie interactive photography video has been catching the industry’s attention, and you may want to grab your camera to play along. The video invites you into a darkroom and asks you set your camera to an aperture to f/5.6 with a shutter a speed of 1 second. Grab your tripod and start taking pictures of the sinister television that is shown in the video. The photographs that show up on your LCD screen may shock you:

If you followed all the directions to a T, you’ll notice in your photographs that the television in the video has disappeared all together and been replaced by an entirely different scene. Pretty awesome isn’t it?

It is also a great exercise in understanding how shutter speed works. Because your digital camera doesn’t pick up the static on the screen, it instead exposed the picture that is behind it, which is invisible to the human eye.

camera setup for darkroom video

Setup your camera and venture into the darkroom

If you’re still puzzled, the creators made a second film that helps shed light on the trickery. It’s more fun to try it on your own first though.

If you didn’t try this before reading the whole post, I hope you make time to do so. Even after taking the element of surprise out the video, you can still have a lot of fun with it. It was produced by the International Federation of Photographic Art. Give it try!

Like This Article?

Don't Miss The Next One!

Join over 100,000 photographers of all experience levels who receive our free photography tips and articles to stay current: