My friend Jon emailed me a link this morning to the article World’s biggest camera captures — you guessed it — world’s biggest photo on the SciFi Tech blog. As part of their ongoing process of documenting the El Toro Marine Core Air Station (located in Orange County, CA) and it’s transformation into one of the nation’s largest metropolitan parks (The Orange County Great Park), the Legacy Photo Project set the world record for the world’s largest photograph and the world’s largest camera.

How big? The camera (actually a camera obscura) was a F-18 hanger on the Air Station, the “film/photograph” was a special seamless canvas sheet 31 feet by 111 feet covered with 80 liters of gelatin silver halide emulsion, and the developer tray used to develop the 35 minute long exposed “negative” was Olympic swimming pool sized and held 1800 gallons of developer/fixer which was washed off with two fire hoses! (no word on world record for largest developer tray)

The $65,000 photo (that’s cost) was actually taken in June 2006. It’s an image of the control tower, structures and runways at the heart of the shuttered 4,700-acre Marine Corps Air Station. The end of the Legacy Project’s press release has some interesting comments about the meaning behind the picture…

The Premier Exhibition of the photo will be at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, CA from September 6th-29th.

I believe the team got negative points in the “portability” category…