Calling dopey crafters: I have a peep hole into my bedroom!

[Iteki]

Strange but true, my bedroom has two appartment doors instead of normal doors. One leads out into the stairway, the other leads into the sitting room.
The door to the sitting room is hung so that the bedroom is on the "outside" of the door, so the security fish-eye peephole thingy looks in!

Now, the people living here before us just put a bit of tape over it, but I think that is a little boring. I am hoping that the crafty dopers, dopey crafters, and the pervos who clicked cos it said peep-hole will be able to help me out

What I want to do is to hang a box on the other side of the peep-hole, that can contain various scenes. Easiest is probably to do with photos, but occasionally I would change this to small arty installations in the box instead. I have a few ideas, and hope to get some more here. I would also seriously appreciate some help on coming up with ways to do this practically.

A couple of the ideas for photo scenes that I have so far are:

• Photo from start of Sound of Music with herself dancing on the mountaintop
• Photo of bedroom, but tidy! Can hide all the mess in there when guest come.
• Same room, photoshopped (I promise!) to a wild SM dungeon.
• Same room, the collection of teddy-baears arranged on the bed, staring at the peep-hole in a scary Greenwich Cookoos kind of way. Guests then open the door and the teddys are lying in their usual places, looking teddyish. (Cue twilight zone music).
• The inside of the box kitted out as a model of the room, like a dolls house room, and then doing things like hanging jelly-beans from the "ceiling".

What other things could I do, and how could I do them?

[Belrix]

I suspect you're going to have trouble with focal length. Have you tested how far you have to get into the room before the peephole image comes clear?

If it works with close up stuff, I suggest printing wide images of Mars from the new lander photos and pasting them up as a diorama.

-B

[flapcats]

Probably too expensive, but would be cool:

3 to 4" 12v LCD screen (£120 ish), hooked up to old video camera (old, meaning cheap) that points at the outside of the door. That way, the onlooker would be looking at the back of their own head (cue twilight zone music, again).

[Cervaise]

How about a picture of a dude pointing a shotgun right at the peeper's eye?

[Tamarin]

Go to a thrift store and buy some old View-Master slides. Change slides every couple of weeks.

[NevarMore]

How about a spring and a needle hooked to a pressure plate on the peephole???

I'm thinkning you should look for one of the bulkier peepholes. I've seen them in hotels where theres a largish mirror box to magnify the image instead of the simply straight thru peephole. Use that and fill it with whatever. It'd also offer more room to mount images.

The other idea is make good copies or high-resolution images and go to a GOOD (digital)photo shop. Have them shrink the image down to postage stamp size and make a print of it. For the DIYer, use one of the better self-serve digital print stations (I reccomend Sony), get your image into the computer. Resize the image to whatever size and then make the CANVAS size the size of the print (3x5 or 5x7 etc). You could also make several images in varying sizes on one sheet to test focal lengths and resolutions etc.

Watch the store ads for a cheap digital camera or ebay for an ancient one. Take pictures of wahtever and mount it so the LCD is visible through the peephole. Either mount the camera to the door, or take chance seperating and rewiring the LCD. Set the camera to show the stored images.

[Zebra]

If you could do a video installation the Pam Anderson/Tommy Lee tape would be cool.

[Iteki]

The idea of using video is very tempting! Some really nice ideas for that here, but I think that would have to be phase 2, start off small and work my way up Will be keeping an eye out for cheap screens for the purpose tho!

I did a quick check and think I might have some problems with this fish-eye rig. I held a CD case in front of it to see how far in I had to have it for it to be clear. It was clear all the time, but even when it was held only about an inch from the door, you could see the room around the edges!

Am I going to have to scale everything up hugely so I can keep it close enough to the door to use the door normally, or should I look into plain-glass or a lot less fish-eye and do the distortion in the print out?

[Cervaise]

Maybe you should completely cover the inside of the shadow box on your side of the peephole with black velvet and have a floating demon head in the endless dark.

[cornflakes]

Originally Posted by Belrix

I suspect you're going to have trouble with focal length.

FWIW, I just looked through our peephole while wrapping my hand around to the other side. Even with my finger pressed against the lens, the ridges on my finger were clearly resolved.

How about a copy of the "what is wrong with this room?" gif that was floating around the internet a while back?

[NoClueBoy]

Unsrew it (they unscrew from the inside usually, so yours would unscrew from the outside), poke out the innards, and re-install it the right way. Should take about 72 seconds. Just look for the ridge or slot that a flat head screwdriver could fit in and that should be the retaining ring. Be careful not to slip and scratch the door.

[Iteki]

Originally Posted by NoClueBoy

Unsrew it (they unscrew from the inside usually, so yours would unscrew from the outside), poke out the innards, and re-install it the right way. Should take about 72 seconds. Just look for the ridge or slot that a flat head screwdriver could fit in and that should be the retaining ring. Be careful not to slip and scratch the door.

Giving me the ability to see out from my bedroom into the sitting room, you mean?
Or did I get whooshed?

[scr4]

Originally Posted by Iteki

Giving me the ability to see out from my bedroom into the sitting room, you mean?

I think he means removing the optics will narrow the field of view. Your current problem is that the peephole has too large a field of view, showing not just the photo but everything around it.

If you ever get a video set up, I think it would be fun to walk around with a camera strapped to your head and play back that tape. Sort of the same theme as Being John Malkovich.

[NoClueBoy]

No wooshing, and no narrowing the view. I'm assuming what you're really wanting is not to have people peering into your bedroom and seeing you naked. Reversing the peep hole takes care of that problem.

Now, if you want people to still see in, but not see you naked, then some of the diorama suggestions would probably work.

[Zebra]

On the outside lable the peephole "The Abyss"

Then inside but in the black box and put inside the box one of those balls that looks like an eyeball and have it staring straight back at the peephole.


Becasue when you stare into the abyss, the abyss stares back.

[Iteki]

Zebra that is deep man
I get what you meant now NoClueBoy, thanks for the tip, I activly want to to do some sort of diorama thing though. At present there is no "barrel" in the peephole so I will be installing one for this purpose, the previous occupants removed it and put tape over the holes.

[NevarMore]

Originally Posted by Iteki

Am I going to have to scale everything up hugely so I can keep it close enough to the door to use the door normally, or should I look into plain-glass or a lot less fish-eye and do the distortion in the print out?

Either or. Photoshop should be able to warp the picture with one of its lens filters, but it'll be a lot less trial and error to just get a glass circle made.