Pinhole camera taped to rail in city park mistaken for a bomb

 

 

Following the tragic bombings in Boston on Monday, pinhole photographers might want to back off leaving their homemade box cameras unattended in public spaces for a while. Just yesterday, police mistook a pinhole camera taped to a bike path guardrail in a park in Canada for a bomb.

Police launched a remote controlled robot, which destroyed the camera in Ivey Park in London, Ontario at around 3:45 pm yesterday, according to Metro Canada.

“It appears as if someone attached it for a project or something similar,” Constable Will Knelsen told Metro. "At this time, we have not had the opportunity to speak with the owner or (whomever) placed that camera there.”

The park was cordoned off for 4 hours after police received a tip about a "suspicious package" in the park from a passerby. The police department's explosive-disposal team then dispatched the robot, which made its way along a bike path before blowing up the package with "a loud 'boom' that echoed across the area."

Pinhole cameras are light-proof boxes with a small hole cut into one side, to record an inverse image on the opposite wall of the device. An example of a pinhole camera with related supplies, taken from Wikipedia, is at the top of this story.

(Via Reddit)