Camera Obscura | DP Week 2 - Post 1
THE BEGINNING OF PHOTOGRAPHY
The camera obscura name comes from the Latin words for 'dark' (obscura) and 'room' (camera). It's a box-shaped optical device that was used around 200 years ago for artists and scientists to study and create images. The precursor to the modern camera and the principle behind how the camera works.
This device seemed to work with magic but it's simply science. Also called a pinhole image, a camera obscura lets light in through a small opening on one side and projects a reversed and inverted image on the other. To correct the inverted image, a lens or mirror can be added to the device.
Mozi (470-391 BCE), a Chinese philosopher recorded that the image in a camera obscura is inverted (upside down) because of light, which travels in straight lines from its source and crosses over in the process. That's the earliest data regarding the camera obscura theory.
In the 4th century, the Greek philosopher Aristotle made an observation that sunlight, when passing through small openings amid leaves, casts a shadowy image of an eclipsed sun onto the ground. This peculiar occurrence was also documented by Anthemius of Tralles, a Greek mathematician from the 6th century who, in conjunction with his architectural work on the Hagia Sophia, conducted experiments with a form of camera obscura. In the 9th century, Al-Kindi, an Arab polymath proficient in philosophy, mathematics, medicine, and music, similarly delved into experiments involving light and a pinhole.
Leonardo da Vinci, a Renaissance artist, and inventor, in the Codex Atlanticus first described a mechanism that could make drawing in perfect perspective a much easier task, later that would be known as camera obscura. da Vinci meticulously drew approximately 270 diagrams of camera obscura devices in his sketchbooks.
Later in the 15th century, other artists started recognizing the possibilities offered by the device as a tool for drawing assistance (tracing). For others, this technique was considered a form of cheating.
Between 1826 and 1827, Joseph Nicéphore Niépce used a portable camera obscura to expose a bitumen-coated pewter plate to light and created the View from the Window at Le Gras, the first recorded image that did not fade quickly.
After this experiment and success, photography progressed very quickly.
If you'd like to turn your room into a camera obscura check this video: Create a CAMERA OBSCURA at home and put yourself inside a camera!
Or if you'd like to create a camera obscura to capture an image of anything else check this video: Make a Cardboard Camera Obscura
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