Camera Obscura

Camera obscura means darkened chamber room in Latin. In sixth century CE, the camra obscura was used in Byzantine by the Greek professor called Anthemius of Tralles. It is an optical piece of equipment that projects the images of objects. It is an important device because it is one of the most important milestones that led to the contributed in the photography that we have today.

The camera obscura is in fact a very simple device. It is a box or a room that has a small hole on one side in order to let the light pass. The light passes through this hole and the image is created with its proper color and perspective. The only thing that is different is that the image is created upside down. The image produced can be printed on paper or used as a representation of the objects that the image is produced from. Later on mirrors were used in order to create images with the right direction. However this development was much later in the eighteenth century. A camera obscura may have a pinhole or a lens and this difference changes the images that are created. For example in camera obscuras that have a pinhole, the size of the pinhole changes the characteristics of the images created. As the pinhole gets smaller the image becomes sharper, this means it has a larger depth of field. All the images created are very sharp, however the images become less bright. On the other hand it is more useful to use a lens in camera obscuras because the aperture is wider. This means that the camera can let more light in without losing its focus.