CAMERA OBSCURA
The ancient principle of the camera is child's play. Hard to believe? Here is a simple experiment you can try at home:
Cover the windows of a room with black construction paper or aluminum foil until absolutely no light is let in. Turn out the lights. Then poke a tiny hole in the paper or foil, so that a single pinprick of light enters the room and strikes the wall opposite the windows. What do you see?
If you do it just right, when the light enters the "dark room" (camera obscura in Latin) and hits the wall, it will form a faint upside-down image of the view outside the window. This simple phenomenon is the basis upon which the science of photography is built.
One of the first people to make note of such an image was a Chinese scholar Mo Ti, who lived in the 5th century B.C. In the 10th century A.D., Arab physicist Alhazen discovered that the smaller he made the hole, the sharper the image came into focus. If the hole was tiny enough, the image became very clear.
THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS
Reproducing the image created by a camera obscura was easy: you simply held a piece of paper up against the wall, so that the image landed on the paper, then traced it. The camera obscura became a useful scientific tool. Scientists built special "dark rooms" for the sole purpose of studying the sky, eclipses, changes in the seasons, and other natural events.
The tracings made with the aid of the camera obscuras were so detailed and accurate that by the 1500s, people were using them to paint portraits, landscapes, and other scenes.
In 1568 a professor at the University of Padua named Daniello Barbara discovered that replacing the primitive pinhole with a glass lens brought the camera obscura image into a brighter and sharper focus.
In the 17th century, scientists and artists developed portable camera obscuras that allowed them to study objects in the field. Early versions were essentially lightproof tents with lenses sewn into the walls. Later versions were two-foot-long wooden boxes that projected an image onto a piece of frosted glass built into the lid. The user could then trace the image by placing a piece of paper over the glass.
PUTTING THINGS IN PERSPECTIVE
The images created by these early single-lens camera obscuras were circular in shape, with distortion along the edges. In the 1700s, a complex multilens system was introduced that corrected the distortion, and the camera obscura became as common a part of the painter's art as brushes and paint.
Artists were not the only ones putting the camera to use—explorers took them on expeditions all over the world so that they could record the wonders they encountered. In the process, the boxes literally changed the way people saw the world.
The ancient principle of the camera is child's play. Hard to believe? Here is a simple experiment you can try at home:
Cover the windows of a room with black construction paper or aluminum foil until absolutely no light is let in. Turn out the lights. Then poke a tiny hole in the paper or foil, so that a single pinprick of light enters the room and strikes the wall opposite the windows. What do you see?
If you do it just right, when the light enters the "dark room" (camera obscura in Latin) and hits the wall, it will form a faint upside-down image of the view outside the window. This simple phenomenon is the basis upon which the science of photography is built.
One of the first people to make note of such an image was a Chinese scholar Mo Ti, who lived in the 5th century B.C. In the 10th century A.D., Arab physicist Alhazen discovered that the smaller he made the hole, the sharper the image came into focus. If the hole was tiny enough, the image became very clear.
THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS
Reproducing the image created by a camera obscura was easy: you simply held a piece of paper up against the wall, so that the image landed on the paper, then traced it. The camera obscura became a useful scientific tool. Scientists built special "dark rooms" for the sole purpose of studying the sky, eclipses, changes in the seasons, and other natural events.
The tracings made with the aid of the camera obscuras were so detailed and accurate that by the 1500s, people were using them to paint portraits, landscapes, and other scenes.
In 1568 a professor at the University of Padua named Daniello Barbara discovered that replacing the primitive pinhole with a glass lens brought the camera obscura image into a brighter and sharper focus.
In the 17th century, scientists and artists developed portable camera obscuras that allowed them to study objects in the field. Early versions were essentially lightproof tents with lenses sewn into the walls. Later versions were two-foot-long wooden boxes that projected an image onto a piece of frosted glass built into the lid. The user could then trace the image by placing a piece of paper over the glass.
PUTTING THINGS IN PERSPECTIVE
The images created by these early single-lens camera obscuras were circular in shape, with distortion along the edges. In the 1700s, a complex multilens system was introduced that corrected the distortion, and the camera obscura became as common a part of the painter's art as brushes and paint.
Artists were not the only ones putting the camera to use—explorers took them on expeditions all over the world so that they could record the wonders they encountered. In the process, the boxes literally changed the way people saw the world.
Next Week ; IMAGE PROBLEMS , SPIRITS IN THE MATERIAL WORLD, MESSAGE IN A BOTTLE
"2001 by The Bathroom Reader's Press"