page_title: Camera obscura
section_title: Role in the modern age
hierarchical_section_title: Camera obscura / Role in the modern age
caption_attribution_description: English: Cameras obscurae from the Paris Musee des Arts Metiers Български: Камери обскури от парижкия Музей на изкуствата и занаятите
context_page_description: Camera obscura, also referred to as pinhole image, is the natural optical phenomenon that occurs when an image of a scene at the other side of a screen is projected through a small hole in that screen as a reversed and inverted image on a surface opposite to the opening. The surroundings of the projected image have to be relatively dark for the image to be clear, so many historical camera obscura experiments were performed in dark rooms.
  The term "camera obscura" also refers to constructions or devices that make use of the principle within a box, tent, or room. Camera obscuras with a lens in the opening have been used since the second half of the 16th century and became popular as an aid for drawing and painting. The camera obscura box was developed further into the photographic camera in the first half of the 19th century when camera obscura boxes were used to expose light-sensitive materials to the projected image.
  The camera obscura was used as a means to study eclipses without the risk of damaging the eyes by looking into the sun directly.
context_section_description: While the technical principles of the camera obscura have been known since antiquity, the broad use of the technical concept in producing images with a linear perspective in paintings, maps, theatre setups, and architectural, and, later, photographic images and movies started in the Western Renaissance and the scientific revolution. While, e.g., Alhazen (Ibn al-Haytham) had already observed an optical effect and developed a state of the art theory of the refraction of light, he was less interested to produce images with it (compare Hans Belting 2005); the society he lived in was even hostile (compare Aniconism in Islam) toward personal images. Western artists and philosophers used the Arab findings in new frameworks of epistemic relevance. E.g. Leonardo da Vinci used the camera obscura as a model of the eye, René Descartes for eye and mind and John Locke started to use the camera obscura as a metaphor of human understanding per se. The modern use of the camera obscura as an epistemic machine had important side effects for science. While the use of the camera obscura has dwindled, for those who are interested in making one it only requires a few items including: a box, tracing paper, tape, foil, a box cutter, a pencil and a blanket to keep out the light.
  In 1827, critic Vergnaud complained about the use of camera obscura for many painting at that year's Salon exhibition in Paris: "Is the public to blame, the artists, or the jury, when history paintings, already rare, are sacrificed to genre painting, and what genre at that!... that of the camera obscura." (translated from French)
caption: Cameras obscura for Daguerreotype called "Grand Photographe" produced by Charles Chevalier (Musée des Arts et Métiers).
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