Indiscriminate Use Of The Camera Obscura example essay topic

Research Paper on the Camera Obscura, What is a Camera Obscura also known as a pinhole camera? Camera Obscura, May 28, 1997. Camera Obscura (Latin for a dark room) is a dark box or room with a hole in one end. If the hole is small enough, an inverted image can be seen on the opposite wall. This phenomenon was known by thinkers as early as Aristotle (ca. 300 BC) 1.

Many sources state that Roger Bacon invented Camera Obscura just before the year 1300. More accurately, Bacon popularized Camera Obscura, using it to view solar eclipses. The earliest record of the uses of a Camera Obscura can be found in the writings of Leonardo Da Vinci (1452-1519) 2. At about the same time, Daniel Barbara, a Venetian, recommended the Camera Obscura as an aid to drawing and perspective.

He wrote: "Close all shutters and doors until no light enters the camera except through the lense, and opposite hold a piece of paper, which you move forward and backward until the scene appears in the sharpest detail. There on the paper you will see the whole view as it really is, with its distances, its colors and shadows and motion, the clouds, the water twinkling, the birds flying. By holding the paper steady you can trace the whole perspective with a pen, shade it and delicately color it from nature". 3 In the mid sixteenth century, Giovanni Battista della Porta (1538-1615) published what is believed to be the first account of the possibility of using Camera Obscura as an aid to drawing. It is said that he made a huge "camera" in which he seated his guests, having arranged for a group of actors to perform outside so that the visitors could observe the images on the wall.

The story goes, however, that the sight of the up side down performing actors was too much for the visitors; they panicked and fled, and Battista was later brought to court on a charge of sorcery. 4 Few artists ever admitted to using a Camera Obscura to aid in their artistry. Perhaps this is because of the Camera Obscura's link to the occult, or because the artists felt in some way that their artistry was lessened. Several artists are said to have used them; these include Canaletto (1697-1768), Vermeer (1632-1675), Joshua Reynolds (1723-1792), and Paul Sand by (1725-1809) 5. Though some, including Joshua Reynolds, warned "against the indiscriminate use of the Camera Obscura", others, notably Algarotti, a highly regarded 18th century art critic, strongly advocated its use in his "Essays on Painting" (1764): .".. the best modern painters among the Italians have availed themselves of this contrivance; nor is it possible that they should have otherwise represented things so much to the life... Let the young painter, therefore, begin as early as possible to study these divine pictures...

Painters should make the same use of the Camera Obscura, which Naturalists and Astronomers make of the microscope and telescope; for all these instruments equally contribute to make known, and represent Nature". 6 About the same time, the lens was developed. Gero lomo Car dano (1501-1576), an Italian mathematician, introduced a glass disc in place of a pinhole in his camera, and used a convex lens. The word "lens" came about because the early by-convex lenses resembled the lentils used in Italian soup. Lens came from the Latin word for lentil 7. The first Camera Obscura were enormous.

Anastasius Kirche r (1601-1680) described one, which consisted of an outer shell with lenses in the center of each wall, and an inner shell containing transparent paper for drawing. The artists needed to enter via a trapdoor. Eventually, the Camera Obscura became smaller, and finally portable. In the beginning of the 19th century, it was a popular aid to sketching.

The Camera Obscura remained popular until the invention of the photographic plate. In modern day, Camera Obscura is rarely used anywhere outside of Physics classrooms, where it is used as an instrument to teach basic ray-diagram optics 8..