It’s easy to find information online about new cameras, news, rumors, reviews, and what kind of camera you should be using right now. But little information was found about the older cameras. Like many photographers, I find it interesting to consider the origins of photography and how far camera science and technology has come in a relatively short amount of time.
Recently, I am working in Edinburgh, Scotland. Although Edinburgh is a beautiful and fascinating city for many reasons, there is a great part of the night of photographic history next to Edinburgh Castle: Camera Obscura.
For anyone unfamiliar with Edinburgh, the castle sits atop Castle Hill at the end of the Royal Mile, between Holyrood Palace and Edinburgh Castle. Next to the castle’s entrance you’ll find the Observation Tower, also on top of a hill with great views of the city. In 1852, Maria Theresa Short purchased the tower, added the top two floors of the building, and opened Short’s Observatory, the Museum of Arts and Sciences. The main attraction is the Camera Obscura at the top of the tower. It’s a simple setup of lenses on the roof, which function as a lens that focuses light into a dark room. The device then acts as a pinhole camera, projecting a real-time image of the city onto a white table in the center of the room.
Consider that this attraction was open to the public more than 50 years before George Eastman began making films in 1888. Sharp, moving images are projected on a table in the middle of a the room was dark enough to make some people think of Victorian style. tourists faint or feel nauseous. Even today, it’s impressive to see these sharp images powered by nothing more than sunlight and a long rod to move the lenses around.
As a photographer, I grew up with 35mm film photography and work professionally with digital images. In my lifetime, I have watched technology evolve from manual film cameras, through the evolution of digital photography, into advanced digital imaging devices and AI imaging. Standing in a dark room, watching the same images actually projected on a small table, I felt like I was witnessing photography, from the Greek words phōs (light) and graphé (drawing). , in its purest form.
Camera Obscura, Catalog, William Y. McAllister, New York, c. 1890
Light rays travel in straight lines and change as they are partially reflected and absorbed by an object, retaining information about the color and brightness of that object’s surface. Illuminated objects reflect light rays in all directions. A sufficiently small hole in a barrier only allows rays to travel directly from different points in the scene on the other side, and these rays form an image of the scene as they reach the surface opposite the hole. – Wikipedia
How it works?
The Camera Obscura consists of a room with a small hole in the top. Light from the outside passes through the hole and hits the inner surface, where the scene is recreated, inverted and inverted but the colors are preserved. The tower in Edinburgh uses lenses and mirrors, similar to periscopes, instead of just pinholes, as it allows for a larger aperture, providing available light while maintaining focus and creating an image. The image is no longer inverted.
Where can you find one?
I highly recommend experiencing Camera Obscura in person to get an in-camera experience.
Even if you can’t make it to Edinburgh, there are around 73 Camera Obscura in the world open to the public, 20 of them in the UK, followed by 14 in Germany. Others are spread around the world, with some in the United States. You can find your best friend by visiting Camera Obscura World.
I would highly recommend a trip to Edinburgh, as it is a fascinating city to explore and photograph. If you have any interest in Harry Potter, you will find endless inspiration about the wizarding world all over the city.
