How To Make Camera Obscura

How to Make a Digital Photographic camera Obscura

Camera accessory manufacturer Fotodiox has published a video that explains how to brand a digital camera obscura that can be used for both video and photo capture made from a box, a magnifying glass, and frosted plastic.

The build is promised to be super-simple and results in an unusual video capture device too as a fun photography tool. While the photos and videos can be digitized by simply taking a photograph of the rear of the device, Sean Anderson besides shows how to make "true" digitized versions of the photos using a document scanner.

Camera Obscura is the oldest type of photographic camera in existence and the basics of it in practice date back every bit far as paleolithic cave paintings. That said, the primeval written observations of it date back to around 470 BCE in Chinese text called Mozi.

The concept shown in the video above by Anderson is incredibly simple: it uses a box with either a pinhole or a lens attached to the front end which projects low-cal onto the dorsum. The lens can be focused by altering the distance of the rear of the box from that front element. In this instance, Anderson uses a plate of frosted plastic then that he can photograph or scan the reflected image.

Photographic camera Obscuras are a fun and easy bones photography tool to build and experiment with, just what if you used a portable document scanner to digitize the images created with one? In this video, Anderson shows y'all how he built a camera obscura with a cardboard box, a magnifying glass and some frosted plastic, and how he uses an iScan portable document scanner to create lo-fi large format digital images with information technology.

Every bit Anderson points out, giant camera obscura were used by painters to create authentic renditions of people or landscapes since the creative person could trace the image as it was projected through the device. Over fourth dimension though and as film and digital grew in popularity, camera obscura have mostly fallen out of apply exterior of hobbyists.

This projection is therefore something that would exist more for educational purposes, or just for fun. Anderson shows how he uses a very simple setup to make a photographic camera obscura video equally well as how he uses a handheld scanner to digitize whatever images that he makes using the "big format" system.