I would like to find a camera obscura. No, I don't mean an obscure camera. I'm talking about the graphic device used, for example, by the painter Canaletto to paint Venice in the 1700s. It's got interchangeable lenses, and reflects the image onto a flat surface where you can trace it. Kind of like a lucidograph, except portable, and you can use it on site to render actual 3d objects. I saw one in a Daniel Smith catalog many years ago when I was broke, and no one knows who the vendor was now. Does anyone have any idea where to find one?Thanks.

-- Edith DeGolyer (edegoly@chickmail.com), September 06, 1999

Answers

The modern term 'camera' is in fact an abbreviation of 'camera obscura'. All cameras have lenses that refract the light, causing an image to form on film or a ground glass screen (or, occasionally, something else).

With a large format camera, the ground glass screen is large, so you can trace the image. With conventional LF cameras, the image will be inverted. However, some LF cameras have mirrors, making them SLRs (Single Lens Reflexes), giving an upright but reversed (left-to- right) image. Such cameras sometimes available second-hand. I'm not aware of any modern LF SLRs.

-- Alan Gibson (Alan.Gibson@technologist.com), September 07, 1999.