Camera obscurer

Nicephorus Niepce

Louis Daguerre

Henry Fox Talbot

Richard Maddox

George Eastman

Digital Photography

camera obscura

It’s called this name because it’s about 200 years old , this name comes from the Latin words for ‘dark’ (obscura) and ‘room’ (camera)​

The camera obscura is something where you can perfectly capture the world around you by projecting what’s outside in a dark room, also a power source is not needed. This is not ‘magic’ but useful science, before them was pinhole cameras which had been round for several hundreds of years. But until the early 1600s CE that they were able to make lenses of higher enough quality to create more flexible cameras with bigger openings, this meant that letting in more light to create a brighter and higher quality images. ​

Draughtsman and other painters once used a camera obscura like this for making accurate detailed sketches of scenes such as landscapes or architecture.​

It was useful for capturing perspective, accurately representing the height, width, depth and relative position of what you can see in the 3D world on a 2D flat surface. ​

how dose it work

Above a rather theatrical curtain that surrounds the darkened chamber, there’s a large lens in a wooden panel. This lens focuses the light from the scene outside down into a mirror which is held at a 45degree angle behind it on inside. It reflects rays of light into a piece of paper or canvas, which is laid out flat on the base inside a wooden box.​

To see the image, you need you cover yourself with a piece of black cloth to stop any other surrounding light from getting into the box. And because this uses a lens which creates a relatively big aperture, you get a sharp, colorful image on the the paper, like a mini video feel of the outside world.

who used a camera obscura?

• Because the light is bouncing off the mirror, you see the image the right way up. But the lens causes the image to flip (or invert) so it’s also the wrong way round.​
• That meant artists using a camera obscura would have to trace the final image in reverse.​
• There is plenty of evidence that masters like Canaletto and Rembrandt used the camera obscura — but other artists may have been more secretive.​
• People still debate whether the Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer used a camera obscura to capture the incredible detail in his exquisite paintings of domestic scenes. Although there’s no written evidence to prove it either way, art historians think, on balance, that he probably did!​

Nicephorus Niepce ​

• Born on the 7th March 1765 ​
• Died 5th July 1855, aged 68

 he was a French inventor and one of the earliest pioneers of photography. Niepce developed heliography, a technique he used to create the world’s oldest surviving products of a photographic process. In the mid-1820s, he used a primitive camera to produce the oldest surviving photograph of a real-world scene. Among Niepce’s other inventions was the Pyrophore, one of the world’s first internal combustion engines, which he conceived, created, and developed with his older brother Claude Niepce.

 

his early life

Niepce was born in Chalon-sur-Saône, Saône-et-Loire, where his father was a wealthy lawyer. His older brother Claude (1763–1828) was also his collaborator in research and invention, but died half-mad and destitute in England, having squandered the family wealth in pursuit of non-opportunities for the Pyrophore. Niepce also had a sister and a younger brother, Bernard.​

Nicephore was baptized Joseph but adopted the name Nicephore, in honour of Saint Nicephorus the ninth-century Patriarch of Constantinople, while studying at the Oratorian college in Angers. At the college he learned science and the experimental method, rapidly achieving success and graduating to work as a professor of the college.

His photography

The exact timing of Joseph Nicephorus Niepce’s first photographic experiments is uncertain, but they stemmed from his interest in lithography and the camera obscura. By 1816, Niepce had captured small images on silver chloride-coated paper, though these resulted in negatives and were difficult to fix. Shifting to Bitumen of Judea, a light-sensitive asphalt used in etching, Niepce developed heliography, his method of creating permanent photographic images. In 1822, he made what is considered the first lasting photograph, though it was destroyed later. Surviving photo-etchings from 1825 are among his earliest works. Niepce’s successful camera photograph came between 1822 and 1827 and was rediscovered in 1952. In 1829, he partnered with Louis Daguerre to develop the physautotype, but after Niepce’s death in 1833, Daguerre continued alone, creating the daguerreotype. The French government bought Daguerre’s process, awarding him and Niepce’s estate stipends. Niepce’s contributions were initially overlooked, but he is now recognized as a pioneer of photography. His bitumen process, while impractical for early cameras, was used as an effective photoresist for printing plates well into the 20th century.​

henry fox Talbot

• He was born in 1800 and passed in 1877 ​

And a graduate of trinity college, Cambridge and was recently elected liberal member of parliament in house of commons, he was a true polymath, his intellectual curiosity embraces the fields of mathematics, chemistry, astronomy and botany ; philosophy and phished ; Egyptology, the classics, and art history. He had published four books and twenty-seven scholarly articles on a variety of subjects and was a fellow of the astronomical, linnean, and royal societies

in January 1834, Talbot returned home to Laycock abbey, an  amalgamation of buildings incorporating the thirteenth- and fourteenth-century remains of a former abbey about eighty-five miles west of London. within only a few mouths he was able to began to experiment with that had occurred to him at lake Como and soon found that a sheet of fine writing paper, which is coated with salt and brushed with a solution add silver nitrate, dark in the sun, and that a second coating of salt impeded further darkening or fading.

louis Daguerre – daguerreotype

The daguerreotype process made it possible to capture the image seen inside a camera obscure and preserve it as an object. It was the first practical photographic process and ushered in a new age of pictorial possibility.

the process was invented in 1837 by Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre. in his work as the theatrical scene painter, Daguerre was familiar with the camera obscura, a device used to project a image of a brightly lit scene into a dark chamber. on 19th of august 1839, Daguerre’s announces Daguerre’s invention to the Académie des sciences and the Académie des beaux-arts in Paris. later Daguerre wrote a 79 page booklet, called Historique et description du procédé du Daguerreotype et du Diorama. in march 1840, Jules lion introduced the daguerreotype to new Orleans.

The daguerreotype process produces a highly detailed, a unique object. Its a direct-positive process, meaning no negative is made. To make a daguerreotype, you need a sheet of copper is plated with a thin coat of silver. This plate is then cleaned and polished to a mirror finish. Next, it is sensitized in a lighttight box with iodine and bromine vapours until its surface turns yellow. The reaction between the iodine vapor and the silver coating produces light-sensitive silver iodide.

Once it is sensitized, the plate is kept in a lightproof container, which is inserted directly into a camera, where the exposure is made. Development is then accomplished by placing the exposed plate face down over a source of heated mercury fumes until the image appears. Chemically, the mercury merges, or amalgamates, which will have a silver creating a milky white image. the image is fixed and prevented from undergoing any further development, which is in a solution of sodium chloride or table salt. later the sodium thiosulfate, a hyposulfite of soda or hypo, filled this role. the plate is treated with gold chloride, which intensifies the image. finally the plate is washed in distilled water and then dried.

exposure times for early daguerreotype ranged from 3 to 15 minutes, but after the improvements to the lenses and the introduction for bromine, which increases the sensitivity of the silver components on the plate, which was possible to make a portrait with an exposure of about 1 minute.

initially, daguerreotype were presented to the sitter in a book like case of embossed paper or leather. the fragile plate was protected by a Cover Glass and was sealed inside a preserver frame and brass mat. later the union case, as it was known, was moulded from a material called thermoplastic.

due to the nature of the process, daguerreotype are made into mirror images of their subjects, as reversed from right to lift. this illusion is hardly noticeable in portraits but quite obvious in urban views or any images containing lettering.

Richard Maddox

An anthropologist, also holds advanced degrees in religious studies and humanities. He has done fieldwork in Mexico, Ecuador, and primarily in Spain. His general interests are in the relation between cultural meanings and practices and the exercise of political and economic power. He is the author of the ethnographic and historical study, El Castillo: The Politics of Tradition in an Andalusian Town, which won the President’s Book Award of the Social Science History Association and the Robert E. Park Award of the Urban and Community Studies Section of the American Sociological Association. More recently, he published a study of state and public culture, The Best of All Possible Islands: Seville’s Universal Exposition, the New Spain, and the New Europe. His current research interests include microhistory, processes of Europeanization and globalization, the cultural politics of European liberalisms, regionalism and nationalism, and the transformation of the countryside in Spain and Europe

• education – PhD Stanford University 1988

Publications

• “Euro liberal Pastoralism and Rural Development in Southern Spain,” in Landscape, Heritage, and Conservation (Carolina Academic Press, 2010).
• “Lived in Hegemonies and Biographical Fragments: Micro steps toward a Counter history of the Spanish Transition from Dictatorship to Democracy,” in Small Worlds: Meaning and Method in Microhistory (The School of American Research Press, 2008).
• The Best of All Possible Islands: Seville’s Universal Exposition, the New Spain, and the New Europe (State University of New York Press, 2004).
• “Intimacy and Hegemony in the New Europe,” in Off Stage/On Display: Intimacy and Ethnography in the Age of Public Culture, Andrew Sharrock, ed. (Stanford University Press, 2004).
• “The Politics of Space and Identity in a Europe without Borders: Cosmopolitan Liberalism, Expo ’92, and Seville,” Irish Journal of Anthropology (1998).
• “Founding a Convent in Seventeenth Century Spain: Cultural History, Hegemonic Processes and the Historical Subject,” Rethinking History: The Journal of Theory and Practice (1998).
• “Bombs, Bikinis, and the Popes of Rock n’ Roll: Reflections on Resistance, the Play of Subordinations, and Cultural Liberalism in Andalusia and Academia, 1983-1995” in Gupta and Ferguson, eds., Culture, Power, and Place: Explorations in Critical Anthropology (Duke University Press, 1997).
• “Revolutionary Anticlericalism and Hegemonic Processes in an Andalusian Town, August 1936” American Ethnologist (1995).
• “Culture, Schooling, and the Politics of Class Identity in an Andalusian Town,” Comparative Education Review (1994).
• El Castillo: The Politics of Tradition in an Andalusian Town (University of Illinois Press, 1993).

George Eastman

he was a high school dropout, who was judged ” not especially gifted” when he measured against the academic standards of the day, he was poor, however even as a young man, he took it upon him self to support hid widowed mother and two sisters, one of which had polio.

he began his business career as a 14 year old office boy in an insurance company and followed that with work as a clerk in a local bank.

he was George Eastman and his ability is to overcome financial adversity, his gift for organisation and management, and his lively and inventive mind made him successful in entrepreneur by his mid-twenties, and enabled him to direct his Eastman Kodak company to the forefront of American industry.

however building a multinational corporation and emerging as one of the nations most important industries required dedication and sacrifice. it would not come easy.

His Boyhood

The youngest of three children, George Eastman was born to Maria Kilbourn and George Washington Eastman on July 12, 1854 in the village of Waterville, some 20 miles southwest of Utica, in upstate New York. The house on the old Eastman homestead, where his father was born and where George spent his early years, has since been moved to the Genesee Country Museum in Mumford, N.Y., outside of Rochester

When George was five years old, his father moved his family to Rochester. There the elder Eastman devoted his energy to establishing Eastman Commercial College. Then tragedy struck. George’s father died, the college failed and the family became financially distressed.

George continued his schooling until he was 14. Then, he was forced by family circumstances, he had to find a job to help he family. .

His first job, as a messenger boy with an insurance firm, paid $3 a week. One year later, he became office boy for another insurance firm. Through his own initiative, he soon took charge of policy filing and even wrote policies. From this his pay increased to $5 per week.

But, even with that increase, his income was not enough to meet family expenses. so he decided to study accounting at home in the evenings to get a better paying job.

In 1874, after five years in the insurance business, he was hired as a junior clerk at the Rochester Savings Bank. then his salary tripled — to more than $15 a week.

Kodak (brownie)

Digital Photography

1957 – The First Digital Image

Let’s go back to the middle of the 20th century. Photography – on film – is as popular as it has ever been, made incredibly accessible by affordable, portable 35mm SLR and rangefinder cameras. These find their way into the hands of news people and enthusiasts alike – and as far as most are concerned, they do everything photographers need them to.

All the same, some researchers have started to awaken to the possibilities that rapidly evolving digital technologies might have for image-making. In 1951, a team of Ampex Corporation researchers led by Charles Ginsberg invented a contraption that could take live images from a camera and store them as electrical impulses on magnetic tape. It would be sold in 1956, under the catchier and more familiar name of ‘video recorder’.

For the first thing we might think of as a digital photograph, however, we’d have to wait until 1957. At this point in the story, we meet one Russell Kirsch. 

Kirsch was by all accounts a regular all-American guy. He worked a steady job at the National Bureau of Standards, and his wife Joan had a baby on the way. However, Kirsch wasn’t working just any job – he and his colleagues had in 1950 developed the USA’s first operational stored-program computer, known as the Standards Eastern Automatic Computer, or SEAC. 

This computer would be used for all sorts of applications until its last run in 1964, from statistical analysis to meteorology. but, it was Russell Kirsch who first looked at the hulking machine – which back then was considered to be a relatively slimline computer – and had the thought, ‘Gee, y’know, we could probably load a picture into this thing.’ 

Kirsch and the team built their own drum scanner that would allow them to ‘trace variations of intensity over the surfaces of photographs’. With this, they were able to make the first digital scans. One of the first – possibly the very first – was an image of Russell Kirsch’s new-born son, Walden Kirsch.

By modern standards, this image wasn’t much of anything. It measured just 173 pixels on each side and covered an area of 5x5cm. It had a bit depth of one bit per pixel – it could only classify pixels as black or white, so the team made the shades of grey by compositing several scans done at different intensity thresholds. 

Despite its technical limitations, this image would take its place in history. All digital imaging – from security footage to press photography to Uncle Bob’s iPad photos of his niece’s wedding – would follow on from this picture of Walden. It would go on to be honoured by Life magazine in 2003 as one of the “100 photographs that changed the world” – which it most certainly did.

Origins of Photography

Camera Obscura

Camera obscura is a dark room with a hole in one wall. When it’s light outside, light shines into the hole and projects an upside-down image of the outside world onto the wall. The image is projected upside down due to light travelling in a straight line through the hole. 

Camera obscura built the groundwork for light and optics used in photography. Due to it being a natural phenomenon it makes it hard to pinpoint the exact origins of photography.

Henry Fox Talbot

William Henry Fox Talbot was made the British inventor of photography. Photogenic drawing paper was invented by Henry Fox Talbot in 1834. Silver Nitrate and Sodium Chloride were used to make the light-sensitive Silver Chloride. Before he got into using small wooden cameras, nicknamed mouse-traps by his wife, he made images using plants (he studied plants). Unless it was fixed, the image would fade as fast as it was created. He used Sodium Chloride, Potassium Iodide, and Potassium Bromide for his early fixers. His Early images are very rare and priceless.

Daguerreotype

Daguerreotypes are direct positives, made from copper plated with silver without needing a negative.

The Daguerreotype was not as successful as Talbot’s system because it had serious limitations, the mirror like surface of the image could only be viewed from a narrow angle and the process produced a one of a kind image that did not permit printing duplicates.

George Eastman

George Eastman was born on July 12th 1854. He was an American entrepreneur who introduced the first Kodak camera.

He formed the company Kodak by spending decades developing a camera that was much smaller in size and accessible for everyone to use. He publicly launched the first successful roll-filled hand camera in 1888. Which was known as the Kodak camera.

Kodak (Brownie)

The Brownie was a series of cameras first released in 1900 which were developed by Eastman Kodak. These cameras were so significant as they were the first to allow average middle class people to buy and use them. People would take photographs then return them to Kodak where the images were developed and printed. Kodak would re-fill the film and return the images and camera back to the owner. This created a sustainable system for the general public to create their own images.

Digital Photography

The first digital image was created by Russell Kirsch in 1957.

The image was of Kirsch’s son Walden, the image only measured 176 pixels on a side and was just 5 cm by 5 cm.

The foundation for digital photography was built in 1969 by the Eastman Kodak team. Engineer William Boyle and Physicist George E. Smith created the charge-coupled device (CCD). This enabled electronic images to be captured.

In 1975, Steve Sasson invented the world’s first self- contained digital camera for Kodak, which changed the future of photography. He made the camera using a movie camera lens, a handful of Motorola parts, 16 batteries and some electronic sensors.

William Collie

In Jersey, William Collie was most likely the first to use Fox Talbot’s calotype process. He was from Scotland but had business in Jersey in Belmont road and Bath street from before 1850 to 1878. He held an important position in Britain’s early development of photography but sadly, he isn’t well known and very few of his images are available.

Aperture and Depth of Field

Aperture (measured in f/stop) controls the size of the lens opening that allows light into your camera. You can blur the foreground and background that bracket your subject (known as shallow depth of field) by opening up the aperture with a low f-stop number; alternatively, you can keep your photo sharp from the foreground through to the background (known as wide depth of field) by closing the aperture down with a high f-stop number. Depth of field is defined as being the distance between the nearest and the furthest objects giving a focused image – a small depth of field comes with a lower aperture value, and leads to very little being in focus whereas a larger depth of field comes with higher aperture values and makes more of an image be in focus.

Focal Length

Focal length (usually measured in mm) is defined as being the optical distance from the centre of a lens and its focus. This determines what you see when using the camera, for example a shorter focal length captures more due to a wider angle.

Auto vs Manual Focus

Auto focus is typically general use due to its simplicity, whereas manual focus is used more when close ups and fine detail are needed in an image. When using manual focus, you should use the focus ring on the end of the lens and adjust for each shot as necessary.

Example photos using aperture:

Aperture of 2.8:

In this photograph, the toy plane is noticeably much more in focus compared to other objects in the background, highlighting it as the main subject of the image. This low aperture creates a very shallow depth of field, creating this low focus effect on the background.

Aperture of 5.6:

When compared to the previous image, this one is very similar in terms of the plane still clearly standing out as the subject/main focus – however, a slightly higher aperture value has enlarged the depth of field which consequently has made the other objects captured in frame more in focus.

Aperture of 11:

As the aperture value continues to increase, the depth of field clearly becomes larger which as a result makes even more of the objects captured be in focus. Due to the depth of field not highlighting one particular aspect of this image, there is no singular main focus which implies everything captured in this image is of equal importance.

Aperture of 22:

Finally, with a very high aperture value, the depth of field is very large leading to every object being completely in focus which further emphasises the effect of equal importance first noticed at an aperture value of 22. Blurs are also minimised, which can be useful for capturing images where you want everything to be in focus (such as landscapes, nature etc.)

Artist Research: Uta Barth

Over the last twenty years, Uta Barth has focused her art on how we perceive visuals. Known for her “empty” images that focus on painterly abstraction, she skillfully creates blurred backgrounds, cropped compositions, and plays with natural light to seize those quick, almost unnoticed moments that usually linger at the edges of our vision. By intentionally stepping away from traditional photography and the typical use of a camera, Barth’s work thoughtfully breaks down the norms of visual representation, highlighting the boundaries of what we can actually see.

Some of my work, inspired by Barth:

To achieve the soft focus effect Barth uses, I used a low aperture value as well as manual focus. However, I feel like this wasn’t very successful at capturing the abstract nature of Barth’s work since my image’s focus was slightly too sharp to achieve this – furthermore, I believe the scene I have captured was a poor choice for trying to achieve an abstract effect due to a large variety of things present in the image (chairs, blank walls, door with a light that clearly stands out). To improve next time, I will adjust the f/stop value to be even lower to really try and strive for a shallow depth of field and I will photograph a less vibrant scene with less objects and things to look at to maximise the chances of me capturing the abstract effect used by Barth.

Above is the same image but edited using Photoshop – I found the original image to be too vibrant and colourful to qualify as abstract, so I toned down the saturation to better achieve an abstract effect. Furthermore, I cropped out most of the image to reduce the amount of things present to try work towards more of an abstract effect; overall, I think I could definitely do better if I had adjusted my aperture values properly to achieve a low focus effect.

My work compared to Barth’s:

My work against a picture taken by Uta Barth. My work is clearly not very abstract since the objects captured can be clearly identified and the colours are vibrant which makes the scene even less abstract; in comparison, Barth’s image uses softer colours which blend together naturally as well as a much shallower depth of field, successfully creating an abstract effect.

Manual focus = close ups and fine detail

Autofocus = general use

focal length

The focal length of a lens is the optical distance, which usually measured in mm, from the centre of a lensand its focus

this shows that changes from a very large aperture, which almost nothing in focus, to a very small aperture, with almost all in focus.

the depth of field is the difference between the closest and furthest objects such as in 18mm the edges are in focus and the 200mm is zoomed in on the middle where you can see a couple boats clearly.

camera simulator

22 – this is a very small aperture and a large depth of field

in each photo you can tell a clear difference from the first to the last one, the first one its mostly all in focus and the last one only the plane is in focus and the rest in blurry

Ralph Eugene Meatyard

Meatyard made his living as a optician, born in 1925 and died in 1976. he was a member of Lexington camera club, which he perused his passion of photography outside the mainstream. he experimented lots of different strategies including exposures, motion blur and more methods of photographic abstraction. two of this worked are concentrated in focus and depth of field, which of of this works stretched expressive photography, film and cameras when looking at a normal world.

these photos on them one wouldn’t look like anything special but grouped together, which shows human figures in another view

these photos show that a large aperture has been used when taking these, and that the focus in only in one area and rest is blurry. also these photos were inspired and formed by the artists deep study of zen Buddhism.

some photos in his style that took

tried out other styles

Focal Length

The focal length of a lens is the optical distance from the point where the light meets inside the lens to the camera’s sensor.

Depth of Field

The depth of field is the difference between the nearest and the farthest objects that are in sharp focus in an image captured with a camera.

Camera Focus

There are two ways of focusing a camera; autofocus (AF) and manual focus (MF). Autofocus is for general use while manual focus helps with close ups and detail.

Aperture

Aperture is the opening in a lens where light passes through to enter the camera. It can shrink or enlarge in size to change what reaches the camera sensor.

Canon Camera Simulator

Ralph Eugene Meatyard

My Raw Photographs

Edited Pictures

Ralph Eugene Meatyard’s collection of photographs named ‘Zen Twigs’ inspired my focus experiments due to his use of a small depth of field within these photos. His photographs have nothing in focus but the twigs and I tried to reflect this by using a very wide aperture when taking my photos. After, I edited a few of my best pictures into black and white to copy the contrast and tone seen his photos; this is highlighted by the sharp focus on the plant in view. I also cropped them into squares to really recreate the composition of his work within mine.

Ernst Hass was a colour photographer born in
march 1921 in Vienna and died on 12th September
1986.

Just after the war Hass took up
photography. After being recognised
he started photographing for LIFE,
Vogue, and Look.
Ernst Hass’ parents always encouraged him to pursue his
creative talents and gave him confidence to start his career in
photography. He saw the world in colour, and refused to copy
most photographers back then so started taking photos in colour.
He bought his first camera at the age of 25 and since then he became an avid
documentarian. He was the first person to publish a colour photo essay for
LIFE in 1953 on Returning Prisoners of War. After that he joined the circle of
celebrity photographers. They helped him to pursue his dreams.