Camera Specs Through my Lens

    The invention of the camera is one that not only shocked the nation but also left many dumbfounded to its creation. To ask around about it is to receive many compliments but to ask about it's history is to be left without an answer. Many do not know that the camera originally started as an artist's dream tool.

    It began with the Camera Obscura. A term that referred to a dark room with a small hole in one wall. Made by Ibn al-Haytham the invention was made so that when it was bright outside, light would enter through the hold and project an upside-down image of the outside world onto the wall opposite the hole. An artist would be inside and trace the outline of the outside world given. This invention helped greatly in the way of making ore realistic murals. But this had its flaws as well:

• The image would be reversed as well as upside -down
• The room had to be pitch black for a better view
• This meant artists would have to crane and move out of the way to draw so shadows were not traced.
• If the sun set before you were finished, you had to start over the next day and hope nothing had changed.
• The giant box was not practical for a modern-day artists life

    So, people would attempt to solve a few of these problems by making the box more portable and useful. Refined by Johannes Kepler, the walk-in box was made smaller in height and width first as he used it to travel and survey Upper Austria. A mirror would be added later within the box to reflect the image to a clear opening within the top of the crate so the artist could trace the outline not reversed. But because of the light now coming from the view up top, the picture would appear more faint in the screen, so a covering blanket would be added to the open cover that the artist would drape themselves in to better trace. The original camera was made for art. It would be 200 years before the camera would be ratified with the addition of silver chloride that would produce the negative of an image and install the need of red rooms for the non-permanent images produced from them.

    Since its creation the camera has not stopped changing in the way it works as well as the way it impacts others. "Since the invention of the camera in 1826 photography has been used to document everything from family portraits, social injustice, sporting events, world news, expressions of joy and sorrow, and hundreds of monumental moments. The camera has given man the power to reveal the truth visually." A quote from Alysha Taliana in her presentation on the cameras' never ending social innovation. The camera has given man the opportunity to see what they need to see from the comfort of their own homes and the ability to connect with those across the world from themselves as well as they can those right next door.