An Obscure Chamber!
All modern cameras have one common ancestor - The Camera Obscura: the light of the outside world falls through a pinhole onto the opposite wall of a room and produces an upside-down picture. In the 16th century the camera obscura was greatly improved by an objective lens, which produced much brighter pictures and around 1750 many painters, like the Venetian Canaletto, used it to make sketches for their paintings. Then in 1836 Nicéphore Nièpce projected the picture on a light-sensitive plate and the photographic camera was born.
Our beautiful, sturdy Camera Obscura is equipped with a powerful lens (62mm diameter, 275mm focal length) and a mirror for an upright picture, like the one Canaletto used. The picture is projected onto a 16x16cm screen with transparent paper on which it can be viewed or copied by pencil. If you want, you can copy your drawings onto our Solar Photo Paper (see below) to produce beautiful blueprints of your artwork!
Pre-punched kit with black and gold printing, complete with lens, mirror, clear screen and transparent paper.
Construction time: about 3 hours
Size: 28 x 19 x 19 cm
