Camera Obscura Research Paper

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Photography has developed from being portrayals of light that assisted artists in their paintings to becoming an easy process that anybody could do in their daily lives. Photography began with artists looking to improve their work and make paintings more realistic than before. To do this, artists used the “camera obscura”. The camera obscura was a box with a hole in one side of it. Inside the box, light would reflect on a slanted surface and turn the image upside down. Then artists would trace over the light with paint to create their picture. Although it didn't start being known till the 13th or 14th century, there are manuscripts explaining the process of how it would work that came from Hassan ibn Hassan,an Arabian scholar, in the 10th …show more content…

So by giving examples and writing about his experiences, Giovanni wanted to show people that it was a huge breakthrough in painting and the creation of images, however, this was not the reaction that people had towards the process. Giovanni ended up being charged with witchcraft for using the obscura to make paintings, which put fear in the minds of other artists who used it. This is why many Renaissance artists didn’t admit to using the obscura, and nobody will know if they did or not, even though it is assumed most of them did. This invention helped shape the …show more content…

Niepce had been able to create this picture by using what is known as “Bitumen of Judea”. Bitumen of Judea was a “small piece of polished pewter” which Niepce had placed in his camera obscura and then “coated with a solution of bitumen and lavender oil” to create the picture. He used this because bitumen, a naturally occurring asphalt, is light sensitive (Welch). This is an important property of bitumen because that means when it’s introduced to light, it will change to match with the light, which is what was needed for a picture to come out. The Bitumen of Judea remained in Niepce’s obscura for “any[time] between eight hours [and] several days”(Welch). Considering today that exposure time to take a picture can range between a couple seconds to a minute or a little longer, eight hours is a long time to take a picture. However our technological advances were not available back then, so eight hours of letting a picture take itself was a huge cutback from sitting down and painting over light reflections. Niepce wanted to further study the elements of

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