Preview: Camera Obscura
The principle of the dark room was already known to the ancient Greeks. In special circumstances this phenomenon occurs spontaneously. In the next movie you see how a hotel room can work as a camera obscura. The outside world is projected onto the ceiling through a slit above the curtain. Note also that this phenomenon produces not only still images but also moving images. This principle is therefore well suited for photography and motion pictures.
In a BBC series on photography a large camera obscura was built. A complete Venetian palace was projected onto the wall of a large room. The result is quite amazing.
| 3 | The digital camera [Viewing Duration = 00:12:24] | 74 |
| 3.1 | Introduction | 74 |
| 3.2 | Image and Image Fixing | 74 |
| The First Objective Image | 74 | |
| Camera Obscura | 75 | |
| Chemical Fixation | 76 | |
| Analog Fixation | 76 | |
| Digital Fixation | 77 | |
| 3.3 | From Image to Motion Pictures | 78 |
| The Magic Lantern (1659) | 78 | |
| The Projection Lantern (1731) | 78 | |
| Persistence of Vision (1824) | 79 | |
| Fantascope (1832) | 79 | |
| Zoetrope (1834) | 70 | |
| Flip Book (1868) | 80 | |
| Recording Motion (1878) | 80 | |
| Frozen Motion (1999) | 81 | |
| The First Film Camrea(1882) | 81 | |
| The Film Roll (1888) | 82 | |
| Film Formats (Size) | 83 | |
| 3.4 | Design of The Digital Camera | 84 |
| Components | 84 | |
| The Objective | 85 | |
| Diaphragm | 86 | |
| The Shutter | 86 | |
| Charge Coupled Device: CCD | 86 | |
| Color and Brightness | 87 | |
| 3.5 | Image Compression | 88 |
| Quality and Quantity | 88 | |
| Keyframes and Delta Frames | 90 | |
| Keyframes and the Movie Player | 92 | |
| 3.6 | Summary | 92 |
| Notes | 93 | |
| References | 95 |