All cameras are descendants of the camera obscura, an optical curiosity predating the Renaissance adopted by artists to aid in realistic drawing. As its Latin name (“dark chamber”) suggests, it is essentially a box or room with a pinhole or lens in one wall to form an image on the opposite wall.
THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE VIEW CAMERA
The earliest photographic cameras on record were made by or for the inventors of photography. Joseph Nicéphore Niépce of France and England’s William Henry Fox Talbot, two men with reasonable (but not exclusive) claim to be photography’s inventor, used simple wooden boxes. These boxes evolved gradually into today’s view camera. It occurred to Talbot in 1839 to cut holes in the camera’s back to enable him to ...
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