Practical Photography

In the Renaissance Pin Hole photography techniques were mostly used by scientists and astromers, and in later centuries the pinhole was fitted with a lens, to help artists and amateur painters as a drawing aid.

Leonardo da Vinci was probably the most famous pin hole enthusiast at this time.

In 1475 Paolo Toscanelli a mathematician and astronomer from the Renaissance placed a bronze ring with an aperture in a window of the Cathedral of Florence. On a sunny day an image is projected using the light through the hole onto the floor of the cathedral. At mid day, the solar image shows a “noon-mark” on the floor. This mark was used for telling time and can still be seen today.

A similar mark was used in the Vatican in 1580 when papal astronomers used a pinhole in the Observatory in Rome. This was put in to prove to Pope Gregory XIII that the spring equinox fell incorrectly ten days earlier on 11th of March rather than the 21st of March.

A scientist from Naples called Giovanni Battista della Porta , is often wrongly described as the inventor of the camera obscura. He described them acurately in his first edition of Magia naturallis but his description wasjust the first of its kind to receive much publicity. He was, however, by no means the inventor.

In the 1620s Johannes Kepler invented the first portable camera. It was a Camera obscura which was used by many as a drawing aid these were soon widely distributed and found in all sorts of shapes and sizes. These were used by artists and amateur painters.

In the 19th century large scale camera obscuras were designed and built as places of education and for entertainment. The meniscus lens, much better than the the bi-convex lens, had a better quality and showed suprior projected images. Many of these buildings and towers with camera obscuras are around today. The Camera Obscura at Royal Mile, Edinburgh;the Clifton Observatory at Bristol, England; the Great Union Camera at Douglas, Isle of Man; ; one at Portmeirion, North Wales; , San Francisco; Santa Monica, California, Germany, and many more. Some have even been built in the 20th century.