camera obscura

[ ob-skyoor-uh ]

noun

1. a darkened boxlike device in which images of external objects, received through an aperture, as with a convex lens, are exhibited in their natural colors on a surface arranged to receive them: used for sketching, exhibition purposes, etc.

camera obscura

/ ɒbˈskjʊərə /

noun

1. a darkened chamber or small building in which images of outside objects are projected onto a flat surface by a convex lens in an aperture Sometimes shortened tocamera

Word History and Origins

Origin of camera obscura¹

1660–70; < New Latin: dark chamber; camera ¹, obscure

Word History and Origins

Origin of camera obscura¹

New Latin: dark chamber

Example Sentences

To a child, a box can be a doll’s house or a rocket ship, a camera obscura or a magic carpet sailing down the concrete slides in Golden Gate Park.

From Los Angeles Times

Artists and scholars dispute whether Vermeer may have made use of a 'camera obscura', a forerunner of the modern photocamera.

From Reuters

In particular, he revived an idea first floated in the 1920s that Vermeer made his paintings from inside a room-size camera obscura, a device that operates like a pinhole camera.

From New York Times

The museum’s researchers, however, said the brushstrokes contained no evidence of a link to the camera obscura, a type of pinhole camera.

From New York Times

Morell needed it to negate as much light as possible because he makes photographs using a “camera obscura” — literally, a dark room.

From Washington Post