camera obscura

American  

[ob-skyoor-uh] / ɒbˈskyʊər ə /

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.

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camera obscura British  

/ ɒbˈskjʊərə /

noun

1. Sometimes shortened to: camera.  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

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Etymology

Origin of camera obscura

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

Example Sentences

“All those same people a few hundred years ago when Da Vinci was using the camera obscura were like, ‘Get your proportions right, just by eye.

From Los Angeles Times • Mar. 31, 2026

The rear façade consists of three pavilions that Mr. Lacovara says were modeled on the camera obscura, used by Renaissance artists to achieve accurate perspective.

From The Wall Street Journal • Apr. 2, 2025

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 • Oct. 7, 2022

Midway through the narrative, Ron notices physics devices in one of the schools where he services equipment that remind him of the camera obscura box his physics teacher, Mr. Strauss, had shown.

From Washington Post • May 10, 2022

Mrs. B. Because the rays do not enter the mirror by a small aperture, and cross each other, as they do at the orifice of a camera obscura, or the pupil of the eye.

From Conversations on Natural Philosophy, in which the Elements of that Science are Familiarly Explained by Jones, Thomas P.