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. 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

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

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.

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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.

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

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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.

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

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