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Camera Obscura

Definition: Camera Obscura

Camera Obscura

Noun

1. A darkened enclosure in which images of outside objects are projected through a small aperture or lens onto a facing surface.

Source: WordNet 1.7.1 Copyright © 2001 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
 



Specialty Definitions: Camera Obscura

DomainDefinitions

Fine Arts

A room which has been darkened so that objects outside the room can be seen inside on a screen, generally with the aid of a lens. Source: European Union. (references)

Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits.

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Specialty Definition: Camera obscura

(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)

Camera obscura from "L'Encyclopédie"

The camera obscura (Latin for dark chamber) was a novelty optical invention, and one of the ancestral threads leading to the invention of photography; photographic devices today are still known as cameras.

Simply do it yourself by building a box and punching a hole in one of the walls - voilà! With a small enough aperture, light from only one part of a scene can strike any particular part of the back wall; the smaller the hole, the sharper the image on the back side. With this simple do-it-yourself apparatus, the image is always upside-down, although by using mirrors it is also possible to project a right-side-up image. Some camera obscuras have been built as tourist attractions, though few now survive. Examples can be found in Grahamstown in South Africa, Bristol in England, Dumfries and Edinburgh, Scotland, and San Francisco, California.

Camera obscura were used by artists in the 16th century, as an aid to sketches for paintings.

A small, hand-held version using photographic paper to record the image is known as the pinhole camera.

Related Links

Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Camera obscura."

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Crosswords: Camera Obscura

English words defined with "camera obscura": Scioptic ball. (references)
Non-English Usage: "Camera Obscura" is also a word in the following languages with English translations in parentheses.

German (camera obscura), Hungarian (camera obscura).

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Modern Usage: Camera Obscura

DomainUsage

Movie/TV Titles

Camera Obscura (2000)

Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits.

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Commercial Usage: Camera Obscura

DomainTitle

Books

  • Blue Opium, Panta Rhei, Camera Obscura (reference)

  • Camera Obscura (reference)

  • Camera Obscura, Camera Lucida (reference)

  • Private Screenings: Television and the Female Consumer (A Camera Obscura Book) (reference)

  • Venice: Camera Obscura (reference)

    (more book examples)

  

Periodicals

Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits.

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Frequency of Internet Keywords: Camera Obscura

The following statistics estimate the number of searches per day across the major English-language search engines as identified by various trade publications. Hyperlinks lead to commercial use of the expression at Amazon.com.
 
ExpressionFrequency
per Day

camera obscura

84

build camera obscura

4

andmoresound camera obscura

4
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits.

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Modern Translations: Camera Obscura

Language Translations for "camera obscura"; alternative meanings/domain in parentheses.

Bulgarian 

  

тъмна камера, камера обскура. (various references)

   

Chinese 

  

暗箱 (camera bellows). (various references)

   

Czech

  

temná komora (darkroom). (various references)

   

Dutch

  

donkere kamer (dark room, darkroom). (various references)

   

French

  

chambre noire, chambre noir. (various references)

   

German

  

camera obscura, lochkamera (pinhole camera), Dunkelkammer (dark room, darkroom). (various references)

   

Hebrew 

  

מחשכ" (dark room). (various references)

   

Hungarian

  

camera obscura, sötétkamra (dark room, dark-room), lyukkamra, fényképezésre használható. (various references)

   

Manx

  

shamyr ghorraghey (dark room). (various references)

   

Pig Latin

  

ameracay obscuraay.(various references)

   

Portuguese

  

câmara escura (dark room). (various references)

   

Russian 

  

темная камера, камера-обскура. (various references)

   

Serbo-Croatian

  

mračna komora (darkroom). (various references)

   

Swedish

  

kamera obscura. (various references)

   

Turkish

  

karanlık oda (darkroom). (various references)

Source: compiled by the editor from various translation references.

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Anagrams: Camera Obscura

Scrabble® Enable2K-Verified Anagrams

Words within the letters "a-a-a-b-c-c-e-m-o-r-r-s-u"

-5 letters: araceous, ararobas, baccaras, braceros, camorras, carabaos, carboras, carouser, cramboes, crumbers, curacaos, curacoas, marabous, obscurer, racemous, reoccurs, succorer.

Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits.

SCRABBLE® is a registered trademark. All intellectual property rights in and to the game are owned in the U.S.A and Canada by Hasbro Inc., and throughout the rest of the world by J.W. Spear & Sons Limited of Maidenhead, Berkshire, England, a subsidiary of Mattel Inc. Mattel and Spear are not affiliated with Hasbro.

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Alternative Orthography: Camera Obscura


Hexadecimal (or equivalents, 770AD-1900s) (references)

43 61 6D 65 72 61      4F 62 73 63 75 72 61

Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519; backwards) (references)

    

Binary Code (1918-1938, probably earlier) (references)

01000011 01100001 01101101 01100101 01110010 01100001 00100000 01001111 01100010 01110011 01100011 01110101 01110010 01100001

HTML Code (1990) (references)

&#67 &#97 &#109 &#101 &#114 &#97 &#32 &#79 &#98 &#115 &#99 &#117 &#114 &#97

ISO 10646 (1991-1993) (references)

0043 0061 006D 0065 0072 0061      004F 0062 0073 0063 0075 0072 0061

Encryption (beginner's substitution cypher): (references)

376779718467249688569878467

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INDEX

1. Definition
2. Crosswords
3. Usage: Modern
4. Usage: Commercial
5. Expressions: Internet
6. Translations: Modern
7. Anagrams
8. Orthography
9. Bibliography


  

Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.