16th Century - Camera Obscura

Although the idea had been tested earlier on, the Camera Obscura became available to the public in the 16^th century. The idea for making this camera dates back to the times of the Ancient Greeks. Aristotle noticed a beam of light passing through a crack in the wall of a dark room, and the image was reversed onto the opposing wall. The theory was also used to test whether light travelled in a straight line in the 10^th Century, and to see the sun in the 13^th Century. In the 16^th Century, the camera was a valuable aid to artists, which enabled them to create clearer drawings with more detail and accurate perspective. It was a large box, with a small pinhole at the end, which enabled light to reflect a flipped image onto the back surface, which could then be traced.

The pros and cons for the Camera Obscura are as follows:

Pros:
- Easy to make (using a cardboard box)
- Large depth of field

Cons:
- Unable to zoom in on a focus, or out to get a wider range of image
- Image had to be traced.
- Quite large, was hard to carry around
- No memory - unable to 'save' images
- Resolution was poor