Experience our walk-in camera obscura, the ancestor of all camera technologies, built into the California Museum of Photography. They’re rare—just a handful exist in California. Ours is free and open to the public when the Museum is open.

“Camera obscura” is a Latin phrase meaning “darkened room.” (“Camera,” meaning room, plus “obscura,” meaning darkened = “darkened room.”) Place a small hole in one side of a dark, enclosed space and it is transformed. It becomes an optical device when light reflected from the scene outside passes through the hole and strikes an internal surface. The result is an image reproduced, upside-down and reversed, but with detail, color, motion, and perspective preserved.

*Included in any field trip visit!