CAMERA (Fr., Chambre, Chambre noire ; Ger., Kamera) The photographic camera is essentially a light tight box, having a lens at one end and provided at the other with a suitable arrangement for the insertion and withdrawal of the sensitive plate or film. To ensure that the required amount of subject is included, a ground-glass focusing screen, or some kind of finder or sight, is employed. The prototype of the photographic camera is the camera obscura (which see). The first camera used for photography was that of Nicephore Niepce, who, writing in 1816, describes it as a box about 6 in. square, furnished with a sliding tube carrying a lens. In Daguerre's first camera A the only means of focal adjustment was a rack and pinion on the objective. Charles Chevalier, of Paris, introduced some improve ments, among them the method of making the body in two portions, one sliding within the other and clamped by a screw working in a slot on the baseboard, as seen in Daguerre's later appar atus B ; this arrangement is still met with in some ferrotype cameras. The mirror E at the back, to erect the image in focusing, will be noticed. The next step forward was the inven tion of the bellows, which was probably sug gested by that of the accordion, and seems to an inclined mirror and using it both for focusing and as a shutter. D will serve to explain the various fittings and movements of a modern triple-extension field camera, each part being named and indicated by an arrow. The different
have been known as early as 1839, though it was not in general use till the 'fifties. It was originally square or oblong, and the only way of reversing the plate was to turn the entire apparatus on its side. The pyramidal, or so called " conical," bellows was first made in 1861, and at about the same period were intro duced the swing front, swing back, and side shifting movement. Since then progress in camera construction has been rapid. The reversing back, rising and falling front, turn table, and many other conveniences, have been added, until the elaborate and beautifully finished outfits of to-day bear scarcely any resemblance to the heavy and clumsy apparatus of earlier years. Yet, to give a curious instance of how ideas tend to repeat themselves, the kinds of cameras are described in this work under their separate headings as " Studio Camera," " Field Camera," " Hand Camera," " Reflex Camera," " Enlarging Camera," etc., and any not so found should be looked for under latest refinement of mechanical skill, the reflex or reflector camera, is strikingly similar in design to an early pattern of box-form camera obscura C described by the Abbe Nollet in his " Lecons de Physique," published at Paris in 1755. Thomas Sutton, in 1861, was the first to adopt the reflector principle in exposure by hingeing the particular branch of work for which it is used.