The word "Camera Obscura" comes from the Latin word "Dark Chamber". A camera obscura is an optical mechanism that led to the creation of photography and the camera. To create this device, you would need a box or room with a hole in one side. When light from an outer source transcends through the hole and comes into contact with a surface inside, it projects the external scene and rotated 180 degrees (so it appears to be upside-down), however the colour and perspective is preserved. This image can be projected onto paper, which can be useful to trace and to produce a highly accurate representation.
The image to the left is an example of a camera obscura. As you can see in this photograph, the external scene is projected and flipped horizontally so that it appears to be upside down. This is very similar to what occurs when the natural eye sees an image, however then our brain re-orientates this image so that it is the correct way up, unlike this camera obscura.
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The following video below shows how to create a camera obscura if you wanted to create you own. The video show how the projected image changes within the room as it changes outside and as you can see, it is possible to film this movement and may actually look more accurate than just filming the view from directly outside.