Color Projects

The Camera

The camera is the key component that makes up photographic vision. The job of the camera has been to make an “acceptable” and recognizable depiction, based on established visual conventions, of what was seen. The early camera, called the camera obscura, was designed to imitate the visual ideas of perspective and scale that were formulated during the Renaissance. Even today, the combination of camera and lens, whether digital or film, determines many of the basic characteristics of the final photographic image, including field of view, depth of field, sharpness, and tonal range. A knowledgeable viewer can often identify the fingerprint of the camera used to make an individual image. Because the camera plays such a vital ...

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