camera obscura

American  

[ob-skyoor-uh] / ɒbˈskyʊər ə /

noun

1. a darkened boxlike device in which images of external objects, received through an aperture, as with a convex lens, are exhibited in their natural colors on a surface arranged to receive them: used for sketching, exhibition purposes, etc.

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camera obscura British  

/ ɒbˈskjʊərə /

noun

1. Sometimes shortened to: camera.  a darkened chamber or small building in which images of outside objects are projected onto a flat surface by a convex lens in an aperture

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Etymology

Origin of camera obscura

1660–70; < New Latin: dark chamber; see camera ¹, obscure

Example Sentences

“All those same people a few hundred years ago when Da Vinci was using the camera obscura were like, ‘Get your proportions right, just by eye.

From Los Angeles Times • Mar. 31, 2026

The rear façade consists of three pavilions that Mr. Lacovara says were modeled on the camera obscura, used by Renaissance artists to achieve accurate perspective.

From The Wall Street Journal • Apr. 2, 2025

In particular, he revived an idea first floated in the 1920s that Vermeer made his paintings from inside a room-size camera obscura, a device that operates like a pinhole camera.

From New York Times • Feb. 3, 2023

Midway through the narrative, Ron notices physics devices in one of the schools where he services equipment that remind him of the camera obscura box his physics teacher, Mr. Strauss, had shown.

From Washington Post • May 10, 2022

I feel as though I were in the dark of a camera obscura gazing into their 235 brightness.

From Out of the Air by Gillmore, Inez Haynes