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[Art Review] Human Eye vs. Camera Eye

English text revised, edited by Kanako, granddaughter of the writer, 25/12/2022.

Chapter 1 revised with additional figures and references, 15/01/2023; 06/03/2023.

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Chapter 1 Camera obscura

In the house in which I spent my childhood, when I woke up in the morning, the scenery of the garden was reflected upside down on the frosted glass window through the knotholes in the cypress boards of shutter window. Since the pattern cannot be reproduced, a similar image found on the Internet is shown in Fig.1.

Fig. 1 An image reflected on the paper window through a knothole in the wooden board of the shutter window at Nisshinkan (日新館), the old College of Aidzu Clan (會津藩)[1]

At school, I made a pinhole camera during craft class. When the pinhole was slightly enlarged and a magnifying glass was attached, the projected image became clearer.

When I was a junior high school student, I took photographs myself for the first time with an old camera, which my elder brother used to use. Although the camera was a simple one, Konishiroku’s Pearlette, made in 1940, with a F6.3 75mm lens and a shutter of B, 1/25, 1/50, and 1/100 exposures, and the film used was the small monochrome 127 Film (4 x 6.5/4x3 cm), I was much impressed with the photographs which I took. The Asahi Pentax S2, a luxurious camera that I bought when I was in college was versatile not only for general use but also for the copying of literature.[2] It may be difficult for young people to imagine, but before the emergence of xerography, it was common to use a camera for duplication: we took photographs of literature pages in libraries, developed the film in a dark room and printed it on papers of cabinet-size or so. Around 1960, when we were cleaning out the office of a professor who was about to retire, we were astonished to find hundreds of dry plates, on which images of magazine pages were photographed, in the drawers of his bookshelves.

In the history of the camera, Ibn al-Haytham (965-1040), a genius born in Basra in the era of the Fatimid Arab Dynasty and called “the father of modern optics”[3], appears first. Legend has it that one day when he saw the light entering through a pinhole in the outer wall into a dark room, and reflecting the outside scenery on the opposite wall of the room, he concluded that vision is caused by the light that enters one’s eye [4]. This is the beginning of the so-called “camera obscura”. Images related to Ibn al-Haytham are shown in Fig.2.

(1)  (2)  (3)

Fig.2. (1) A stamp to commemorate the contribution of Ibn al-Haytham [5]; (2) An illustration of Ibn al-Haytham’s camera obscura [6]; (3) The illustration of vision by Ibn al-Haytham[7].

There is a theory that it was Johannes Kepler who applied the Latin idiom “camera obscura” to the above-mentioned fact. Apart from it, the Latin words “camera” and “obscura” mean in English “chamber” and “dark”, respectively. Therefore, the idiom denotes “a dark room (or dark box)”. A camera to take photographs is thus etymologically an abbreviation for camera obscura. For reference, the Latin “camera” has been inherited in modern words in a form close to the original spelling, e.g., Kammar in German, Kamer in Dutch and Kamar in Indonesian.

Among works that depicted the demonstration of the camera obscura are Light and landscape through knothole, a woodprint by Kyokutei Bakin (曲亭馬琴), in Kage to hinata chinmon zui (阴兼阳珍紋圖彙, lit. Collection of strange patterns about the sun and shadow), published by Senkakudo in Kyowa 3 (1803)[8] and Fuji from knothole, by Hokusai Katsushika (葛飾北齋) in his wood print collection, One hundred views of Mt. Fuji (富嶽百景), Tempo 5 (1834) [9]. It might be possible that Hokusai, who had frequently imitated the works of other artists, had made Fuji from knothole after Kyokutei Bakin’s work (See, Fig.3).

(1)   (2)

Fig.3 (1) Light and landscape through knothole, a woodprint by Kyokutei Bakin (曲亭馬琴), 1803[10]; (2)Fuji from knothole, by Hokusai Katsushika (葛飾北齋), ca.1834 [11].

On the Internet, I have learned that there were people in ancient China who recorded the phenomenon of camera obscura. Mozi (墨子, ca.470 - 390 BC), a philosopher and thinker of the Warring States Period, conducted scientific studies. In his book “Mozi (墨子)” was a passage related to the “Formation of an image via small hole”.

“The light of a bonfire radiates directly on people and heats them. If the light source is low, then the shadow of the person will be high, and if it is high, then the shadow will be low. If the light is cast from the upper part of the head, then the shadow will be formed below. The shadow has perspective, and the length of the upper and lower ends depends on the position of the light source”, as illustrated in Fig.4 after the book of Mozi (墨子) [12].

Fig.4 An illustration of observation in the book of Mozi [13].

Shen Guo (沈括, 1031 - 1095), a politician and scholar of the mid-Song period, wrote as follows in his book, “Brush talks from dream brook (圖解夢溪筆談)”.

"When a kite (bird) flies horizontally in the air, the shadow moves as the kite flies. If there is a ceiling with a small hole overhead, then the image of the kite will be reversed on the floor, and the image will move opposite to the direction of the flight. If there is a small hole in the wall of a mansion, then the image of the tower outside will be reflected upside down on the opposite-side wall inside”, as illustrated in Fig.5 [14].

(1)     (2)

Fig.5 Illustrations of Shen Guo’ description. (1) The flight of kite; (2) The projection of a tower through a small hole on the wall. Redrawn on CorelDRAW after the pictures in the literature [15].

Far back in the period of the Western Han Dynasty, a periscope with a concave mirror, the first of its kind in the world, was described in Huainan Wan Bi Shu (淮南萬畢術, lit. Encyclopaedic Techniques of Prince Huainan)”, edited by King Huainan, Liu An (179 - 122 BC). An imaginary picture is shown in Fig.6.

Fig.6 A periscope with a concave mirror in Huainan Wan Bi Shu (淮南萬畢術, lit. Encyclopaedic Techniques of Prince Huainan) [16].

In the book of Mozi[17], various phenomena related to the light-collecting ignition by concave mirrors and the reflection and refraction of light on the surface of convex and concave mirrors are described. Nevertheless, they were never formalized as was done by Ibn al-Haytham.

The Renaissance master Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) is said to have studied camera obscura in detail, as described in theCodex Atlanticus (Atlantic manuscript 1515) (see Fig.7). [18]

Fig.7 A sketch of camera obscura by Leonardo da Vinci in Codex Atlanticus [19]. Held by Biblioteca Ambrosiana, Milan.

Robert Hooke (1635 - 1703), the great scientist of seventeenth-century England, showed a portable camera obscura that he had designed and wrote it would be quite useful for recording accurate images of topography (see Fig.8), in the article “An instrument of use to take the draught, or picture of anything (19 Dec. 1694)’’, in a book, entitled Philosophical Experiments and Observations of the Late Eminent Dr. Robert Hooke [20] , which was published after his death by his friend William Derham. He did not leave landscape drawings drawn by himself, as he was not an artist, although he included detailed sketches of microscopic creatures in his other book, Micrographia.

Fig.8 A portable draughting instrument (camera obscura) designed by Robert Hooke[21].

The artist who had certainly used camera obscura was Giovanni Antonio Canal (1697 – 1768) of Venice, commonly known as Canalotto, as his obscura still exists (Fig.9)[22]. His sketches and paintings, which are in accordance with the law of perspective, can be seen today as seen in Figs.10 and 11[23]; [24].

Fig.9 Camera obscura used by Canaletto [25].

Figs.10 Drawings of Campo San Giovanni e Paolo, Venice by Canalotto [26]. Held by Gallerie dell’Accademia.

Fig.11 The view of Basilica from Saint Mark’s Square, in Venice (1883), by Canalotto. Left: Original picture [27]; Right: Perspective analysis by Casper J. Erkelens [28].

Analytical result suggests that Leonardo da Vinci had also applied the law of perspective for his paintings as shown in Fig.12 [29].

Fig.12 The Last Supper, by Leonardo da Vinci [30]. Left: Original picture; Right: The same picture with the horizon line (red), vanishing lines (yellow), and vertical/horizontal lines (blue) [31].

The most famous painter who is supposed to have used a camera obscura is Johannes Vermeer (1632 - 1675), who represented Netherlands during the Baroque period. It seems to be not certain in which studio he was trained, but he established his own painting style that accorded the law of perspective. The shading of lights that was poured on the view was accurately expressed. Fig.13 shows the image of The Music Lesson, analysed by Prof. Philip Steadman using digital technology, copied from his book.[32]

Fig.13 The Music Lesson, by Johannes Vermeer (c. 1662-1665). Left: Original picture; Middle: Perspective analysis; Right: Reconstructed picture. Copied with camera (Nikon Z6) from Prof. Philip Steadman’s book [33].

Humans memorise an image reflected on their retina as patterns in their brain cells and, when necessary, recall the memory to express them on paper and canvas. Of course, memory capacity varies between individuals. Once, when I lived in Bandung, Indonesia, for research cooperation, a student from the Faculty of Arts, Bandung Institute of Technology told me he would like to draw my portrait. He let me sit in a chair and ran a pencil on his sketchbook for about fifteen minutes. A15 size (652 x 530) oil painting, delivered a week later, was marvellous, as my little nervous expression and the pattern of the batik shirt that I wore were accurately depicted.

In principle, a camera is a device to record the real image of an external scene reflected through a convex lens on the focal plane. Let us briefly review the history of recording method. The first method, announced on the 7th of January 1839 by Louis Jacques Mande Daguerre (1787-1851), was the daguerreotype obtained by exposing silver-plated copper plates to iodine vapour to form silver iodide on the surface. When this news reached William Henry Fox Talbot (1800-1877), he immediately claimed that his kalotype or talbotype that involved the use of thin paper sensitised by immersion in a solution of silver halogenide had been invented earlier, and sent a picture taken in 1935 to the Royal Society. The advantage of Talbot's method was that it gave a negative image which could be contact printed to positive, whereas Daguerre's resulted in an image with better resolution but was left-right reversed. From 1860s onward, the invention of the wet plate, dry plate, and films with xylonite (celluloid), cellulose acetate and polyester followed.[34];[35]; [36] The portraits of William Henry Fox Talbot and Louis Jacques Mande Daguerre, and their first pictures are shown in Fig.14 and Fig.15, respectively.

Fig.14 William Henry Fox Talbot (1864) [37] and the window in the South Gallery of Lacock Abbey (August 1935) [38].

Fig.15 Louis Daguerre (1844) [39] and Boulevard du Temple (late 1838 or early 1839) [40]. Note, the pictures are left-right reversed as clearly seen in Daguerre’s jacket button.

In 1851, Frederick Scott Archer and Peter Wickens Fry invented the wet plate, a transparent glass plate on which silver nitrate dispersed in collodion was applied. Although the wet plate had to be prepared just before use, the quality of pictures obtained was better than that of calotype and equivalent to that of daguerreotype. In 1871, Richard Leach Maddox invented the dry plate, or a glass plate coated with emulsion of silver nitrate dispersed in gelatine solution. It was found much more sensitive than the wet plate. Then, the process as well as the quality of dry plate was improved in the following years. Even after the emergence of transparent roll films (to be mentioned below), dry plate was useful as a large-size sensitive plate well until early twentieth century for such purposes to take group photographs and the copy of literature (mentioned above). [41]

The form of photosensitive device changed after 1888 when Eastman Kodak marketed the celluloid-based roll film together with the original Kodak Camera, and roll films became the major form. [42]

The approach to natural colour photography was pioneered in 1861 by the eminent physicist James Clerk Maxwell (1831-1879) in cooperation Thomas Sutton (1819-1875) known for inventing the single-lens reflex camera and the panorama camera. James Maxwell, who established the electromagnetic theory, was interested also in colour vision and deduced that all colours can be expressed by superimposing the three lights, red, green, and blue, and asked Thomas Sutton to create transparent images taken with three colour filters. [43]; [44] Their portraits are shown in his Fig.16.

Fig.16 Left: James Clerk Maxwell (1831-1879) [45]. Right: Thomas Sutton (1819-1875)[46].

Sutton decided to place flat liquid cell filters in front of the camera lens, and used aqueous solutions of iron sulphocyanide, copper chloride, and ammonium sulphate for red, green, and blue, respectively.

Although it was necessary to adjust the concentration of the solution and the exposure time in various ways due to the different absorption rate of the filters, at any rate he obtained three images of a bow of tartan ribbon. Fig.17 shows Sutton's the single-lens reflex camera and the type of liquid filter he would have used. Wet plates were used as the photosensitive device. Fig.18 shows three positives taken by Sutton and the superimposed image. Maxwell actually projected the three images with three magic lanterns, through the same filters used for taking pictures, onto the screen at the same locations.[47]; [48]

Fig.17 Left: Thomas Sutton’s Single-lens reflex camera [49]. Right: Liquid cell filter[50].

Fig.18 Three colour images taken by Thomas Sutton and their superimposed image[51].

Maxwell was disappointed that the superimposed colour was significantly different from the actual ribbon colour.

The problem was solved a century later, in 1960, by Dr. R. M. Evans at Eastman Kodak Company. [52] First, in addition to the fact that the wet plate was not sensitive to the long wavelength region of visible light, the lens glass (probably soda glass) used by Sutton absorbed light of wavelengths longer than 430mμ, hence the range of light longer than 430mμ was supposed to have not reached the wet plate. From this fact, it was assumed for the Sutton's three-color images that (1) only blue light was reflected on the wet plate and that (2) a part of green light shorter than 430 mμ and a part of blue light were reflected on the wet plate. What about red? Spectroscopic analysis of cloth dyed with the dye presumably used by Sutton showed absorption in the ultraviolet region, suggesting that Sutton's red image was in fact a reflection to ultraviolet light. Evans's paper also discusses aberrations and other problems, but the details are left to the original paper. Maxwell's theory itself was correct and became the foundation of digital photography of later times.

In 1873, Hermann Wilhelm Vogel (1834-1898) discovered that a wet plate to which coralline was added reacted to yellow light, or the fact that some dye molecules had sensitizing effect on silver halide. He also found that silver bromide to which aniline green was added was sensitive to red light, and that a yellow glass filter absorbed blue light but did not affect the transmission of yellow light. [53] The following year, Edmond Becquerel (1820 -1891) reported the sensitization chlorophyll to red light.[54]

Sergei Prokudin-Gorsky (1863-1944) of Russia deserves special mention as a photographer in the early days of natural colour photography. In 1901, he opened a photo studio in St. Petersburg, and the following year he studied colour photography under Professor Adolf Miethe at the Technical Highschool of Berlin, Germany. Fig.19 shows his portrait and three-colour camera, and Fig.20 shows the snapshots of Leo Tolstoy and Prokudin Gorsky himself.

Fig.19 Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky’s portrait 4 [55] and three-colour camera. [56]

Fiｇ.20 Snapshots of Leo Tolstoy and Sergei Prokudin-Gorsky. [57]

In 1909 he was ordered by Nicholas II to document the Russian Empire in photographs and, given a darkroom railway carriage, he travelled around the empire to take a huge number of photographs. Many of them are presently kept in the US Library of Congress. Fig.21 shows a set of R, G, and B images of Alim Khan, the chief of Bukhara, found on the Internet, and the superimposed image of R, G and B images.

Fig.21 A set of three images (R, G, and B from left to right) of Alim Khan, the chieg of Buhara Protectorate, taken by and Sergei Prokudin-Gorsky [58], and the superimposed image of R, G and B images achieved with Corel PaintShop Pro 2021. The three images has been aligned setting two standard points at the right-top corner of the back door and the left-bottom corner of the wall.

The superimposition was conducted using the Corel PaintShop Pro 2021's Colour Channel Combination Function. Prior to this, the three grayscale images downloaded from the Internet were aligned setting two standard points at the right-top corner of the back door and the left-bottom corner of the wall. The present writer was greatly impressed when the calm figure of Bukhara Emir of more than 100 years ago vividly appeared on his computer display.

Having learnt that the Corel Paintshop's Colour Channel Combination Function is effective, a test was made to see what would happen if the three positive colour images of tartan ribbon bow prepared by Thomas Sutton were turned to negatives and their greyscale images were superimposed. The results are shown in Fig.22.

 Fig.22 Three positive colour imaged of tartan ribbon bow prepared by Thomas Sutton (top row) [59], their positive images (middle row) and their greyscale images and the combined image achieved with Corel PaintShop Pro 2021(bottom row).

The hue of the original tartan is cirtainly unknown but the superimposed image is far more colourful than the Maxwell's projection, although the original three images weren't the exact reflection of red, green and blue lights. Had Maxwell seen this, he might not have been disappointed with the result.

The first Kodacholor (negative) that covered the whole range of visible light emerged in 1942.[60]

After 1920s the film-base was gradually replaced by non-flammable cellulose acetate, and after 1960s by more stable polyester. [61]

In the latter half of the 1900s, an image sensor with CMOS (Complementary Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor) became of use. Ever since Casio applied CMOS for “QV-10”, the first compact camera equipped with a liquid crystal panel, digital cameras gradually replaced the film camera. As an image sensor, CCD (Charge Coupled Device) is currently the mainstream.

It was in 1998, when I had my first digital camera, Kodak's DC-210 Zoom [62] and inspected digital photo images on a computer display that I re-recognised the above-mentioned principle of camera that “a camera is a device to record the real image of an external scene reflected through a convex lens on the focal plane”. I understood that (1) The image caught by a camera is in accordance with the law of perspective, and that (2) A camera can catch the image of moving objects within a matter of moments.

Acknowledgements

The writer express his thanks to Dr. Doetze Sikkema, the Netherlands, and Mr. Richard Ranson, UK, for giving me comments on the original version manuscript, especially about the history of photograph. Thanks are due also to Prof. Paul Smith, Switzerland, who says he himself is “Your buddy-in-art” and reads my humble Art Review articles.

References