Speaking of photography is necessarily speak to the camera obscura, for any camera is based on it. The camera obscura is not really an invention, but the fruit of observation and knowledge of natural phenomena to take advantage.

Thus it is not known for certain dates back to when the first discovery of the phenomenon, but is often attributed to Aristotle for a description left by the "light is passed through a small hole made in a closed room by all sides. On the wall opposite the hole will form the image of what is in front. "

However, the first scientific and practical applications of the camera obscura are due to Leonardo DaVinci, who used to project the image of objects that would draw in order to "trace".

To build a simple pinhole camera, just use a cardboard box, preferably black on the inside and make a tiny hole on one side, called pinhole. If we put photo paper (sensitive to light, not printer paper) on the opposite side, the image is recorded there in front of the pinhole, yes, reversed.

In this way we will have built a pinhole camera, in which the hole is the aperture of our objective, and correct calculation and execution will determine the brightness and sharpness of the image.

From this basic principle that anyone can experience in your home, adding pinhole camera lens is perfect against the hole, which help to concentrate the light. Attributed to Giovanni Battista Della Porta's first idea of putting a magnifying glass to increase the amount of light and sharpness in the sixteenth century, which led to the development of objectives .

Today, five centuries later, modern digital cameras are still basically a dark room with a hole - which he has added a few spectacles in one hand and a sensitive material in the opposite direction.