Definition of Photographic Camera

The photographic camera is a technological device whose main objective or function is to take still images of situations, people, landscapes or events to maintain visual memories of the themselves. Cameras are responsible for the birth of two sciences or arts: the Photography and, later, the movie theater. The first cameras were created in the early nineteenth century although they did not maintain many of the typical characteristics of a device of this type if not that they were very primitive versions of the same. Today, cameras have evolved greatly and we can record and reproduce images of our surroundings immediately thanks to the technological innovations of recent years.

The functioning of the camera depends on its internal camera obscura. In this space is where the image that is observed in reality is recorded and the exchange of lights or light spectrum is what makes that image remain in the memory of the camera (something that in the most primitive photographic machines could not be achieved unless the image was projected on a wall and the same was completed by hand tracing). Obviously, no more light can enter this dark chamber than is necessary to capture the image because otherwise the expected result would not be obtained. In addition, cameras have a lens that is what allows to focus and visualize the object to be reproduced, as well as to focus the image completely.

Due to the fragility of the reproduction of images according to the photography system, in the early days, taking a photo could imply that what wanted to reproduce had to remain still for several hours, almost as someone had to do posing for a painting. Eventually, photography evolved greatly and today the cameras available allow us to obtain images at the same time that we take them.

Photography is largely responsible for the birth of cinema if we understand it as a permanent and constant superposition of several still images seen at a certain velocity they simulate movement.