A young man definitely not hiding a camera from the 1890′s in his clothing
Not to detract from joak but here’s what the camera looked like
It was 14cm diameter but the lens poked through a buttonhole in his waistcoat from where it was hanging around his neck, and he has a piece of string from that lever on the side to his trouser pocket to take the photos. (Also! It could hold six four cm photos, so viewing them on your phone screen is probably about full size)
This is why we should teach people actually about how photography works in art classes. People see the words “photography” and any date before 1930 and assume you run around with this
But the rules on how to make a photo between when cameras were first made and how the last few with photo paper worked have NEVER changed. You take a material that is light sensitive, put it into anything resembling a light-secure box that has a hole and then you allow light in for a specific amount of time through that hole, then make it dark again. Develop the light-sensitive material and you have a picture.
What box? ANY box. I own cameras I made myself which are a bread box, a match box and my class once made a whole room in my old university into a camera (my photopaper was 2x2 m, developing that was a bitch lol). If you teach an elementary school kid how to calculate exposure time, they can make a picture with a shoebox. This dude did nothing world-breaking apart from having the idea to make the camera small and to hide the camera. I am NOT diminishing what he did, those photos are great and the flask idea is brilliant, I also assume he was among the first with the idea itself to do this. Just… there is no crazy magic involved in people not having noticed a camera back then once you understand how cameras work.
Most cameras back then were so massive cause…people wanted big photos (most likely a remnant of rich people usually having big paintings of themselves). The problem is that in contrast to now where you just make the image bigger (with restrictions, of course, but it is usually possible), THEN the image had to be as big as it was (unless you made a close photo of THAT one which….well, “blurry” would be too nice a term. But the bigger the picture, the bigger the hole…… but the bigger the hole, the more unsharp it often becomes. So the alternative is to make the box DEEP and use a small hole. But then only a little bit of light can come in so you need to spend more time to have light fall onto the material. That’s how you end up with those stiff images cause if the people move they become unsharp. For example, the room camera I build? ONE photo took 1 hour and 23 minutes of exposure in which I just sat behind my photo paper in the dark listening to music, because my hole was only 2x2 cm.
(For anyone interested in building their own camera and calculating exposure time, research Pinhole Camera btw)
Now if you are fine with small photos, then the smaller you go, the smaller your camera can be. It doesn’t have to be as deep if your hole is big enough in relation. My matchbox camera needed less than a second for a picture (they were always too bright cause I am only human, I can’t operate in miliseconds)
The hole in the camera of
Carl Størmer?
Pretty big in relation to the canister.
4cm pictures with such a hole? It would only take miliseconds of light to get a picture, depending on how light-sensitive his material was. Going by the photos, he got an almost perfect exposure for most of his pictures so I assume he had a mechanical shutter installed into the construction as well that only failed him on cloudy days (some images turned out a bit dark).
Anyway, long rant and all I am saying is: this dude didn’t need a Doug Dimmadome hat to pull this off, but it is a really cool idea to have in 1890s and he pulled it off perfectly. Also I love this photo of a cat he made
