The box camera is mechanically simple, the most common form is a cardboard or plastic box with a lens in one end and film at the other. The lenses are often single element designs meniscus fixed focus lens, or in better quality box cameras a doublet lens with minimal (if any) possible adjustments to the aperture or shutter speeds. Because of the inability to adjust focus, the small lens aperture and the low sensitivity of the sensitive materials available, these cameras work best in brightly lit daylit scenes when the subject is within the hyperfocal distance for the lens and of subjects that move little during the exposure -- snapshots. During the box cameras heyday, box cameras with photographic flash, shutter and aperture adjustment were introduced, allowing indoor photos.
Read more about Box Camera: Purpose, Typical Box Cameras, Other Box Cameras
Famous quotes containing the words box and/or camera:
“I shall return in the dark and be seen,
Be led to my own room by well-intentioned hands,
Placed in a box with a lid whose underside is dark
So as to grow....”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)
“The camera is a killing chamber, which speeds up the time it claims to be conserving. Like coffins exhumed and prised open, the photographs put on show what we were and what we will be again.”
—Peter Conrad (b. 1948)