Q 01/05

In a lens aperture setting such as f/2.8, what does the letter f stand for?

A) Focal length

B) Focus distance

C) Film speed

D) Flash sync

Answer · why

A) Focal length

The f-number is the lens's focal length divided by the aperture diameter, so f/2.8 means an opening 2.8 times smaller than the focal length.

Q 02/05

Which 11th-century scholar analysed the camera obscura in his Book of Optics?

A) Avicenna

B) Al-Khwarizmi

C) Omar Khayyam

D) Ibn al-Haytham

Answer · why

D) Ibn al-Haytham

Ibn al-Haytham, working in Cairo around 1021, analysed pinhole images in his Kitab al-Manazir (Book of Optics), showing that light travels in straight...

Q 03/05

Which astronomer's 1604 book contains the earliest known use of the term 'camera obscura'?

A) Galileo Galilei

B) Johannes Kepler

C) Tycho Brahe

D) Isaac Newton

Answer · why

B) Johannes Kepler

Johannes Kepler coined the term 'camera obscura' in his 1604 optics treatise Ad Vitellionem Paralipomena (Astronomiae Pars Optica), which analysed how...

Q 04/05

Who made the first permanent photograph from a camera image, in 1826?

A) Louis Daguerre

B) Nicéphore Niépce

C) Henry Fox Talbot

D) George Eastman

Answer · why

B) Nicéphore Niépce

Nicéphore Niépce made View from the Window at Le Gras at his estate near Chalon-sur-Saône, exposing a bitumen-coated pewter plate for many hours in a ...

Q 05/05

A daguerreotype image was made on a polished sheet of what?

A) Ground glass

B) Silver-plated copper

C) Tin coated in lacquer

D) Waxed writing paper

Answer · why

B) Silver-plated copper

A daguerreotype was made on a silver-plated copper sheet, polished to a mirror and sensitised with iodine fumes; the latent image was then developed o...