Wow Place #289: Camera Obscura, San Francisco, CA

Wow Place #289: Camera Obscura, San Francisco, CA

Not long ago, I watched an excellent, highly-provocative documentary called, “Tim’s Vermeer.” In it, the director, Teller (of the magic duo, Penn and Teller) follows Texas-based inventor Tim Jenison in his attempts to prove that the 17th century Dutch Master Johannes Vermeer (“Girl with a Pearl Earring”) used some kind of optical device to guide his painting techniques. Specifically, Jenison insists that Vermeer must have used a camera obscura – 150 years before the invention of photography.

The inventor makes a powerful case. Check out the movie when you get a chance. But what the heck is a “camera obscura”?

Thankfully, a few of these fascinating contraptions are still in operation, and one of them resides in my very own San Francisco, California. Perched on the cliffs just north of Ocean Beach, the camera obscura is adjacent to the Cliff House restaurant, housed in an odd little yellow building that kind of looks like a set of binoculars — with a turret.

The first recorded reference to a camera obscura in San Francisco goes back to the 1860s, at an attraction called Woodward’s Gardens. An earlier version of the Cliff House also had such a contraption on its fourth floor – until the restaurant burned down in 1907. When the 3rd Cliff House opened in 1937, businessman Floyd Jennings approached the owner with the idea of adding a camera obscura to the deck outside. It was installed in 1946 and has been in continuous operation ever since.

So again, what the heck is a camera obscura?

Essentially, it’s a device that projects an image onto a horizontal viewing table via a reflected image. For the San Francisco version of this gadget, a metal hood in the cupola at the top of the building slowly rotates, making a full revolution in about six minutes, allowing for a 360° view around the building. Light enters the building via an angled mirror in the metal hood, then passes through a lens with a 150 in. (381 cm) focal length and is projected onto a parabolic white “table” in a black room.

In essence, the mirrors bring the outside inside, allowing you to view the scene outside on a flat table inside, in front of you.

You can see how Vermeer might have used such a device to aid his painting. With the outside scene laid out on a canvas in front of him, he could simply paint over it, replicating the lighting effects exactly. At the very least, he’d have the scene right there, a short distance away, for easy reference.

Visiting the camera obscura is a fun, old-timey experience. For a modest $3, you walk into a dark hallway and enjoy a smattering of cute holograms hanging on the wall before ushering yourself into the main viewing room. There you find a large table transformed into a slowly-rotating, 360-panorama of the nearby cliff scenery.

To be honest, the camera obscura is not the kind of place you linger at for hours. It’s more of a “Well ain’t this something?” kind of attraction. In short, it’s a cute little novelty – but a cool one, harkening back to the City’s bygone era, when men wore hats and women wore gloves, and people said things like “Egad” and “Gadzooks.” It’s a slice of history, and for that I’m grateful.

And at $3 a pop, it’s a pretty good deal I’d say.

(As humans, we tend to be on the lookout for incongruities. No doubt the inventor, Tim Jenison, found himself wondering, “How could Vermeer capture light in his paintings the way that he did, when none of his contemporaries could do the same? Something doesn’t compute here.” And thus Tim began his quest to debunk Vermeer. A theory I heard recently is that we’re better at recognizing patterns and incongruities when we’re stressed. This apparently goes back to our caveman days, when the jungle was a very dangerous place. Under such stress, our ancestors got pretty good at scanning their surroundings for the smallest signs of predators. I have to wonder if perhaps the reason there are so many conspiracies out there these days is because everyone is so darn stressed! We’re seeing patterns everywhere!! The next time you find yourself doubting government, or authority, or your kids, or your partner, try asking yourself, “Am I particularly stressed today?” Let me know how you answer.)