Their travels, documented by Catherwood and his camera lucida and printed with fantastic detail, inspired new interest in Mayan culture and expeditions of Central America. When I first started building camera lucidas in my garage back in 2005, the landscape was pretty barren. In spring 2013, we designed, crowdfunded and mass-manufactured the NeoLucida: the first portable authentic camera lucida to be manufactured in nearly a century. The NeoLucida XL is a see-through camera lucida, it uses mirror and glass to combine a virtual ghost image of your subject and the real view of your hand.

Set up a bouquet of flowers, a bowl of fruit, your favorite stuffed animal, or even a replica skull from anatomy class and use the NeoLucida Plus to capture it from any angle!

Mary’s Abbey, Beddington (1815) is inscribed “Power of 5 in Patent Graphic Telescope”, marking this as one of the world’s first “telephoto” images, long before photographic camera optics would make this type of image common. I used mine to sketch a pencil with a radical skull head he had given me as a gift and presented him with the cool tool and sketch over takeout Chinese on our back porch.

Since that time, in close collaboration with our manufacturing partners, Big Idea Design, we have shipped more than 25,000 NeoLucida devices all over the world. Ingres likely knew what you will know after experience with the NeoLucida: it isn’t paradoxical to say that optical tools are both indispensable and hardly used. If the item comes direct from a manufacturer, it may be delivered in non-retail packaging, such as a plain or unprinted box or plastic bag.Herschel took his camera lucida with him as he traveled for King and country in the pursuit of scientific excellence. Set up the NeoLucida Plus to look at a printed image or a computer screen and make a hand-drawn copy! The NeoLucida prism acts like a beamsplitter; when you look down into the eyepiece, you see a ghost image of your subject on your paper. Forty of his camera lucida drawings and accompanying notes depict landscapes, city views, vernacular architecture, portraits of locals in regional dress, and even events like a forest fire. You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice.