We developed obscura expert system as our final project for graduation from the technical secondary school HTL Leonding. The objective of obscura is to establish an aid for taking photographs with analogue cameras or for developing them in the darkroom.

For on-site photography and work in the darkroom, many different settings can be used to get satisfactory results. To facilitate managing them and to ensure mobility, a programme was created on a PDA. Settings are entered by the user via an innovative user interface, saved in a databank and synchronized with the desktop. An additional area of application involves the evaluation of individual negatives and positives by the user. Based on this data, a “learning system” can be set up. It processes data from current and earlier evaluations for the expert system. On the desktop, an image viewer displays the scanned images with their respective settings. The PDA programme receives the data “learned” by the system, data which can serve as a basis for future photos. It primarily strives to be an aid, though it can also work with the input and propose settings.