The History of

Photography

Where does the word

"Photography come from?
"Photography" is derived from
the Greek words photos ("light") and
graph ("to draw")
The word was first used by the scientist Sir
John F.W. Herschel in 1839.
It is a method of recording images
by the action of light, or
related
radiation, on a
sensitive material.

Camera Obscura
The camera obscura (Latin for 'dark room') is an
optical device that projects an image of its
surroundings on a screen.
It was used in drawing and for entertainment, and was
one of the inventions that led to photography.
The device consists of a box or room with a hole in one
side.
Light from an external scene passes through the hole
and strikes a surface inside where it is reproduced,
upside-down, but with color and perspective preserved.
The image can be projected onto paper, and can then
be traced to produce a highly accurate representation.

Pinhole Camera

The first reference to the optic laws that made pinhole

cameras possible, was observed by Aristotle around
330 BC, who questioned why the sun could make a
circular image when it shined through a square hole.
The smaller the hole, the sharper the image, but the
dimmer the projected image.
A pinhole camera's shutter is usually manually
operated because of the lengthy exposure times, and
consists of a flap of some light-proof material to cover
and uncover the pinhole.
Exposures range from 5 seconds to hours and
sometimes days.

Sun Pictures

1800s: Thomas Wedgwood, a potter,

makes a major contribution to the world of
photography by creating "sun pictures".
Wedgwood placed opaque objects on paper
and leather treated with silver nitrate.
Exposing the paper, with the object on top, to
natural light, then preserving the image in the
dark room, essentially became the birth
of photography as we know it today.

Photogram

Photogram - A photographic print

made by placing an arrangement of
objects on photosensitive paper
exposed to light to yield an image of
ghostly silhouettes floating in a void
of darkened space. The first
photogram was probably made
around 1802.

The First Photograph

Nicphore Nipce (of France) developed

a way to permanently capture the
image of a camera obscura.
In 1827 he made the world's first
surviving photograph from the window
of a country home in France.
It required an exposure, in
bright sunlight, of eight hours.

The Daguerreotype
In 1837 Louis Daguerre developed the
Daguerreotype
The image is a direct positive made in the camera on a
silvered copper plate.
The surface of a daguerreotype is like a mirror, with the
image made directly on the silvered surface; it is very
fragile and can be rubbed off with a finger, and the
finished plate has to be angled to reflect some dark
surface in order to view the image properly.
Depending on the angle viewed, and the color of the
surface reflected into it, the image can change from a
positive to a negative.

English Contributions
William Henry Fox Talbot developed his
own method of photography at about
the same time as Daguerre.
Talbot impregnated paper with silver nitrate or silver
chloride; when exposed in a camera, the paper turned
black where light struck it, creating a negative image
of the subject.
To achieve a positive image, a contact print could be
made by placing the negative over a second piece of
sensitized paper and exposing the combination to
bright light.
This was the first negative-positive process and
produced photographs called calotypes

English Contributions

In 1851 F. Scott Archer invented the

collodion process, which combined
the fine detail of the
daguerreotype
with the ability
to print multiple paper
copies
like the calotype.
The process was complicated and the plate was
light-sensitive only as long as it remained wet.
Because plates had to be used immediately after
preparation, a portable darkroom
(in the form of a tent, wagon, or
railway car) had to accompany the
camera wherever it went.

Cartedevisite
1854: Adolphe Disderi develops carte-de-visite
photography in Paris, leading to a worldwide
boom in portrait studios for the next decade.
The carte-de-visite was usually made of an
albumen print, which was a thin paper
photograph mounted on a thicker paper card.
Photograph was the size of a visiting card and
were traded among friends and visitors.
Card mania spread throughout Europe and then
quickly to America.
Albums for the collection and display of cards
became a common fixture in Victorian parlors.

Stereograms

Stereoscopic photography was

discovered by Charles
Wheatstone in 1838.
A special camera with two lenses was used
to take two simultaneous photographs of the
subject from viewpoints separated by about
the same distance as a pair of human eyes.
When the resulting pictures were viewed
through a special viewing device, they
merged to create a 3-dimensional image.

The first Kodak camera

In the 1880s, George Eastman invented

flexible roll film to replace photographic
plates.
Photographers no longer needed to carry
boxes of plates and toxic chemicals around.
In 1888 Eastman's Kodak camera went on
the market with the slogan "You press the
button, we do the rest.
This launched the era of mass-market
photography.

Fuji

1934: Fuji Photo Film is founded; the

first Japanese producer of
photographic films. 1940s: Fuji
begins making cameras and lenses,
in addition to film.

Polaroid Instant Film

Edwin Land founded the Polaroid Corporation,

which sold the first instant camera to the public
in 1948.
The Polaroid cameras one-step process for
developing and printing photographs created a
revolution in photography.
In 1963, the first colour instant film was
developed by Polaroid.
In 2008, Polaroid decided to cease all production
of instant cameras, in favor of digital
photography products

The Arrival of Digital

Cameras

The first attempt at building a digital

camera was in 1975 by Eastman
Kodak.
The camera weighed 8 pounds
(3.6kg), recorded black and white
images to a cassette tape, had a
resolution of 0.01megapixels (10,000
pixels), and took 23 seconds to
capture its first image.
To play back images, data was read
from the tape and then displayed
on a television set.
The prototype camera was a technical
exercise, not intended for production.

The Arrival of Digital

Cameras
1988 -The first true digital camera that recorded
images as a computerized file was the Fuji DS-1P
It contained a 400 kilopixel CCD and saved
photographs to removable Toshiba memory cards.
CCD or Charge-Coupled Device - is an analog
electronic device that can be used as the image
sensor in place of film in an electronic camera or
optical devices like microscopes or telescopes. CCDs
are also used in
digital and film cameras as parts of
some autofocus and light
metering
systems.

 1990 -The first commercially

available digital camera was the
Dycam Model1; it also sold as
the Logitech Fotoman.
It used a CCD image sensor,
stored pictures digitally, and
connected directly to a computer
for download.
The camera had a resolution of
0.077 megapixels, shot in black &
white, and could store 32 photos.
The original price was $995 (US)

 1991: the Kodak DCS-100, the first

commercial digital SLR was a Nikon
F3 body whose film chamber and
winder were gutted to make room for
the sensor and electronics.
The photographer needed to carry a
separate storage unit, worn on a
shoulder strap and connected via
cable.
The camera was intended for photo
journalists, in order to quickly send
photographs back to the studio or
newsroom.
It had a resolution of 1.3 megapixels
and the entire system was marketed
at a retail price of $20,000 (US).

 1999: The Nikon D1 was the

worlds first digital SLR built
entirely by a single
manufacturer. It had 2.7
megapixels and sold for around
$5000.
2000: The first camera phones
are introduced in Japan
2001: Polaroid goes bankrupt
2004: Kodak ceases
production of film cameras
2005: Canon EOS 5D, first
consumer priced full-frame
digital SLR, priced at $3000

 Digital Cameras of today