History of Photography Cameras

Cameras revolutionized the making of images

Photography revolutionized the way that the world was seen. Its ability to capture a real moment, to freeze an image outside the flow of time, is its unique and most characteristic feature. Cameras and film processes have been constantly evolving since the start of the 19th century to refine and enhance this ability.

Camera Obscura

The forerunner of modern cameras was the Camera Obscura. Developed in the 18th century, the Camera Obscura was a light-proof box with two opening cut into it. One, on the top, was angled to allow light in and would be covered with a transparent image. The light would pass through the image and hit an mirror inside the box to be angled out of the second opening at the front, a small hole. This has the effect of projecting the image onto a wall or screen with the perspective and color intact but upside-down. The Camera Obscura was used by painters to help with perspective and for general entertainment.

Daguerreotype

While the Camera Obscura reproduced an image, it was not able to capture or preserve the image. The Daguerreotype was the first camera to perform this function. Developed by Louis Daguerre and Joseph Niépce in the first decade of the 19th century and unveiled to the public in 1839, the Daguerreotype used the Camera Obscura but added a copper plate covered in a silver iodine solution. The image would be captured on this plate and could be highlighted using a mercury vapor, resulting in a permanent record of the image.

Calotype

Calotype cameras, devised by William Henry Fox Talbot in 1841 used the same principle as the Daguerreotype but included the ability to make multiple copies of a photograph from the same plate. Paper would be placed against the silver-iodide plate and then treated with a sodium solution. The photographer could repeat this process again and again. This is more akin to the film cameras that we see in the modern world.

Kodak

The Calotype process was used and refined (in such methods as the tintype which used an iron sheet blackened with paint) over the ensuing decades but still required large, expensive camera equipment in order to be pursued (such as the distinctive box cameras with the concertinaed, bellows lens housing developed in 1850).

It was only with the inception of the Eastman Kodak company in 1892 that photographic cameras began to be more portable and accessible to the general public. They provided a service whereby a customer could purchase a camera and film, take their desired photographs and return it to Kodak for processing. They also produced the first flash bulbs in 1899. This model was developed by Kodak and other over the next 100 years to include films capable of being removed by the photographer, instant photographs (the Polaroid camera) and ever more sophisticated arrangements of lenses which altered the image effects available to the photographer.

Digital Cameras

Digital cameras were developed from technology devised by the American space programme as they sought to be able to transmit images from space probes back to earth. Whereas in film cameras light is transmitted onto the photographic paper, in digital cameras light is transformed into an electronic code. This code is contained in pixels, each of which carries information (thus, the more pixels, the more information and the better the picture) and can be transmitted electronically and reconfigured on another apparatus, namely a computer.

References

• Cartage: History of Camera Obscura
• R. Leggat: The Daguerreotype
• University of Glasgow: The Calotype Process