History of the Camera

1. History of the Camera By: Tikkysha

2. Camera obscura Photographic cameras were a development of the camera obscura, a device dating back to the ancient Chinese and ancient Greeks, which uses a pinhole or lens to project an image of the scene outside upside-down onto a viewing surface.

3. Early fixed images The first partially successful photograph of a camera image was made in approximately 1817 by Nicéphore Niépce using a very small camera of his own making and a piece of paper coated with silver chloride, which darkened where it was exposed to light. No means of removing the remaining unaffected silver chloride was known to Niépce, so the photograph was not permanent, eventually becoming entirely darkened by the overall exposure to light necessary for viewing it. Later, in 1826, he used a sliding wooden box camera made by Charles and Vincent Chevalier in Paris, France. He made his first permanent camera photograph in 1826 by coating a pewter plate with bitumen and exposing the plate in this camera. The bitumen hardened where light struck. The unhardened areas were then dissolved away. This photograph still survives.

4. Dry plates For the first time, cameras could be made small enough to be hand-held, or even concealed. There was a proliferation of various designs, from single- and twin-lens reflexes to large and bulky field cameras, handheld cameras, and even cameras disguised as pocket watches, hats, or other objects. Collodion dry plates had been available since 1855, thanks to the work of Désiré van Monckhoven, but it was not until the invention of the gelatin dry plate in 1871 by Richard Leach Maddox that they rivalled wet plates in speed and quality.

5. Kodak and the birth of film The use of the photographic film was pioneered by George Eastman, who started manufacturing paper film in 1885 before switching to celluloid in 1889. His first camera, which he called the Kodak, was first offered in sales in 1888. it was a very simple box camera with fixed-focus lenses. In 1900 Eastman took mass-market photography one step further by coming up with the Brownie, a simple and very inexpensive box camera that introduced the concept of the snapshot. Despite the advances in low cost photography made possible by Eastman, the plate camera still offered higher-quality prints and remained popular well into the 20th century. Except for a few special types such as the Schmidt camera’s, most professional astrographs used plates until the end of the century when electronic photography replaced them.

6. Instant cameras A new type of camera appeared on the market in 1948. this was the Polaroid model 95, the worlds first viable instant-picture camera. Known as a land camera after its creator Edwin Land. The land camera became very popular despite its relatively high price. It was a huge success and remains the most popular camera of all time.

7. Automation The first camera to feature automatic exposure was the selenium light meter-equipped. Its extremely high price kept it from achieving any success.

8. Digital cameras Digital cameras different from the other older ones ‘cause they can save the pictures digitally on the memory chip inside the camera, the chip can then be removed and inserted into a computer or machine to be developed. Pictures can also be shared and sent around through mobile phones.

9. The true arrival of the digital camera The first true digital camera that recorded images as a computerized file was likely the Fuji DS-1P of 1988, which recorded to a 16 MB internal memory card that used a battery to keep the data in memory. This camera was never marketed in the United States, and has not been confirmed to have shipped even in Japan.

10. Picture’s