Taking a photograph has never been as easy as it is today. However, in the initial days of the camera, things looked a little different. It took professionals long hours to capture a single image, that appeared blurry and did not last very long. Our modern-day cameras are a result of several technical discoveries and contributions of many bright people over the past couple of centuries. Here is a brief history of the camera technology, since its inception.
Camera Obscura:
In the 4th century BC, philosophers and scholars used a device called camera obscura, which was basically a dark room with a hole made on the wall. The light entered into the room through the hole and created an inverted image of the surrounding outside on the reflecting surface.
By the late 17th century, the Camera Obscura was reduced to the size of a small box called Pinhole Camera. This instrument was used by a lot of artists, to add more details to their paintings or illustrations. Typically, they used the drawing sheet as the reflecting surface and traced over the projected image. The idea became quite popular during the Renaissance period and was used even by the likes of Leonardo Da Vinci.
Heliography
In 1826, French inventor Nicephore Niepce found the perfect combination of materials and lighting to create the world’s first photograph. He used a pewter plate coated with bitumen and put it into the camera. After 8-9 hours of exposure time, the plate was washed with a mixture of oil, lavender and petroleum that created a blurry image of the view outside Niepce’s window. The process came to be known as Heliography.
Daguerreotype (Daguerre-Giroux camera)
While the credit goes to Niepce for devising the first photographic process, it was his partner Louis Daguerre who made the invention practical. He continued with Niepce’s experiments of photographic plates exposed to a camera. He discovered that mercury fumes reacted with silver-coated copper plates to produce a direct positive image. This process significantly reduced the exposure time to about 30-40 minutes and the images produced were also a lot sharper. The camera used for the daguerreotype method was known as “Daguerre-Giroux” and it was the first photographs equipment that made available for commercial usage.
Calotype
William Henry Fox Tablot developed the calotype process by using a paper coated with silver chloride. He placed the paper inside a camera that created an instant negative image when exposed to light reflecting from a subject. From the image produced an unlimited number of duplicates could be made which was one of the main advantages of this method. However, the quality of the images was inferior to the ones produced by the daguerreotype.
Collodion Process (Wet Plate)
Englishman Frederick Scott Archer invented the wet collodion process in the year 1851. It involved using a glass plate coated with light-sensitive solutions and collodion. The image had to obtained while the plate was still wet and had to be exposed for about 2-3 minutes into the camera to create a glass plate negative, from which multiple copies of that same photograph could be made. This process was an improvement over both the daguerreotype and calotype as the images produced were much better in terms of sharpness and clarity.
Gelatin Photography (Dry Plate)
After numerous attempts, English photographer, Richard Maddox developed the first successful dry plate negative in the year 1871. He used gelatin emulsion of silver chloride coated on a piece of paper or plastic, which had to be dried before use. Unlike the wet plate process, gelatin plates could now be stored, transported and used for later. Gelatin is still the basis of analogue (film) photography even to this day.
Kodak Camera
George Eastman invented the roll film in the year 1884, which made photography accessible to all. He used photo emulsion coated on paper rolls that allowed photographers to take pictures in quick succession, without having to reload the camera after every shot. His company Eastman Kodak introduced an affordable camera named “Kodak” in 1888. It was a simple, portable box camera that contained a roll film of 100 paper negatives placed inside. The users could take as many photos as they wanted to as long as the films lasted after that they had sent the camera back to the factory for the processing of the films. Following the success of Kodak, the company released a camera called “Brownie” at a price tag of just $1, which became extremely popular. It was intended to be used by children and was heavily marketed all across the United States under the tagline “You press the button; we do the rest”.
35mm Film Camera
In the year 1913, an engineer working at Leitz (a German company that specialised in lenses) developed a prototype camera intended for the usage of 35mm roll films. These cameras became very popular with the introduction of Leica 1 in 1925 and were known for their high-quality images, however, they were quite expensive initially for the general public. Since WW2 they became pretty much the standard in the industry for journalism, street and amateur photography until the late 20th century.
Instant Camera (Polaroid)
American scientist, Edwin Land introduced the Polaroid Model 95 in the year 1948. It was the world’s first commercially available instant camera capable of printing photos minutes after clicking the camera shutter. The camera absolutely revolutionized traditional photography as all the darkroom methods involved in the processing of the films were now housed in a single hand-held unit.
Single Lens Reflex (SLR) Camera
The first 35mm SLR camera (Kine Exakta) was made available in 1936, long after it was patented in the year 1861. This German camera was followed by several technical innovations that took place in Japan, the US, Sweden and Russia. The SLR allowed photographers to capture exactly what was visible through the lens. It works when light reflects from an object in front and enters into the camera through an adjustable aperture that lets you control the amount of light that hits the film.
SLR cameras became widely popular in the 1970s, with Polaroid SX 70 being the first to introduce an autofocus technology, that made photography easier for regular people. The cameras were soon upgraded to digital in the late 80s, called DSLRs, which are still used even to this day.
Twin Lens Reflex (TLR) Camera
A TLR featured two different lenses of the same focal length, speed and were focused on an equal distance. The above lens projects the image on a screen mounted on top of the box for viewing and the bottom lens reflected the image on an exposed film for the purpose of capturing the image. TLRs reached their height of popularity in the mid 20th century and was quite the camera of choice amongst professional photographers.
Digital Camera
The first digital photograph was created by Russell Kirsch in the year 1957, where he used a drum scanner to take a picture of his 3-month-old son Walden. Later in 1974, an engineer at Kodak named Steven Saason developed the first-ever digital camera that took about 23 seconds to record a single 0.01megapixel image. Although Kodak chose to drop the idea of digital technology, Japanese companies like Sony and Fuji continued to move ahead with the concept. After years of innovation and research, Fujifilm unveiled the first fully digital consumer camera named Fujix DS-1p in the year 1988. Soon cameras were integrated into mobile phones as well, with Kyocera VP-210 being the first camera phone available in the market and now almost every phone comes along with a camera as a mandatory feature. With the aid of powerful cameras built into our smartphones, we can easily take great pictures, edit them and share them on social media.
Conclusion
Today, analogue cameras are a thing of the past and are only preferred by geeks or hard-core enthusiasts. The world of photography has gone digital. The cameras produced now are more powerful than ever, they are capable of capturing images even at 360 and 5K resolutions and are also able to manipulate and modify an image as per our requirement. Cameras have helped revolutionise the way we see our world and our surrounding and would not have been possible without the work and effort of so many people around the world throughout history.
