The word “Photography” is derived from the Greek words photos (“light”) and graphein (“to draw”). The word was used by the scientist Sir John F.W. Herschel in 1839.
The first casual reference to the optical principle of a camera is by Aristotle, who questions how the sun can make a circular image when it shines through a square hole. In the 4th century BC, Aristotle noted that “sunlight travelling through small openings between the leaves of a tree, the holes of a sieve, the openings wickerwork, and even interlaced fingers will create circular patches of light on the ground.”
The first evidence of any kind of mechanical visual reproduction, however, comes from Saudi Arabia, where unknown Bedouins noticed, at a time now lost, that a hole in their tent projected an inverted image of a passing camel onto the opposite wall inside their tent. The pinhole camera is based on this principle.
The famous scientist Abu Ali Hasan Ibn al-Haitham (965–1039 AD) is known for the earliest use of the camera obscura. He was the first to demonstrate this with his lamp experiment where several different light sources are arranged across a large area. He was thus the first to successfully project an entire image from outdoors onto a screen indoors with the camera obscura..
In 1500 the Camera Obscura (Latin for dark room) had been in existence in some form for at least 400 years. There is a drawing, dated 1519, of a Camera Obscura by Leonardo da Vinci; about this same period its use was an aid to drawing.
Dutch Masters, such as Johannes Vermeer, who were hired as painters in the 17th century, were known for their magnificent attention to detail. It has been widely speculated that they made use of such a camera, although it is never proven.
Some early Camera Obscura were enormous. Athanasius Kircher described one which consisted of an outer shell with lenses in the centre of each wall, and an inner shell containing transparent paper for drawing; the artist needed to enter by a trapdoor. Then smaller, portable ones were made. Thus the camera obscura, as it came to be known, became a popular aid to sketching.
Professor Johann Heinrich Schulze (12 May 1687 – 10 October 1744) was a German professor who mixed chalk, nitric acid, and silver in a flask; notices darkening on side of the flask exposed to sunlight, but not by exposure to the heat from a fire. The Accidental creation of the first photo-sensitive compound. Schulze’s experiments with silver nitrate were undertaken in about 1717.
To provide an interesting demonstration of its darkening by light, he applied stencils of words to a bottle filled with the mixture and put it in direct sunlight, which produced copies of the text in dark characters on the surface of the contents. The impressions persisted until they were erased by shaking the bottle or until overall exposure to light obliterated them. Because they were produced by the action of light, many German sources credit Schulze as the inventor of photography.
SILVER NITRATE ON LEATHER WAS THE NEXT STOP FOR APPLYING IMAGES TO A SURFACE IN THE 19TH CENTURY
Thomas Wedgwood made “sun pictures” by placing opaque objects on leather treated with silver nitrate. This resulted in images which deteriorated rapidly, if displayed under light stronger than from candles. There was no known method of making the image permanent.
He was the first person known to have thought of creating permanent pictures by capturing camera images on material coated with a light-sensitive chemical. His practical experiments yielded only shadow image photograms that were not light-fast, but his conceptual breakthrough and partial success have led some historians to call him “the first photographer”.
HOORAY, THE VERY FIRST REAL PHOTO SAW THE LIGHT IN FRANCE WITH THE HELP OF ASPHALT!
The First photograph was created in the year of 1826 by Joseph Nicephore Nièpce using the Camera Obscura. The Camera Obscura had only ever been used to look through and draw images from, but Joseph Nicephore Nièpce took the first ever photograph with it. He called his method “Heliography”
YOU HAD TO HAVE A LOT OF PATIENCE WITH THIS METHOD
In 1826 he set up a Camera Obscura in the window of his workroom in France, placed within it a polished plate coated with a sort of asphalt and uncapped the lens. After a day-long exposure of eight hours, the plate was removed and the latent image was rendered visible by washing it with a mixture of lavender oil and white petroleum. The result was the permanent direct positive picture of “a view from nature”. But it would take 12 more years to reduce the exposure time to less than 30 minutes.
EXPOSURE TIMES OF A FEW MINUTES AND SHELF LIFE IN BRIGHT DAYLIGHT
This new process of photography created images on silver-plated copper, coated with silver iodide which made it sensitive towards light. The plate would then be put into a camera and exposed to light. The exposure time took only a few minutes rather than 8 hours. After this time the plate was “developed” in warm mercury, creating an image that wouldn’t change when exposed to any amount of light.
Daguerre now had a complete process that produced unique positive images in a few minutes with the Camera Obscura on silver-plated copper. The image was unique because there was no negative but only the plate that was used in the camera. Enlargings or more than one print of the image were impossible.
Daguerreotypes were popular until the mid 1850s.
NIEPCE NEEDED A PARTNER TO REALIZE A MORE USEFUL PROCESS
In 1829 a man called Louis Daguerre partnered up with Joseph Nicephore Nièpce because Louis had created the practical process of photography and he had partnered up with Joseph because they thought that they could both improve the process that Joseph had created.
Then in 1839, after Joseph Nièpce’s death, and after all their hard work and experiments, Louis Daguerre created a simpler photography process and he called it “the Daguerreotype” after himself.
THE BIRTH OF THE REAL FORERUNNER OF PHOTOGRAPHY: THE NEGATIVE TO POSITIVE PROCESS
The English botanist and a mathematician William Henry Fox Talbot found a method, which he named Calotype which was Greek for a beautiful picture, to reduce the exposure times of images to less than 1 minute.
This Calotype process created a paper negative which could be transferred as positive prints, multiple times, also on paper. It was a relatively simple and economical process and produced pleasing print tones.
Even though the Daguerreotype enjoyed more success during the early days of photography, the Fox Talbot’s Calotype process was the true forerunner of today’s modern photography.
WET GLASS PLATES PROVIDED MORE DETAILS IN A PHOTO AND (EVEN) SHORTER EXPOSURE TIMES
At the time of the emergence of the Fox-Talbot negative/positive process, another method came into use: “Wet Plate” photography, better known as the “collodion wet plate process”. The collodion wet plate process was created by a man named Frederick Scoff Archer, who was an English sculptor. He created Wet Plate Negatives by covering glass with a collodion solution and silver salts, which were sensitive to light..
Because he used glass to produce a negative, it was a lot more effective than using paper because it created a lot more detailed image. A (big) disadvantage of the process was that the photographic material to be coated, sensitized, exposed, and developed within the span of about fifteen minutes. This resulted in the necessity of a portable darkroom for use in the field.
A DRY PLATE WAS MUCH EASIER TO USE BUT MUCH SLOWER THAN ITS WET COUNTERPART
The extreme inconvenience of exposing wet collodion in the field led to many attempts to develop a dry collodion process, which could be exposed and developed sometime after coating. Collodion is normally used in its wet form, but it can also be used in dry form, at the cost of greatly increased exposure time. The increased exposure time made the dry form unsuitable for the usual portraiture work of most professional photographers of the 19th century.
MECHANICAL IMPROVEMENTS TO THE ‘EYE’ OF THE CAMERA OBSCURA IN THE 19TH CENTURY
The early photographic experiments of Thomas Wedgwood, Nicéphore Niépce, Henry Fox Talbot, and Louis Daguerre all used simple single-element convex lenses. These lenses were found lacking. Simple lenses could not focus an image over a large flat film plane (field curvature) and suffered from other optical aberrations. Their severe longitudinal chromatic aberration meant the light the photographers were seeing (generally yellow light) and the light to which the early photographic mediums were sensitive not converge to the same point, making it difficult to focus.
In 1804 William Hyde Wollaston invented a positive meniscus lens for eyeglasses. Niépce began using Wollaston Meniscus in 1828. Daguerre used this lens in his experiments, but since it was a single-element lens that lacked any chromatic aberration control it was impossible to focus accurately with the blue-sensitive media in the daguerreotype process.
A MATHEMATIC PROFESSOR CREATED A BETTER AND FASTER LENS
Because the Achromat Landscape lens was quite slow, the French Society for the Encouragement of National Industry offered an international prize in 1840 for a faster one. Joseph Petzval was a mathematics professor with no optical physics experience, but, with the aid of several human computers of the Austro-Hungarian army, he took up the challenge of producing a lens fast enough for a Daguerreotype portrait.
He came up with the Petzval-Portrait in 1840, a four-element lens that, at f/3.6, was the first wide-aperture portrait lens. It was appropriate for one- to two-minute shaded outdoors Daguerreotype exposures. With the faster Collodion (wet plate) process developed in the 1850s, a camera equipped with this lens could take one- to two-minute indoor portraits. Because of national chauvinism, Petzval did not win the prize, despite being far superior to all other entries.
THE PETZVAL PORTRAIT LENS WAS THE SUPERIOR PORTRAIT LENS FOR OVER A CENTURY
A 150mm Petzval lens was fitted to a conical metal Voigtländer camera taking circular Daguerreotypes in 1841. The Voigtländer-Petzval was the first camera and lens specifically designed to take photographs, instead of being simply a modified artist’s Camera Obscura. The Petzval Portrait was the dominant portrait lens for nearly a century. The Petzval Portrait remains popular as a projection lens where the narrow angles involved mean the field curvature is not significant.
Petzval’s Portrait was illegally copied by every lens maker, and Petzval had a nasty falling out with Peter Voigtländer over unpaid royalties and died an embittered old man. Although the Portrait was the first mathematically computed lens formula, trial and error would continue to dominate photographic lens design for another half century.
FROM GLASS PLATES TO TRANSPARENT FLEXIBLE FILM
In the late 1870s, Hannibal Goodwin developed a method for making transparent, flexible roll film out of a nitrocellulose film base. This film which was used in Thomas Edison’s Kinetoscope, an early machine for viewing motion pictures. Goodwin, an Episcopal priest and amateur photographer, was inspired to invent this film when he was unable to find suitable Bible pictures for use in his Sunday-school classes. Initially, he decided to make his own glass-plate photographs, but soon found that glass-plate photography was a cumbersome, multi-step process. Hoping that a new camera might be the answer, Goodwin also experimented with George Eastman’s Kodak camera, but was dissatisfied that the camera had to be sent back to the factory for processing.
He applied for a patent in 1887 for his roll film at the same time Eastman Kodak was experimenting with flexible film. The Patent Office declared an interference between Goodwin and Kodak, and Goodwin won the case. Goodwin’s patent was sold to Ansco who successfully sued Eastman Kodak for infringement of the patent and was awarded $5 million (over $120 million in 2020) on March 10, 1914..
THE START OF THE KODAK EMPIRE
When George Eastman quit his school to start work as an office boy in 1868 in an insurance company at $3 a week he was fourteen years old. And when Eastman quit his job at Rochester Saving Bank 13 years later in 1881 he was getting $1400 a year.
He worked at the bank during the day and experimented at home in his mother’s kitchen at night. His mother said that some nights Eastman was so tired he couldn’t undress, but slept on a blanket on the floor beside the kitchen stove.
After three years of photographic experiments, Eastman had a formula that worked. By 1880, he had not only invented a dry plate formula, but had patented a machine for preparing large numbers of the plates.
He purchased his first camera in 1877, it cost him $49.58 and he had to pay additional $5 for lessons. With tent-load of equipment carry and knowledge of tedious film development procedure, photography was either a professional business or at least a serious hobby..
THE KODAK ‘LITTLE ROLL-HOLDER BREAST CAMERA’
Initially, Eastman and co concentrated on developing and patenting what they viewed as the three basic elements of photography: the film, the process of filmmaking and the roll holder. Until 1887 or 1888, Eastman and his employees were working so intensely, especially on the delicate problems involved in the preparation of emulsions for coating plates or film that there was no time for the big picture. Eastman pushed his colleagues with such forcefulness that a rather large number of them collapsed under strain. What happened next is no less than a “paradigm shift”.
Eastman began working on a simple camera which targeted mass market in the summer of 1887. By December, his ‘little Roll-Holder Breast Camera’ was ready for a name. He called it KODAK. He wanted a brand-new unique word in order to meet the trademark requirements in England; and he also wanted a word easy to pronounce. Including the case in which it was sold, the new Kodak was 6.5 inches by 3.25 inches by 3.75 inches. Price: $25.
KODAK CONQUERED AMERICA WITH THE SLOGAN: ‘YOU PRESS THE BUTTON, WE DO THE REST’
And Eastman wasn’t just selling the camera. He was selling a service as well. The $25 camera came loaded with a roll of one hundred frames of unexposed film. Taking the photograph was as easy as pushing a button and turning the key for the next frame. When all one hundred frames had been exposed, the photographer sent the camera back to Rochester when Eastman Kodak Company unloaded it, developed pictures, reloaded the camera and sent the pictures and the camera back to the customer. Price for this service: $10..
Eastman created a unique customer experience and associated it with a brand name called “Kodak”. In fact, Kodak later launched a brand campaign: “You press the button, we do the rest”. Not every problem needs a technical solution; something Thomas Alva Edison never understood.
THE REAL SUCCESS CAME WITH THE INTRODUCTION OF THE ‘KODAK BROWNIE’
Kodak never stopped filing patents; in fact he developed a strong relationship with MIT which ensured a stream of talent kept coming to Kodak.
By 1900, Eastman brought out a more compact version called Brownie. It was a leatherette covered card box with a wooden film carrier. The original had no finder but did have V sighting lines on top.
It was selling for $1.00 with roll of film for an additional $0.15. This camera is considered by many experts to be the most important camera ever manufactured.
The reason is that it was produced so cheaply that anyone, not just professionals or people of means, could own it. Because it was so simple to use, anyone could operate it right out of the box. Kodak was to sell millions of them.
REMARKABLE DEVELOPMENTS IN THE TWENTYTH CENTURY
After the first World War there was a noticeable trend from wooden to precision-made metal ‘miniature’ cameras. Whilst Kodak dominated the market for popular snapshot cameras, at the higher end of the market, the German camera industry reinforced its reputation for quality and innovation through the products of manufacturers such as Zeiss Ikon, Ernemann and Leitz.
The success of the Rolleiflex and the Leica cameras made medium-format and 35mm photography acceptable and the Kine Exakta, introduced in 1936, was the first 35mm SLR camera.
THE ORIGIN OF THE 35MM FORMAT THANKS TO OSCAR BARNACK’S LEICA
The camera that truly realized the potential of the 35mm format, Oscar Barnack’s Leica, is also legendary for its all-metal body and superb build quality.
This overview of the history of analog photography would not be complete without delving deeper into the Leica. From the beginning of the twentieth century, a number of camera designers had toyed with the idea of using 35mm cine film for still photography.
One of the earliest patents for a 35mm still camera dates from 1908 and a few 35mm cameras, such as the Tourist Multiple of 1913 and the Simplex, which appeared the following year, actually made it on to the market.
Although it was not, as is sometimes mistakenly thought, the first 35mm camera, the Leica was the camera that undoubtedly did more than any other to popularize 35mm photography. A classic example of industrial design, it is one of the most significant cameras ever produced..
A CASSETTE THAT COULD BE LOADED IN AND REMOVED FROM THE CAMERA IN BRIGHT DAYLIGHT!
But besides the unique concept of the Leica 35mm camera, there was another aspect that deserves the necessary attention: the newly developed 35mm film cassette. Leitz introduced a film cassette which could be loaded with 1.6 meters of film in the darkroom, which then could be loaded into the camera in daylight when required.
Several photographic suppliers followed and made such daylight cassettes for the user to load from bulk. By the early 1930s film manufacturers also supplied film in disposable cassettes, and in 1934 Kodak created an industry standard by introducing the now-ubiquitous 135 format disposable cartridge along with their Retina cameras.
THE FIRST SATISFACTORY FORM OF INSTANT PHOTOGRAPHY APPEARED IN THE 1940’s.
ITS INVENTOR BECAME ‘THE WORLD’S RICHEST SCIENTIST’
The idea of an ‘instant’ camera is almost as old as photography itself. However, the first fully-satisfactory method of instant photography aimed at the general public didn’t appear until the 1940s. Devised by the American scientist and inventor, Edwin Land, its name was to become a household word – Polaroid.
Fascinated by the phenomenon of light polarization, Edwin Land founded the Polaroid Corporation in 1937. During the Second World War, the company prospered as it responded to American government orders for sunglasses, infra-red polarizers, viewfinders and other specialized optical equipment.
Even before the end of the war, however, Land was working on a research project that was to transform his already successful business and eventually earn him a place in the Guinness Book of Records as ‘the world’s richest scientist’...
THE SOURCE OF INSPIRATION WAS JUST THREE YEARS OLD!
Within an hour, the camera, the film and the physical chemistry became clear to him. However, it was to take nearly three years of intensive research before Land was able to demonstrate his one-step system of photography at a meeting of the Optical Society of America in February 1947.
THIS ‘READY-WHILE-YOU-WAIT’ DEVELOPMENT CAUSED A REVOLUTION IN THE FIELD OF PHOTOGRAPHY
On 26 November 1948 the first Polaroid Land camera, the Model 95, went on sale at the Jordan Marsh department store in Boston. It was a large, heavy camera of conventional folding design, fitted with an f/11, 135mm lens and a shutter giving speeds from 1/8 to 1/60sec.
What made the camera revolutionary was its use of Land’s ‘Type 40’ film. This consisted of two rolls of paper film, one positive and one negative.
After exposure, the negative paper was drawn into contact with the positive paper forming a positive image. The whole process took about one minute, after which the two strips of paper could be removed from the camera and peeled apart to reveal the final 3¼ by 4¼ inch (86 x 102mm) sepia-coloured photograph.
The camera was an instant sensation, capturing the imagination of the American public. Sales rocketed and by the time the Model 95 was discontinued in 1953, it is estimated that around 900,000 had been sold..
THE FIRST POLAROID COLOR PHOTOS CREATED A LOT OF POLLUTION IN THE BEGINNING
The blight created by carelessly discarded caustic-chemical-laden Polaroid negatives, which tended to accumulate most heavily at the prettiest, most snapshot-worthy locations, horrified Polaroid founder Edwin Land and prompted him to develop the later SX-70 system, which produced no separate negative to discard.
THE DEVELOPMENT OF COLOR FILM IN GENERAL
In 1935, American Eastman Kodak introduced the first modern “integral tripack” color film and called it Kodachrome. Kodachrome had three layers of emulsion coated on a single base, each layer recording one of the three additive primaries, red, green, and blue. In keeping with Kodak’s old “you press the button, we do the rest” slogan, the film was simply loaded into the camera, exposed in the ordinary way, then mailed to Kodak for processing..
The complicated part, if the complexities of manufacturing the film are ignored, was the processing, which involved the controlled penetration of chemicals into the three layers of emulsion. Only a simplified description of the process is appropriate in this short history: as each layer was developed into a black-and-white silver image, a “dye coupler” added during that stage of development caused a cyan, magenta or yellow dye image to be created along with it. The silver was chemically removed, leaving only the three layers of dye images in the finished film.
AGFA MADE THE PROCESSING PROCESS MUCH SIMPLER
Initially, Kodachrome was available only as 16mm film for home movies, but in 1936 it was also introduced as 8mm home movie film and short lengths of 35mm film for still photography. In 1938, sheet film in various sizes for professional photographers was introduced, some changes were made to cure early problems with unstable colors, and a somewhat simplified processing method was instituted..
In 1936, the German Agfa followed with their own integral tripack film, Agfacolor Neu, which was generally similar to Kodachrome but had one important advantage: Agfa had found a way to incorporate the dye couplers into the emulsion layers during manufacture, allowing all three layers to be developed at the same time and greatly simplifying the processing. Most modern color films, excepting the now-discontinued Kodachrome, use the incorporated dye coupler technique, but since the 1970s nearly all have used a modification developed by Kodak rather than the original Agfa version.
PRICE COMPARISON AND EASE OF USE BETWEEN BLACK AND WHITE AND COLOR DURING THE SECOND PART OF THE 20TH CENTURY
The expense of color film as compared to black-and-white and the difficulty of using it with indoor lighting combined to delay its widespread adoption by amateurs. In 1950, black-and-white snapshots were still the norm. By 1960, color was much more common but still tended to be reserved for travel photos and special occasions. Color film and color prints cost several times as much as black-and-white, and taking color snapshots in deep shade or indoors required flashbulbs – an inconvenience and an additional expense..
By 1970, prices were dropping, film sensitivity had improved, electronic flash units were replacing flashbulbs, and color had become the norm for snapshot-taking in most families. Black-and-white film continued to be used by some photographers who preferred it for aesthetic reasons or who wanted to take pictures by existing light in low-light conditions, which was still difficult to do with color film.
JAPAN TAKES THE LEADING ROLE IN PHOTOGRAPHY AFTER WWII
Cameras and photography were birthed in Europe, so how did the Asian island country of Japan become the most dominant player in the global camera industry?
There was already a substantial Japanese camera and optical industry before WW2, but it was not well known outside of Japan. People in the rest of the world did not think anyone could really challenge the Germans in this area. At the end of WW2, the German camera industry was in ruins, and worse, much of it was in the Eastern zone, dominated by Russia. In the West, Leitz survived, but in the East, Zeiss, Exakta and many others around the traditional center of Dresden were decimated. Even worse, the Russians carted off the tools and dies to make the Zeiss Contax, perhaps the most advanced 35mm camera of the pre-war era..
Japan was equally decimated, but a few small camera companies like Nikon, Canon and Asahi (later Pentax) rebuilt and were able to take advantage of trade agreements with the US to start exporting their products. Canon copied the Leica almost exactly, Nikon combined the best features of the Leica and the Contax, and Asahi went off in a new direction, the SLR.
THE SITUATION OF THE PHOTO INDUSTRY IN GERMANY AFTER THE SECOND WORLD WAR
Meanwhile, in Germany, Zeiss was busy digging its grave, coming out with models that were either retreads of pre-war designs (Contax II), or wildly impractical and complicated new designs (Contaflex), all at extremely high prices. Leitz was able to retain its customer base with innovative designs (Leica M3), but Zeiss floundered, and the rest of the German camera industry, trapped behind the Iron Curtain, ceased to be a factor..
The East German Zeiss factory did design the first modern SLR, the Contax S, but it was ridiculously unreliable, and when Asahi copied it and came out with the Pentax, the game was up.
JAPAN WAS ‘THE SWEET SPOT’ BACKED BY THE JAPANESE GOVERNMENT
What contributed most to Japan’s dominance in the camera industry would be when mass market high-end photography equipment was becoming popular, Japan was the high quality/low cost manufacturing capital of the world.. There were countries that made things much cheaper (India, Malaysia, China, Brasil, etc) and places that made higher quality stuff (Germany, Switzerland, etc) but Japan was the sweet spot. High quality, low(relatively) cost.
The Japanese companies had backing by the Japanese Government, allowing these companies to finance their low sales outside of Japan and this eventually led to them holding large amounts of market share, pushing out all other competition.
REFINING THE PHOTO EQUIPMENT AND THE PERIPHERAL DEVICES
With the introduction of a color image, the truly groundbreaking photographic developments of much of the 20th century have been told. After the Second World War, the photo industry was mainly concerned with the further development of the technical part of the camera. Light metering and distance metering were added to the camera, automatic exposure, the quality of the lenses was continuously improved and the dimensions of the devices became more compact and the device became lighter..
Much more attention was also paid to the design. Color and shape became an integral part of the camera’s appearance. All this to meet the demand of the (young) public. One of the questions from the market was the design of a single-use film-based camera loaded with color film. Fuji succeeded in this with his Quicksnap.
PICTURES FIRST, CAMERAS SECOND: THE STORY OF FILM-BASED DISPOSABLE CAMERAS
In Japan, the Utsurun-Desu (“It takes pictures”) was released in 1986 for 1380 yen and became widely accepted. Traditionally, cameras had been quite expensive in Japan and were only used during special occasions, and typically only by the male of the household.
As a result of the introduction of cheap, lightweight disposable cameras in Japan a cultural shift began, where parents, and children were able to take photos, creating the “snap happy” stereotype that still persists today. Because of the immediate appeal, companies like Konica, Canon and Nikon soon produced their own models. To stay competitive, Fuji introduced advanced features to its original model such as panoramic photography, waterproofing and the inclusion of a flash..
Disposable cameras are popular with tourists and are also a common solution for underwater photography by those who don’t own a dedicated underwater camera or waterproof housing. In the last ten years, disposable cameras have become increasingly popular as wedding favors. Usually they are placed on tables at wedding receptions to be used by guests to capture their unique perspective of the event. More commonly they are available in colors to match the wedding theme such as ivory, blue, white, gold, etc.
THE FIRST STEPS INTO THE DIGITAL AGE WERE PUT THROUGH A JAPANESE PROTOTYPE
The story of a digital photo begins with camera Mavica (derived from Magnetic VIdeo CAmera). On August 25th 1981, Sony unveiled a prototype of the Sony Mavica as the world’s first electronic still video camera.
The initial prototype demonstrated in 1981 supported video capture at ten pictures per second, and hopes were expressed that this could be increased to sixty pictures per second before the product was launched..
The Mavica was almost a full SLR with interchangeable lenses and a resolution of 570 x 490 pixels. But then it was considered a “static camera,” the result of which was not the video but static images – shots. This unreleased original MAVICA as well as the later ProMavica MVC-5000 and MVC-7000 were designed as single-lens reflex systems with interchangeable lenses.
LOOKING BACK IRONIC, BUT KODAK DEVELOPED THE FIRST DIGITAL CAMERA SYSTEM
So who invented the digital camera? Ironically, Kodak did in 1975– or, rather, a company engineer called Steve Sasson, who put together a toaster-sized contraption that could save images using electronic circuits. The device weighed 8 pounds (3.6 kg) and had only 100 × 100 resolution (0.01 megapixels). The images were transferred onto a tape cassette and were viewable by attaching the camera to a TV screen, a process that took 23 seconds. His camera took images in black-and-white.
It was an astonishing achievement. And it happened in 1975, long before the digital age. Mr Sasson and his colleagues were met with blank faces when they unveiled their device to Kodak’s bosses. For Kodak’s leaders, going digital meant killing film, smashing the company’s golden egg, so the product was dropped for fear it would threaten Kodak’s photographic film business..
FURTHER DEVELOPMENT OF THE DIGITAL CAMERA AT KODAK
In 1986, Kodak scientists invented the world’s first megapixel sensor, capable of recording 1.4 million pixels that could produce a 5 x 7-inch digital photo-quality print.
In 1987, Kodak released seven products for recording, storing, manipulating, transmitting, and printing electronic still video images. In 1990, Kodak developed the photo CD system. The Photo CD was introduced to the public in 1992. The photo CD was a method of saving and viewing digital images. This became popular around the same time it was introduced as it was easy to carry round and, also, easy to use. It also provided a better option to store a photographers photos rather than having them piling up at home or business..
In 1991, Kodak released the first professional digital camera system (DCS), which was aimed at photojournalists. It was a Nikon F-3 camera equipped by Kodak with a 1.3-megapixel sensor.
THE FIRST CAMERAS WORKING TOGETHER WITH A HOME COMPUTER
Digital cameras differ from analog cameras primarily in that they do not use film, but capture and save photographs on digital memory cards or internal storage instead. The move to digital formats was helped by the formation of the first JPEG and MPEG standards in 1988, which allowed image and video files to be compressed for storage. The first consumer camera with a liquid crystal display on the back was the Casio QV-10 in 1995, and the first camera to use CompactFlash was the Kodak DC-25 in 1996..
The first commercially available digital camera was the 1990 Dycam Model 1; 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 produced blackand-white images just 284 by 376 pixels – good enough for screen resolution but not much else. Up to 32 monochrome pictures could be stored in the camera’s internal memory. Convenience did not come cheap. The FotoMan cost £499. Back in 1992, you could have bought a Canon EOS 100 or a Nikon F801 for that sort of money.
NEW FACES FOR THE CONSUMER MARKET IN THE NINETIES
In 1991, Kodak brought to market the Kodak DCS-100, the beginning of a long line of professional Kodak DCS SLR cameras that were based in part on film bodies, often Nikons. It used a 1.3-megapixel sensor and was priced at $13,000.
The first digital cameras for the consumer-level market that worked with a home computer via a serial cable were the Apple QuickTake 100 camera (February 17, 1994), the Kodak DC40 camera (March 28, 1995), the Casio QV-11 with LCD monitor (late 1995), and Sony’s Cyber-Shot Digital Still Camera (1996).
The Mavica was almost a full SLR with interchangeable lenses and a resolution of 570 x 490 pixels. But then it was considered a “static camera,” the result of which was not the video but static images – shots. This unreleased original MAVICA as well as the later ProMavica MVC-5000 and MVC-7000 were designed as single-lens reflex systems with interchangeable lenses.
