THE CAMERA IXDS-5403 Media History and Theory Professor David Edwin Meyers Lindsey Wilson College
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Leilani Moore August 2016 M.A. Interactive Design
A photograph is a powerful means of communicating emotion, storytelling, and recording of history and events. Courtesy of nobackgroundimages.com
It is a thing of great value since it’s invention almost two hundred years ago. Beginning with the camera obscura and ingeniously progressing through the ages with Daguerreotypes, 35mm cameras, digital cameras, and cell phone cameras, our world is saturated with photographic images, reflecting our world, societies, relationships, history, and things of beauty. The wondrous story of the camera lies ahead.
THE CAMERA OBSCURA
Used by artists in the 1600’s as an aid to correctly render perspective, the camera obscura al-
lowed light to pass through a small hole into a darkened chamber, projecting an inverted image of the outside scene upon the opposite wall. All photographic cameras descend from the camera obscura.
1826 – The first permanent photo; Frenchman, Joseph Nicephore Niepce used the photosensitivity of bitumen to produce the first permanent photo. Defining heliography or writing with sunlight as “spontaneously reproducing
Illustration of artist using a camera obscura. (Paris, 1855). George Eastman House Collections. Courtesy of okozaoko.com
WORLD’S FIRST PHOTO
the image received in the camera obscura by the action of light with all the
inside for image focusing, housing a mirror at a forty-five degree angle. By 1850, Daguerreotype studios sprang up in every major U.S. city, preserving images of people, places, and things of the Industrial Revolution era.
View from the Window at Le Gras Courtesy of National Geographic
gradations from black to white.” He photographed a view of nature, from his window in Saint-Loupde-Varennes, France, recording the image on a pewter plate coated with a light-sensitive asphalt compound called bitumen during an eight-hour exposure. It was truly a eureka moment and a process that Niepce would describe as “nearly magical.” In 1829, Niepce collaborated with Jacques Louis Mande Daguerre, working towards the single goal of perfecting the photograph, contributing with the ingenious inventors of the Industrial Revolution.
ahead, and in 1839, he produced the first practical photographic process. It was named the daguerreotype, using mirror-like images on a copper plate, developed in mercury. Daguerreotypes were extremely sharp in detail, with lovely silver surfaces, which remains the photographic process with the highest resolution to this day. The Giroux camera is a fixed-bed, double box camera with an attached 15 inch, f/15 lens, accompanied by a slightly smaller rear box that slides inside for image focusing, housing a mirror at a forty-five degree angle.
DAGUERROTYPE CAMERA
The Giroux camera is a fixed-bed, double box camera with an attached 15 inch, f/15 lens, accompanied by a slightly smaller rear box that slides
1839 – Niepce died in 1833, but Daguerre forged
THE CALOTYPE PROCESS Paralleling the Daguerreotype discovery was the creation of the negative and the first photo laboratory by Englishman, William Henry Fox Talbot, developing a new process using paper instead of copper plates. In 1841 Talbot applied the phenomenon of the latent image, and the calotype was born. Opposite of the daguerreotype, the calotype process began with a negative, reversing all the values in the scene. The negative was placed in contact with a sensitized paper material and exposed to light, producing a positive print from the original negative. This principle would be applied to all negative plates and films. Despite calotype negatives being inferior to
1/10th of a second, with short exposures enabled by a fast f/2.2 lens that let in lots of light. Images were one-inch in size for lockets and other tiny frames that were popular during this era.
The Giroux daguerreotype apparatus is photography’s first camera manufactured in quantity. Courtesy of photododo.com daguerreotypes in sharpness, with photo images on print paper dull and mottled, it was cheap and made it possible to make multiple copies of the same picture.
his models, discovered collodion coated paper. It was a great improvement: colorless, grainless, and its sensitivity permitting far shorter exposures, despite being a viscous, highly flammable, toxic liquid.
The process of making the prints was done outdoors The advantages outweighin the sun. ed Collodian’s “revenge Pistolgraph, 1859, Thomas effects” with better, sharpSkaife, London, England When the prints looked er pictures. The process Courtesy of geh.org right, they were placed was cheaper, reliable, into a chemical bath or and reproducible and this FILM IS MADE “fixer” to stop them from spurred a new wave of further darkening. Thus camera development that EASIER film photography and dewent on for decades. TO HANDLE veloping prints using light 1871 - Up until this time and chemicals were born. FIRST ACTION pictures had to be deCAMERA veloped immediately afTAKING Thomas Skaife’s Pistolter being taken. Richard PICTURES GETS graph, introduced in 1859 Leach Maddox, setting out and resembling a pistol, to avoid using the toxic EASIER was the first camera to collodion process that was With the new Collodian incorporate a mechanical causing havoc upon his process, cameras only shutter, capable of instan- health, invented the gelaneeded a few seconds of taneous photography, tin dry plate silver bromide light exposure to make a capturing action-stopping process, which made it print. In 1852, Frederick pictures of slow-movingpossible to take a picture Scott Archer, an English subjects. Powered by a and develop it later. Picsculptor who had become rubber band, its shutter ture taking became imknown for photographing speed was was about mensely easier and faster,
which allowed for amateur photographers to get into the game and the ease of taking more interesting images for everyone. The gelatin dry plate made photography far more accessible, transitioning this medium from a profession into a hobby. Gelatins was a precursor to the invention of film.
ROLL FILM 1880 - For the next century, roll film became the foundation for camera development that would span advances in camera technologies at a rapid rate. After the debut of roll film, people did not easily give up dry plates due to maintaining their investments. New and improved dryplate cameras continued to compete against film cameras, with the very large dry plate cameras staying popular with photographers for decades to come. But the march of film camera was strong and relentless, with the surge of easy-to-use cameras on the horizon.
GEORGE EASTMAN AND KODAK 1888 – A sole man with a grand vision propelled the history of the camera into
a universal penetration of the modern world. George Eastman, a successful young business man, resigned from his bank career and plunged into a photographic plate manufacturing business. Over the next 19 years, he designed cameras using roll film. He created the name Kodak and hired only the brightest people from MIT to aggressively propel his vision of the Kodak camera.
“You press the button, we do the rest” rocketed instantaneous photography to center stage.
THE FIRST MASS MARKETED CAMERA--THE BROWNIE
Eastman wanted a camera in every household, so he turned to Frank Brownell, whose comapny produced
1888 - George Eastman patents Kodak roll-film camera. His first Kodak box camera was very simple and very cheap. Courtesy of wordpress. com
The first Kodak camera made its appearance in 1888, at the cost of $25 and came loaded with film for a hundred 2½-inch circular pictures. Easy to use, once the film was exposed, the camera was simply mailed back to Kodak. It was developed and the prints mailed back, along with a new roll of film. Kodak’s ad slogan,
sixty and more different models. Brownell’s innovations were successful, especially a series of five-dollar models. In 1900, Brownell’s economical camera met Eastman’s expectations and the Brownie camera was launched, with the first five thousand selling immediately. Orders came rushing in, exhausting produc-
1913 but development was delayed until after WW1. Following the war, development resumed and Leica commercialized their first 35mm cameras. These early 35mm cameras became the standard for all film cameras.
The Brownie camera--the first mass marketed camera Courtesy of photodoto. com
tion. Eastman described Brownell as “the greatest camera designer who ever lived.”
William Kennedy Laurie Dickson. Dickson took 70 mm film stock supplied by George Eastman’s Eastman Kodak Company. The 70 mm film was cut lengthwise into into two equal width (35 mm) strips, spliced together end to end, and then perforated along both edges.
The Brownie camera saturated households, commerce, and culture during it’s life span from 1900 to 1960’s. Targeted towards children, adults were frequent users of the camera, The first 35mm with one of the greatest still camera American photographers (also called the shooting with the Brownie candid camera) developed by when he was a boy. A gift Oskar from his aunt, the famous Ansel Adams first used the Barnack Box Brownie while visiting Courtesy of photodoto.com Yosemite National Park in the summer of 1916 when he was fourteen years old. Many other noted photographers got their first taste Oskar Barnack, a reof picture-taking using the searcher at Leica, a German camera manufacturBrownie. er, decided to investigate using 35mm cine film THE FIRST 35MM while attempting to build CAMERA a compact camera capa1914 - The 35mm film ble of making high-quality standard for motion picture enlargements. He built his film was established in prototype 35mm camera in Thomas Edison’s lab by
THE MAGICAL POLAROID
Fast forward to 1948 and picture taking just got easier and faster with the arrival of the polaroid. Inventor and business man, Edwin Land, paralleled with George Eastman, coining a memorable name upon his invention of a new camera/film system.
Prompted by the pleading demands of his young daughter while photographing her, “Why can’t I see them now?” sent Land into a flurry of vast brainstorming. In February 1947, he demonstrated his invention and
successfully compete with the superior German cameras, overcoming existing glitches, offering innovative operating features while remaining rugged as a “hockey puck.”
Edwin Land’s Polaroid which could take a picture and print it in about one minute. Courtesy of photodoto.com
the Polaroid Land camera went into production the next year. The first camera, the model 95, used roll film made by Kodak for Polaroid and delivered finished prints in just sixty seconds. It was an immediate success and became a defining moment in innovative history. 1960’s – The Kodak Instamatic 100 camera was introduced in 1963 simplifying the task of a drop-in cartridge, replacing the cumbersome task of loading film by hooking sprocket holes onto little gears, closing the camera, then advancing while making sure the film was spooling through. The instamatic system came about as a result of “Project 13,” a top-secret R&D program begun at Kodak in the late 1950’s.
Novice users were drawn to the simple little box camera with fixed focus, a pop-up flash gun, and rapid lever wind. Retailing for only $16, an estimated ten million cameras were sold.
The Nikon F was the first signal that Japan could introduce products of compelling superiority. The Japanese ruled advanced 35mm photography from the 1960s onward, cascading one improvement after another. In 1977, Konishiroku Photo Industry Company, Ltd., of Tokyo introduced the
Instamatic 100, 1963, Eastman Kodak Company, Rochester, New York Courtesy of etsy. com
THE ERA OF 35MM AND SLR FILM CAMERAS
German cameras dominated the professional 35mm market, that is, until the entry of the Japanese design Nikon F in March 1959. The first SLR to
Konica C35 AF, the world’s first point-and-shoot autofocus camera. Other features were a programmed automatic exposure and a built-in electronic flash. Canon, Minolta, Olympus, and other Japanese com-
panies crowded the 35mm SLR market for the next thirty years, becoming household name brands while American born Kodak continued to focus on smaller format cameras that offered simplicity and ease of use.
structed of Motorola parts with a Kodak movie-camera lens and Fairchild CCD electronic sensors, to capture optical information and digitally store the captured images. The finished camera size weighed more than eight
Konica C35 AF, the first point and shoot camera.
“substantially impact the way pictures will be taken in the future.” Sasson helped claim for Eastman Kodak Company its first digital camera patent in 1978.
Courtesy of hiyalife.com
DAWN OF THE DIGITAL AGE 1961 - The beginnings of the digital camera began when Eugene F. Lally of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory investigated how to use a mosaic photosensor to capture digital images. His intention was to take pictures of the planets and stars while travelling through space to give information about the astronauts’ position. Unfortunately, technology had yet to catch up with the concept. In 1975, a prototype developed by Kodak engineer, Steven Sasson, became known as the world’s first digital camera. It was con-
With this groundbreaking innovation, Sasson helped to introduce digital technology in camera and photography systems. With his 1977 report, “A Handheld Electronic Still Camera and Its Playback Unit,” predicted that new digital technologies might
pounds and measured the size of a toaster. A special screen was made to view black and white images captured on a digital cassette tape. The resolution was .01 megapixels and would take twenty-three seconds to record a digital photograph.
THE END OF FILM In August 1981, Sony’s demonstration of the camera Mavica (Magnetic Video Camera) was the real start of the conclusion of film in camera. Mavica was more of an
Steve Sasson (Courtesy of wordpress.com)
need for editing software to manipulate these images becomes essential. In 1987, Thomas Knoll, a University of Michigan Ph.D. candidate wrote a program to display grayscale pictures on a blackand-white TV screen using his Macintosh Plus computer.
Sony demonstrates the Sony Mavica – the world’s first digital electronic still camera. Courtesy of photodoto.com
analogue television camera. It stored pictures on two-inch floppy disks. Mavipaks, as they were called, held up to fifty color photos for playback. Digital photography and television images are related to the same technology, so this camera recorded images into a mini disk and then put them into a video reader. Images could be displayed to a television monitor or color printer.
THE DIGITAL WAVE, THE DSLR CAMERA
consisted of a standard Nikon F3 body fitted with a module containing a Kodak-designed CCD, a power winder, and a separate digital storage unit (DSU) at the prudent cost of $20,000.
Thomas partnered with his brother John, who worked for Industrial Light & Magic, the special effects movie company founded by Star Wars creator, George Lucas. Together they expanded Thomas’s idea into a program that would allow users to adjust their
Kodak DCS 100, based on a Nikon F3 body with Digital Storage Unit or DCS. Courtesy of apphotnum.free.fr
Kodak released the first professional digital camera system (DCS) which was of a great use for photojournalists. It was a modified Nikon F-3 camera with a 1.3 megapixel sensor.
color pictures. They called the program ImagePro, but soon renamed it to Photoshop.
In 1991 Kodak releases the first professional digital camera system (DCS), offering professional phoPHOTOSHOP, THE Adobe purchased the litographers the first digital single-lens reflex (DSLR) NEW DARKROOM cense, and Photoshop 1.0 camera. Intended for pho- With digital images making was released in 1990. tojournalists, the DCS their appearance, the
Adobe Photoshop 1 Box Courtesy of exntesis.com
Initially for Macintosh exclusively, Photoshop software would soon be used universally, becoming the standard image-editing software for photographers.
A NEW DIGITAL WORLD In 2005, the Canon EOS 5D was launched, the first consumer-priced, full frame digital SLR with a 24x36mm CMOS sensor.
ginning of photographic time in 1826 with the world’s first permanent photo to today’s massive surge of digital cameras and cell phones taking millions of photos a day, one has to sit back and attempt to take in the wondrous ingenuity, tenacity, intuition, and creativity of the people who made these discoveries and ina cell phone with a camera ventions. With one eureka built in, it opened the Pan- moment after another, the dora’s Box of phone cam- great minds, be ginning eras, driving cell phone with Isaac Newton in the manufacturers in a head to 1600’s, continue to uncovhead race of producing the er great wonders that are best, sleekest, mini combrought to life through puter capabilities cell Nokia Lumia 1020 phone camera, released in 2013 Courtesy of photodoto.com
Today digital cameras are a normalcy, saturating homes world-wide. With every year, manufacturers repeatedly boost the image megapixel count. Paralleling horsepower in the hallmarking of of cars, is the number of megapixels in the marketing of the digital camera.
phones with high-quality megapixel cameras.
When Japan’s Sharp Corporation decided to make
When reflecting at the be
These days, it’s hard to imagine a cell phone without a camera. They’re everywhere.
science, mathematics, and creative thinking. Truly God-given.
REFERENCES Camera History Timeline (Part 1/3) “Camera History Timeline (Part 1/3).” World of Camera, 1 Apr. 2016, wocamera. wordpress.com/2016/04/01/camera-history-timeline-part-13/. Accessed 6 Aug. 2016. History of Cameras: Illustrated Timeline Devlin, Ann. “History of Cameras: Illustrated Timeline.” Photodoto, 11 Oct. 2011, photodoto.com/camera-history-timeline/. Accessed 6 Aug. 2016. Camera: A History of Photography from Daguerreotype to Digital Gustavson, Todd. Camera: A History of Photography from Daguerreotype to Digital. Sterling Signature, 2012. Photos: The History of the Digital Camera Trenholm, Richard. “Photos: The History of the Digital Camera.” CNET, Interactive, 5 Nov. 2007, www.cnet.com/news/photos-the-history-of-the-digital-camera/. Accessed 2 Aug. 2016.