History Of Photography

Pinhole Camera to Digital

Photography

History
Lesson Objectives
Define photography
Learn scientific principles behind
photography
Learn about numerous innovators
and
their processes and ideas

Photography Morphology
Comes from 2 ancient Greek words:
Photo = light
Graph = draw or write
Photography = light writing

Scientific Principles
Camera obscura = darkroom
Leonardo da Vinci drawing;1519
Not permanent

Chemicals
Silver chloride turns
-dark under exposure

Daguerreotypy
Daguerre
Partners with Niepce
photographic plates
Processing
30 minutes
One photograph

Stereoscopic Photography

3D image
Special camera with two lenses
2 simultaneous photographs
2 different views

Birth of motion pictures

Leland Stanford unwittingly
started a chain of events
that contributed to the
development of motion
pictures. To settle a wager
regarding the position of a
trotting horse's legs, he
sent for Eadweard
Muybridge, a British
photographer who had
recently been acclaimed for
his photographs of
Yosemite.

Although Muybridge made history when he arranged 12 cameras alongside a race

track. Each was fitted with a shutter working at a speed he claimed to be "less than the
two-thousandth part of a second." Strings attached to electric switches were stretched
across the track; the horse, rushing past, breasted the strings and broke them, one
after the other; and a series of negatives were made.

Though the photographs were hardly more than silhouettes, they

clearly showed that the feet of the horse were all off the ground at
one phase of the gallop. Moreover, to the surprise of the world, the
feet were bunched together under the belly.

The Scientific American printed eighteen drawings from Muybridge's photographs on

the first page of its October 19, 1878 issue. Readers were invited to paste the
pictures on strips and to view them in the popular toy known as the zoetrope,
A precursor of motion pictures. It was an open drum with slits in its side,
mounted horizontally on a spindle so it could be twirled. Drawings showing
successive phases of action placed inside the drum and viewed through the
slits were seen one after the other, so quickly that the images merged in the
mind to produce the illusion of motion.

Film Medium

slide (positive) or
print (negative)
film speed (ISOInternational
Standards
Organization) or
ASA(American
Standards
Association) or DIN
(German Institute
for
Standardization)
Film brand (Kodak,
Fuji, Agfa, and
Polariod)

Film Processing

Dektol (developer)
Stop bath (prevents
contamination of fixer)
Fixer (removes active
silver to make image
permanent)

Film Cameras
Box Cameras
Folding
Cameras
Large Format
View
Cameras
Twin Lens
Reflex (TLR)
Rangefinder
Single Lens
Reflex (SLR)

Mr. George Eastman started the Kodak Camera Company. He worked

hard to develop a camera that everybody could afford to buy. He did it in
1900. It was the Kodak Brownie box roll-film camera. It cost $1.00. Now
everyone could take photographs, not just professional photographers.

Folding Cameras

The early folding cameras were

compact amateur view cameras,
At the end of the 19th century the
first renowned strut folding
cameras were designed, for No. 3A
Autographic Kodak Junior.
Its lens assembly needs to be
pulled out along the rails on its
opened hinged front door.
The leaf shutter has a small lever
for firing and maybe another for
cocking
Film is advanced with a key or
knob; one stops winding when the
new number appears in a red
window on the back.
viewfinder is a swivelling brilliant
finder attached to the front of the
lens.

Large Format Cameras

The press camera is still

in wide use in and among
fine art photographers
Advances in film
technology, notably finer
film grain, have obviated
the need for large-format
cameras for most press
assignments, however. In
news photography, the
press camera has been
largely supplanted by the
smaller formats of 120
film and 35mm film, and
more recently by digital
cameras.

35 mm Rangefinder Cameras

Rugged reliability:
made back in the days
when cameras had
more metal than plastic
Rangefinder focusing
still can't be beat for
speed and accuracy
Mechanical Copal and
Compur shutters on
these classics (works
with a dead battery!)
Fast, extremely sharp
lenses (works in low
lighting conditions)

35 mm Single Lens Reflex

Single-lens reflex
(SLR) camera is a
camera that typically
uses a semi-automatic
moving mirror system
Photographer see
exactly what will be
captured by the film
As opposed to pre-SLR
cameras where the
view through the
viewfinder could be
significantly different
from what was
captured on film.

Digital Cameras: Early

Samples
Since the mid-1970s, Kodak

has invented several solidstate image sensors

In 1986, Kodak scientists
invented the world's first
megapixel sensor, capable of
recording 1.4 million pixels
that could produce a 5x7-inch
digital photo-quality print.
Mavica was a brand of Sony
cameras which used
removable disks as the main
recording media. In August,
1981, Sony released the Sony
Mavica (Magnetic Video
Camera) electronic still
camera, the first commercial
electronic camera.

Digital Cameras

Digital technology
the wave of the
future.
Most people these
days have a digital
cell phones.
Many people have
digital cameras.
The new cell phones
that take digital
pictures.
Digital Computer
technology

Digital Image Processing

Solid State
Memory
Adobe Photoshop
PowerPoint
Fastone Viewer
(free!)

Summary History Of
Photography

Capturing Images through Film and

Solid state devices
Film Chemical Processing
Digital image Processing through
Computer Software
Cameras from the Pinhole Camera to
Todays Modern SLR Digital Devices
Future?