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1826 - The First Camera
The first camera (obscura) was invented and a photograph was taken by Nicephore Niepce Heliogravure which was produced to be an image of the view of the courtyard outside his window. He used a camera along with a lens and a bitumen coated pewter plate. This photo took 8 hours to expose and then was washed with lavender oil and white petroleum, yet it still isn’t that clear. He called this heliography. -
1829 - Exposure Reduction - Daguerreotype
Louis Daguerre partnered up with Niepce to work on a way to reduce the exposure time it took to render a photo. Niepce sadly passed away in 1833 at the age of 68, however Daguerre continued their work and eventually created a more efficient method. This method was called Daguerreotype and was presented to the general public in 1839. -
1841 - Calotype
A few weeks after the Daguerreotype made its debut, a British scientist called Fox Talbot claimed that he had created a photogenic drawing process which he had been experimenting for a while using light sensitive paper instead of metal plates. After playing around with this for a while, he accidentally discovered a way to use short exposure using a few different chemicals. This was called ‘calotype’. -
1889 - The Kodak Number 1
Around a year after introducing a simplified camera to the world called ‘the Kodak Number 1’, George Eastman created a transparent roll film made of nitrocellulose. Later that year, Thomas Edison took Eastman’s 70mm Kodak film roll, split it down the middle, and cut transport perforations down both sides. This 35mm format later became the international standard for motion picture cameras and later, still cameras. -
1925 - The Leitz Camera
A German engineer named Oskar Barnack had a problem with the weight of the photographic equipment. He made it his goal to create compact and more portable film camera. He created one that incorporated 35mm film in 1913 that could be used for still photography. In 1925 it was incorporated in the Leitz camera company started to market the first portable camera under the name of Lecia. This created a huge impact on photography as it was easier, more portable and easily accessible to the public. -
1947 - Diffusion Transfer
An American physicist called Dr. Edwin Land created a quick procedure for capturing, developing and printing photos which took only one step. He was able to do this by applying the concept of a diffusion transfer that recreates the image captured by the camera's lens and copies it onto a photosensitive surface serving as both photo and a film. In late 1948, 57 of Land’s cameras went up for sale which marked a historic date in photographic history. -
1959 - Automatic
AGFA introduced a new technology in its camera called the Optima. This technology is called left hand "magic" exposure setting where the lever had to be held down while pressing the top-mounted shutter release button. This creates fast shutter speeds thanks to programmed auto exposure and there is a red/green light in the viewfinder for correct exposure. The lens Color-Apotar S 39mm f/3.9 and the shutter are special Compur-B with speeds 1/30-1/250. This was the world’s first automatic camera. -
1974 - DSLR
A worker of Kodak, by the name of Gareth Lloyd, asked Steven Sasson if a type of high-speed semiconductor (a charged-coupled device) could be used as a makeshift camera image sensor. A year after Sasson created a machine weighing about 3.6 kilograms which could capture an image, send a digital signal with the photographic information and then store it into memory. This was the first DSLR camera and the invention that game Sasson the National Medal of Technology and Innovation in 2012. -
1991 - The Kodak DCS-100
Kodak commercially released its first available DSLR. The Kodak DCS-100 was basically a new and improved Nikon F3 body, equipped with a 1.3-megapixel sensor and an external storage unit with space for of 200 MB of data, capable of storing 156 uncompressed images. The DCS-100 wasn’t an enormous commercial feat, carrying a retail tag of $13,000USD, it sold 987 units. More important, however, was that it marked the inevitability of the dominance of digital photography. -
2000
J-SH04, a cell phone created and introduced by the company J-Phone, was the first commercially available mobile phone with a camera that can take and share still pictures. This phone was created in Japan and had a colour display. One month later, the company released the J-SH05 to the public which was a flip phone.
