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First Camera
The camera was invented by Nicéphore Niépce. By using a very small camera of his own making and a piece of paper coated with silver chloride, which darkened where it was exposed to light, he took the first photo. -
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Camera Innovations
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Daguerreotype
Daguerreotype was a metal plate process that took pictures. Though it was easier to take pictures than before it was still messy, expensive, and somewhat dangerous. -
Optical Companies
In 1841, companies started selling cameras and other optical tools. People started using cameras to make art or to take pictures of war for the newspaper. This helped cameras become what they are nowadays. -
Celluloid Roll Film
Metal and glass plates were fragile, costly, and hard to work with so people wanted to find a easier way to take photos. In 1835, Henry Fox Talbot invented a viable method of spreading a gelatine emulsion on paper. Four years after astronomer John Herschel came up with a way to fix the image recorded by silver halides. In 1887, these products were manufactured together to make photographic film. -
Kodak
George Eastman, a master of marketing photography had an idea. He wanted to use a new roll film, build a simple, easy-to-use camera, and market it as a fun use product. It soon became a worldwide boom for photography and was a camera for beginner, enthusiast, and professional photographers. -
Moving Pictures
The question of how best to capture subjects in motion was first successfully answered by Eadweard Muybridge in response to settling a bet about horses hooves and galloping. In quick time, cameras were invented that captured motion. -
35mm Film and the Leica
35mm film was more common in motion pictures, but soon it started getting spooled in small cartridges for still cameras. In 1913, Oskar Barnack, an engineer at Leitz, designed a prototype still camera that produced a 24x36mm image frame. By 1925, the Leica I was introduced and became a commercial success, and in time 24x36mm would become one of the most used formats ever. -
35mm SLRs
In 1957, the first eye-level viewing single-lens reflex camera with an instant return mirror was introduced by Asahi Optical of Japan, called the Pentax. In 1959, the Nixon F was released. It was a professional-caliber 35mm SLR with an entire system of lenses, motor drives, and other accessories surrounding it. They became one of the most common types of cameras for photography. -
Digital
Digital was a fantastic medium for photography because of all of the varied formats, storage and display options, and ease of transferring images. The first known digitally recorded images were created in a Kodak lab in 1975. From about 1989 through to the early 2000s, Fuji and Kodak collaborated with Canon and Nikon to make digital cameras that fit into what professionals needed. Digital was here to stay. DSLRs were pretty much taking over from 35mm SLRs. -
Present Day
One of the most interesting aspects of the timeline of photography is the modern smartphone. Just think, in our pocket we can carry a camera that records still images and video. We can then transfer these photos and movies virtually instantaneously to almost anywhere in the world. Compared to stinky metal plates, we have definitely come a long way.
