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 (ISO-
International
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 solid-state
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?