Early Photography

        Photography is the practice of taking and processing photos. It was invented using the idea of camera obscura, which was discovered around 400 BC. Camera Obscura, Latin for ‘dark room’, is when you take an extremely dark room and have a pinhole for light to come in, eventually, the light will reflect a reversed version of the outside. Since the invention of photography, the methods and devices we use to photograph images have developed a lot. This development impacts the way photographers choose to go about taking pictures as an art form.

In order to begin talking about photographic processes and cameras it’s important to understand the development of camera obscura. Camera obscura was predominantly used by artists at first. They used it to trace the reflection of what they wanted to draw onto a larger scale. Then in the 17th Century In the 17th century portable camera obscura boxes were invented, making it easier for artists to use this method for their paintings.

Figure 1: Portable Camera Obscura Box

The first permanent photograph was invented by Joseph Nicéphore Niépce in 1826. He did this using camera obscura and projected the image onto a metal sheet, known as a pewter sheet, that he coated with a light-sensitive material. This process was referred to as heliography. The exposure time for this image was said to be anywhere from 8 hours to a couple of days.

Figure 2: First Permanent Photograph

The Daguerreotype was the first type of photographic process, it was invented by Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre in 1839. It was the first photographic process available to the public and was the dominant commercial process until the 1850s. The process was slow at first but by 1840 artists and chemists were able to make improvements to the method that sped up the exposure process to be fast enough for portraiture photography.

The Daguerreotype process is done by taking a piece of copper coated with silver that’s polished until the surface is like a mirror. Then it’s fumed with iodine and placed into a camera obscura. After being exposed the silver iodine plate is then heated with mercury to reveal the image. The plate is then placed into a solution that fixes it and then put into a case that’s designed to keep air away from the photograph, so the silver doesn’t tarnish.

Figure 3: Daguerreotype image inside case

Shortly after the invention of the Daguerreotype process came the Calotype process. Created by Henry Fox Talbot in 1841, the calotype process is similar to the daguerreotype process however there is a key difference. Talbot discovered that if you take a negative image, fix it, then place another sheet of sensitive paper and expose that to light, you can copy it into a positive image. A negative image is when the light is inverted in the photo, so the lighter areas appear darker and vice versa. Positive images are what the image actually looks like in real life. Talbot was also able to reduce the exposure time for photos.

Figure 4: On the left is a negative image of a tree and on the right is the same image but a positive one

In 1851 Frederick Scott Archer invented what’s known as the collodion process. He discovered that you can coat glass plates in a collodion solution and place the plate into a camera obscura while still wet to be exposed in order to create negative photos. Those negative photos could then be reproduced onto photographic paper. The Collodion process remained the most common photographic method until the 1870s-80s due to its reduced exposure time.

Figure 5: Photo taken using the Collodion Process

In the 1870s however, the Collodion process started to get replaced by the invention of dry plate technology. Plates were coated with a gelatin form of the Collodion solution, which allowed them to be stored until exposure and they didn’t need to be developed immediately after. The gelatin solution allowed photographers to take pictures at their own leisure and eliminated the rush for exposure, developing photos, etc. This process was used up until the introduction of film.

Figure 6: Photo taken using dry plates

In 1888 George Eastman developed a type of flexible film that would eventually lead to the invention of the first camera, the Kodak. The Kodak was a box camera with a roll of loaded film that could take black and white photos. The camera also had a fixed lens and a single shutter speed. Once the film roll was finished you would send it back to the manufacturer which would process the film for you and put a new roll of film in the camera. This marketing tactic made photography accessible to the general public, unlike before when only professionals or people with a lot of money could afford photography.

Figure 7: First Kodak camera

Color in photography has been something people experimented with since the invention of the daguerreotype, however, the color had to be added by hand afterward. Eventually, in 1907, Auguste and Louis Lumière created the autochrome process but even during that process the color was added afterward and could only be seen if looking at the image with a black light. In 1935, Kodak started to make colored film for their cameras, called Kodachrome, in turn making colored photographs more accessible. 

       

                    Figure 8: Autochrome Image           Figure 9: Kodachrome Image

Digital Photography is what most people are familiar with today. The first digital image was taken in 1957 by Russell Kirsch, however, it was until the 1970s that digital cameras were created. In 1975 Steven Sasson invented the first digital camera and it was developed by Kodak. It wouldn’t be until 1991 though when the first digital camera was available to the public, the Logitech Fotoman. The Fotoman could only take black and white photos and had a small pixel resolution. In 1994, however, the Fotoman Plus was released and it was similar to the first Fotoman however it had a higher resolution and could export pictures in JPEG formats.

           

Figure 10: First digital image                  Figure 11: Fotoman Plus         

Alongside the invention of cell phones came the phone cameras. The first camera phone was the J-SH04. It was created in 2000 by Sharp and had the feature to share photos electronically. During this time Samsung was also developing camera phones, it was similar to the J-SH04 but the phone had to be connected to a computer in order to retrieve the photos. As cell phones continue to develop and become more advanced so does the technology used for the cameras built within them.

     

                   Figure 13: J-SH04 Phone                   Figure 14: iPhone 12 Camera