![1545 gemma frisius - camera-obscura-sonnenfinsternis 1545-650x337](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4d/1545_gemma_frisius_-_camera-obscura-sonnenfinsternis_1545-650x337.jpg)
The history of the camera began even before the introduction of
photography
Photography is the art, application, and practice of creating durable images by recording light, either electronically by means of an image sensor, or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film. It is emplo ...
.
Camera
A camera is an optical instrument that can capture an image. Most cameras can capture 2D images, with some more advanced models being able to capture 3D images. At a basic level, most cameras consist of sealed boxes (the camera body), with ...
s evolved from the
camera obscura
A camera obscura (; ) is a darkened room with a small hole or lens at one side through which an image is projected onto a wall or table opposite the hole.
''Camera obscura'' can also refer to analogous constructions such as a box or tent in w ...
through many generations of photographic technology
daguerreotype
Daguerreotype (; french: daguerréotype) was the first publicly available photographic process; it was widely used during the 1840s and 1850s. "Daguerreotype" also refers to an image created through this process.
Invented by Louis Daguerre a ...
s,
calotype
Calotype or talbotype is an early photographic process introduced in 1841 by William Henry Fox Talbot, using paper coated with silver iodide. Paper texture effects in calotype photography limit the ability of this early process to record low ...
s,
dry plates,
film
A film also called a movie, motion picture, moving picture, picture, photoplay or (slang) flick is a work of visual art that simulates experiences and otherwise communicates ideas, stories, perceptions, feelings, beauty, or atmospher ...
to the modern day with
digital camera
A digital camera is a camera that captures photographs in digital memory. Most cameras produced today are digital, largely replacing those that capture images on photographic film. Digital cameras are now widely incorporated into mobile devices ...
s and
camera phone
A camera phone is a mobile phone which is able to capture photographs and often record video using one or more built-in digital cameras. It can also send the resulting image wirelessly and conveniently. The first commercial phone with color ca ...
s.
Camera obscura (Before 17th century)
![Camera Obscura box18thCentury](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fd/Camera_Obscura_box18thCentury.jpg)
The forerunner to the photographic camera was the ''
camera obscura
A camera obscura (; ) is a darkened room with a small hole or lens at one side through which an image is projected onto a wall or table opposite the hole.
''Camera obscura'' can also refer to analogous constructions such as a box or tent in w ...
''. Camera obscura (
Latin
Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through ...
for "dark room") is the natural optical phenomenon that occurs when an image of a scene at the other side of a screen (or for instance a wall) is projected through a small hole in that screen and forms an inverted image (left to right and upside down) on a surface opposite to the opening. The oldest known record of this principle is a description by
Han Chinese
The Han Chinese () or Han people (), are an East Asian ethnic group native to China. They constitute the world's largest ethnic group, making up about 18% of the global population and consisting of various subgroups speaking distinctive v ...
philosopher
Mozi
Mozi (; ; Latinized as Micius ; – ), original name Mo Di (), was a Chinese philosopher who founded the school of Mohism during the Hundred Schools of Thought period (the early portion of the Warring States period, –221 BCE). The ancie ...
( 470 to 391 BC). Mozi correctly asserted that the camera obscura image is inverted because
light
Light or visible light is electromagnetic radiation that can be perceived by the human eye. Visible light is usually defined as having wavelengths in the range of 400–700 nanometres (nm), corresponding to frequencies of 750–420 t ...
travels in straight lines from its source. In the 11th century, Arab physicist
Ibn al-Haytham
Ḥasan Ibn al-Haytham, Latinized as Alhazen (; full name ; ), was a medieval mathematician, astronomer, and physicist of the Islamic Golden Age from present-day Iraq.For the description of his main fields, see e.g. ("He is one of the pr ...
(Alhazen) wrote very influential books about optics, including experiments with light through a small opening in a darkened room.
The use of a lens in the opening of a wall or closed window shutter of a darkened room to project images used as a drawing aid has been traced back to . Since the late 17th-century portable camera obscura devices in tents and boxes were used as a drawing aid.
Before the invention of photographic processes, there was no way to preserve the images produced by these cameras apart from manually tracing them. The earliest cameras were room-sized, with space for one or more people inside; these gradually evolved into more and more compact models. By Niépce's time, portable box camera obscurae suitable for photography were readily available. The first camera that was small and portable enough to be practical for photography was envisioned by
Johann Zahn in 1685, though it would be almost 150 years before such an application was possible.
Ibn al-Haytham
Ḥasan Ibn al-Haytham, Latinized as Alhazen (; full name ; ), was a medieval mathematician, astronomer, and physicist of the Islamic Golden Age from present-day Iraq.For the description of his main fields, see e.g. ("He is one of the pr ...
( 965–1040 AD), an
Arab physicist also known as Alhazen, wrote very influential essays about the camera obscura, including experiments with light through a small opening in a darkened room.
The invention of the camera has been traced back to the work of Ibn al-Haytham,
who is credited with the invention of the pinhole camera.
While the effects of a single light passing through a pinhole had been described earlier,
Ibn al-Haytham gave the first correct analysis of the camera obscura, including the first geometrical and quantitative descriptions of the phenomenon, and was the first to use a screen in a dark room so that an image from one side of a hole in the surface could be projected onto a screen on the other side. He also first understood the relationship between the focal point and the pinhole, and performed early experiments with
afterimage.
Ibn al-Haytam's writings on optics became very influential in Europe through
Latin translations, inspiring people such as
Witelo
Vitello ( pl, Witelon; german: Witelo; – 1280/1314) was a friar, theologian, natural philosopher and an important figure in the history of philosophy in Poland.
Name
Vitello's name varies with some sources. In earlier publications he was q ...
,
John Peckham
John Peckham (c. 1230 – 8 December 1292) was Archbishop of Canterbury in the years 1279–1292. He was a native of Sussex who was educated at Lewes Priory and became a Friar Minor about 1250. He studied at the University of Paris under ...
,
Roger Bacon
Roger Bacon (; la, Rogerus or ', also '' Rogerus''; ), also known by the scholastic accolade ''Doctor Mirabilis'', was a medieval English philosopher and Franciscan friar who placed considerable emphasis on the study of nature through emp ...
,
Leonardo da Vinci
Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci (15 April 14522 May 1519) was an Italian polymath of the High Renaissance who was active as a painter, draughtsman, engineer, scientist, theorist, sculptor, and architect. While his fame initially rested on ...
,
René Descartes
René Descartes ( or ; ; Latinized: Renatus Cartesius; 31 March 1596 – 11 February 1650) was a French philosopher, scientist, and mathematician, widely considered a seminal figure in the emergence of modern philosophy and science. Ma ...
and
Johannes Kepler
Johannes Kepler (; ; 27 December 1571 – 15 November 1630) was a German astronomer, mathematician, astrologer, natural philosopher and writer on music. He is a key figure in the 17th-century Scientific Revolution, best known for his laws ...
.
Camera Obscura were used as drawing aids since at least 1550. Since the late 17th century, portable camera obscura devices in tents and boxes were used as drawing aids.
Early photographic camera (18th–19th centuries)
Before the development of the photography camera, it had been known for hundreds of years that some substances, such as silver salts, darkened when exposed to sunlight.
In a series of experiments, published in 1727, the German scientist
Johann Heinrich Schulze
Johann Heinrich Schulze (12 May 1687 – 10 October 1744) was a German professor and polymath.
History
Schulze studied medicine, chemistry, philosophy and theology and became a professor in Altdorf and Halle for anatomy and several other s ...
demonstrated that the darkening of the salts was due to light alone, and not influenced by heat or exposure to air.
The Swedish chemist
Carl Wilhelm Scheele
Carl Wilhelm Scheele (, ; 9 December 1742 – 21 May 1786) was a Swedish German pharmaceutical chemist.
Scheele discovered oxygen (although Joseph Priestley published his findings first), and identified molybdenum, tungsten, barium, hyd ...
showed in 1777 that
silver chloride
Silver chloride is a chemical compound with the chemical formula Ag Cl. This white crystalline solid is well known for its low solubility in water (this behavior being reminiscent of the chlorides of Tl+ and Pb2+). Upon illumination or heating, ...
was especially susceptible to darkening from light exposure, and that once darkened, it becomes insoluble in an ammonia solution.
The first person to use this chemistry to create images was
Thomas Wedgwood.
To create images, Wedgwood placed items, such as leaves and insect wings, on ceramic pots coated with silver nitrate, and exposed the set-up to light. These images weren't permanent, however, as Wedgwood didn't employ a fixing mechanism. He ultimately failed at his goal of using the process to create fixed images created by a camera obscura.
The first permanent photograph of a camera image was made in 1825 by
Joseph Nicéphore Niépce
Joseph is a common male given name, derived from the Hebrew Yosef (יוֹסֵף). "Joseph" is used, along with "Josef", mostly in English, French and partially German languages. This spelling is also found as a variant in the languages of the mo ...
using a sliding wooden box camera made by Charles and Vincent Chevalier in Paris.
Niépce had been experimenting with ways to fix the images of a camera obscura since 1816. The photograph Niépce succeeded in creating shows the view from his window. It was made using an 8-hour exposure on pewter coated with
bitumen.
Niépce called his process "heliography".
Niépce corresponded with the inventor
Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre, and the pair entered into a partnership to improve the heliographic process. Niépce had experimented further with other chemicals, to improve contrast in his heliographs. Daguerre contributed an improved camera obscura design, but the partnership ended when Niépce died in 1833.
Daguerre succeeded in developing a high-contrast and extremely sharp image by exposing on a plate coated with silver iodide, and exposing this plate again to mercury vapor.
By 1837, he was able to fix the images with a common salt solution. He called this process ''Daguerreotype'', and tried unsuccessfully for a couple of years to commercialize it. Eventually, with help of the scientist and politician
François Arago, the French government acquired Daguerre's process for public release. In exchange, pensions were provided to Daguerre as well as Niépce's son, Isidore.
In the 1830s, the English scientist
William Henry Fox Talbot
William Henry Fox Talbot FRS FRSE Royal Astronomical Society, FRAS (; 11 February 180017 September 1877) was an English scientist, inventor, and photography pioneer who invented the Salt print, salted paper and calotype processes, precursors t ...
independently invented a process to capture camera images using silver salts.
Although dismayed that Daguerre had beaten him to the announcement of photography, he submitted on 31 January 1839, a pamphlet to the Royal Institution entitled ''Some Account of the Art of Photogenic Drawing'', which was the first published description of photography. Within two years, Talbot developed a two-step process for creating photographs on paper, which he called
calotypes
Calotype or talbotype is an early photographic process introduced in 1841 by William Henry Fox Talbot, using paper coated with silver iodide. Paper texture effects in calotype photography limit the ability of this early process to record low ...
. The calotype process was the first to utilize
negative printing, which reverses all values in the reproduction process – black shows up as white and vice versa.
Negative printing allows, in principle, an unlimited number of positive prints to be made from the original negative.
The Calotype process also introduced the ability for a printmaker to alter the resulting image through retouching of the negative.
Calotypes were never as popular or widespread as daguerreotypes,
owing mainly to the fact that the latter produced sharper details. However, because daguerreotypes only produce a direct positive print, no duplicates can be made. It is the two-step negative/positive process that formed the basis for modern photography.
![Susse Frére Daguerreotype camera 1839](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/57/Susse_Fr%C3%A9re_Daguerreotype_camera_1839.jpg)
The first photographic camera developed for commercial manufacture was a daguerreotype camera, built by
Alphonse Giroux in 1839. Giroux signed a contract with Daguerre and Isidore Niépce to produce the cameras in France,
with each device and accessories costing 400 francs.
The camera was a double-box design, with a
landscape lens fitted to the outer box, and a holder for a ground glass focusing screen and image plate on the inner box. By sliding the inner box, objects at various distances could be brought to as sharp a focus as desired. After a satisfactory image had been focused on the screen, the screen was replaced with a sensitized plate. A knurled wheel controlled a copper flap in front of the lens, which functioned as a shutter. The early daguerreotype cameras required long exposure times, which in 1839 could be from 5 to 30 minutes.
After the introduction of the Giroux daguerreotype camera, other manufacturers quickly produced improved variations. Charles Chevalier, who had earlier provided Niépce with lenses, created in 1841 a double-box camera using a half-sized plate for imaging. Chevalier's camera had a hinged bed, allowing for half of the bed to fold onto the back of the nested box. In addition to having increased portability, the camera had a faster lens, bringing exposure times down to 3 minutes, and a prism at the front of the lens, which allowed the image to be laterally correct.
Another French design emerged in 1841, created by
Marc Antoine Gaudin. The Nouvel Appareil Gaudin camera had a metal disc with three differently-sized holes mounted on the front of the lens. Rotating to a different hole effectively provided variable f-stops, allowing different amounts of light into the camera.
Instead of using nested boxes to focus, the Gaudin camera used nested brass tubes.
In Germany, Peter Friedrich Voigtländer designed an all-metal camera with a conical shape that produced circular pictures of about 3 inches in diameter. The distinguishing characteristic of the
Voigtländer
Voigtländer () was a significant long-established company within the optics and photographic industry, headquartered in Braunschweig, Germany, and today continues as a trademark for a range of photographic products.
History
Voigtländer was f ...
camera was its use of a lens designed by
Joseph Petzval
Joseph Petzval (6 January 1807 – 17 September 1891) was a mathematician, inventor, and physicist best known for his work in optics. He was born in the town of Szepesbéla in the Kingdom of Hungary (in German: Zipser Bela, now Spišská Belá i ...
.
The
Petzval lens
Joseph Petzval (6 January 1807 – 17 September 1891) was a mathematician, inventor, and physicist best known for his work in optics. He was born in the town of Szepesbéla in the Kingdom of Hungary (in German: Zipser Bela, now Spišská Belá in ...
was nearly 30 times faster than any other lens of the period, and was the first to be made specifically for portraiture. Its design was the most widely used for portraits until Carl Zeiss introduced the
anastigmat
An anastigmat or anastigmatic lens is a photographic lens completely corrected for the three main optical aberrations: spherical aberration, coma, and astigmatism. Early lenses often included the word ''Anastigmat'' in their name to advertise th ...
lens in 1889.
Within a decade of being introduced in America, 3 general forms of camera were in popular use: the American- or chamfered-box camera, the Robert's-type camera or "Boston box", and the Lewis-type camera. The American-box camera had beveled edges at the front and rear, and an opening in the rear where the formed image could be viewed on ground glass. The top of the camera had hinged doors for placing photographic plates. Inside there was one available slot for distant objects, and another slot in the back for close-ups. The lens was focused either by sliding or with a
rack and pinion mechanism. The Robert's-type cameras were similar to the American-box, except for having a knob-fronted
worm gear
A worm drive is a gear arrangement in which a worm (which is a gear in the form of a screw) meshes with a worm wheel (which is similar in appearance to a spur gear). The two elements are also called the worm screw and worm gear. The terminol ...
on the front of the camera, which moved the back box for focusing. Many Robert's-type cameras allowed focusing directly on the lens mount. The third popular daguerreotype camera in America was the Lewis-type, introduced in 1851, which utilized a bellows for focusing. The main body of the Lewis-type camera was mounted on the front box, but the rear section was slotted into the bed for easy sliding. Once focused, a
set screw
In American English, a set screw is a screw that is used to secure an object, by pressure and/or friction, within or against another object, such as fixing a pulley or gear to a shaft. A set screw is normally used without a nut (which distingu ...
was tightened to hold the rear section in place.
Having the bellows in the middle of the body facilitated making a second, in-camera copy of the original image.
Daguerreotype cameras formed images on
silvered
Silvering is the chemical process of coating a non-conductive substrate such as glass with a reflective substance, to produce a mirror. While the metal is often silver, the term is used for the application of any reflective metal.
Process
Mos ...
copper plates and images were only able to develop with mercury vapor. The earliest daguerreotype cameras required several minutes to half an hour to expose images on the plates. By 1840, exposure times were reduced to just a few seconds owing to improvements in the chemical preparation and development processes, and to advances in lens design. American daguerreotypists introduced manufactured plates in mass production, and plate sizes became internationally standardized: whole plate (6.5 x 8.5 inches), three-quarter plate (5.5 × 7 1/8 inches), half plate (4.5 x 5.5 inches), quarter plate (3.25 x 4.25 inches), sixth plate (2.75 x 3.25 inches), and ninth plate (2 x 2.5 inches).
Plates were often cut to fit cases and jewelry with circular and oval shapes. Larger plates were produced, with sizes such as 9 x 13 inches ("double-whole" plate), or 13.5 x 16.5 inches (Southworth & Hawes' plate).
The
collodion wet plate process that gradually replaced the daguerreotype during the 1850s required photographers to coat and sensitize thin glass or iron plates shortly before use and expose them in the camera while still wet. Early wet plate cameras were very simple and little different from Daguerreotype cameras, but more sophisticated designs eventually appeared. The Dubroni of 1864 allowed the sensitizing and
developing of the plates to be carried out inside the camera itself rather than in a separate
darkroom. Other cameras were fitted with multiple lenses for photographing several small portraits on a single larger plate, useful when making
cartes de visite
The ''carte de visite'' (, visiting card), abbreviated CdV, was a type of small photograph which was patented in Paris by photographer André Adolphe Eugène Disdéri in 1854, although first used by Louis Dodero. Each photograph was the size of ...
. It was during the wet plate era that the use of
bellows
A bellows or pair of bellows is a device constructed to furnish a strong blast of air. The simplest type consists of a flexible bag comprising a pair of rigid boards with handles joined by flexible leather sides enclosing an approximately airtig ...
for focusing became widespread, making the bulkier and less easily adjusted nested box design obsolete.
For many years, exposure times were long enough that the photographer simply removed the lens cap, counted off the number of seconds (or minutes) estimated to be required by the lighting conditions, then replaced the cap. As more sensitive photographic materials became available, cameras began to incorporate mechanical shutter mechanisms that allowed very short and accurately timed exposures to be made.
The use of photographic film was pioneered by
George Eastman
George Eastman (July 12, 1854March 14, 1932) was an American entrepreneur who founded the Eastman Kodak Company and helped to bring the photographic use of roll film into the mainstream. He was a major philanthropist, establishing the Eastman ...
, who started manufacturing paper film in 1885 before switching to
celluloid
Celluloids are a class of materials produced by mixing nitrocellulose and camphor, often with added dyes and other agents. Once much more common for its use as photographic film before the advent of safer methods, celluloid's common contemporary ...
in 1889. His first camera, which he called the "
Kodak
The Eastman Kodak Company (referred to simply as Kodak ) is an American public company that produces various products related to its historic basis in analogue photography. The company is headquartered in Rochester, New York, and is incorpor ...
," was first offered for sale in 1888. It was a very simple
box camera
A box camera is a simple type of camera, the most common form being a cardboard or plastic box with a lens in one end and film at the other. They were sold in large numbers during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The lenses are often singl ...
with a fixed-focus lens and single shutter speed, which along with its relatively low price appealed to the average consumer. The Kodak came pre-loaded with enough film for 100 exposures and needed to be sent back to the factory for processing and reloading when the roll was finished. By the end of the 19th century Eastman had expanded his lineup to several models including both box and folding cameras.
Films also made possible capture of motion (
cinematography
Cinematography (from ancient Greek κίνημα, ''kìnema'' "movement" and γράφειν, ''gràphein'' "to write") is the art of motion picture (and more recently, electronic video camera) photography.
Cinematographers use a lens to foc ...
) establishing the movie industry by the end of the 19th century.
Early fixed images
The first partially successful
photograph of a camera image was made in approximately 1816 by
Nicéphore Niépce
Joseph Nicéphore Niépce (; 7 March 1765 – 5 July 1833), commonly known or referred to simply as Nicéphore Niépce, was a French inventor, usually credited with the invention of photography. Niépce developed heliography, a technique he us ...
,
using a very small camera of his own making and a piece of paper coated with
silver chloride
Silver chloride is a chemical compound with the chemical formula Ag Cl. This white crystalline solid is well known for its low solubility in water (this behavior being reminiscent of the chlorides of Tl+ and Pb2+). Upon illumination or heating, ...
, which darkened where it was exposed to light. No means of removing the remaining unaffected silver chloride was known to Niépce, so the photograph was not permanent, eventually becoming entirely darkened by the overall exposure to light necessary for viewing it. In the mid-1820s, Niépce used a sliding wooden box camera made by Parisian opticians Charles and Vincent Chevalier, to experiment with photography on surfaces thinly coated with
Bitumen of Judea
Bitumen of Judea, or Syrian asphalt, is a naturally occurring asphalt that has been put to many uses since ancient times.
Wood coloration usage
Bitumen of Judea may be used as a colorant for wood for an aged, natural and rustic appearance. It ...
. The bitumen slowly hardened in the brightest areas of the image. The unhardened bitumen was then dissolved away.
One of those photographs has survived.
Daguerreotypes and calotypes
After Niépce's death in 1833, his partner
Louis Daguerre
Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre ( , ; 18 November 1787 – 10 July 1851) was a French artist and photographer, recognized for his invention of the eponymous daguerreotype process of photography. He became known as one of the fathers of photog ...
continued to experiment and by 1837 had created the first practical photographic process, which he named the
daguerreotype
Daguerreotype (; french: daguerréotype) was the first publicly available photographic process; it was widely used during the 1840s and 1850s. "Daguerreotype" also refers to an image created through this process.
Invented by Louis Daguerre a ...
and publicly unveiled in 1839. Daguerre treated a silver-plated sheet of copper with
iodine vapor to give it a coating of light-sensitive
silver iodide. After exposure in the camera, the image was
developed by mercury vapor and fixed with a strong solution of ordinary salt (sodium chloride).
Henry Fox Talbot perfected a different process, the
calotype
Calotype or talbotype is an early photographic process introduced in 1841 by William Henry Fox Talbot, using paper coated with silver iodide. Paper texture effects in calotype photography limit the ability of this early process to record low ...
, in 1840. As commercialized, both processes used very simple cameras consisting of two nested boxes. The rear box had a removable ground glass screen and could slide in and out to adjust the focus. After focusing, the ground glass was replaced with a light-tight holder containing the sensitized plate or paper and the lens was capped. Then the photographer opened the front cover of the holder, uncapped the lens, and counted off as many minutes as the lighting conditions seemed to require before replacing the cap and closing the holder. Despite this mechanical simplicity, high-quality
achromatic lens
An achromatic lens or achromat is a lens that is designed to limit the effects of chromatic and spherical aberration. Achromatic lenses are corrected to bring two wavelengths (typically red and blue) into focus on the same plane.
The most comm ...
es were standard.
Dry plates
Collodion dry plates had been available since 1857, thanks to the work of
Désiré van Monckhoven, but it was not until the invention of the
gelatin dry plate in 1871 by Richard Leach Maddox that the wet plate process could be rivaled in quality and speed. The 1878 discovery that heat-ripening a gelatin emulsion greatly increased its sensitivity finally made so-called "instantaneous" snapshot exposures practical. For the first time, a tripod or other support was no longer an absolute necessity. With daylight and a fast plate or film, a small camera could be hand-held while taking the picture. The ranks of amateur photographers swelled and informal "candid" portraits became popular. There was a proliferation of camera designs, from single- and twin-lens reflexes to large and bulky field cameras, simple
box camera
A box camera is a simple type of camera, the most common form being a cardboard or plastic box with a lens in one end and film at the other. They were sold in large numbers during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The lenses are often singl ...
s, and even "detective cameras" disguised as pocket watches, hats, or other objects.
The short exposure times that made candid photography possible also necessitated another innovation, the mechanical
shutter. The very first shutters were separate accessories, though built-in shutters were common by the end of the 19th century.
Invention of photographic film
![Brownie2 overview3](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d7/Brownie2_overview3.jpg)
The use of
photographic film was pioneered by
George Eastman
George Eastman (July 12, 1854March 14, 1932) was an American entrepreneur who founded the Eastman Kodak Company and helped to bring the photographic use of roll film into the mainstream. He was a major philanthropist, establishing the Eastman ...
, who started manufacturing paper film in 1885 before switching to
celluloid
Celluloids are a class of materials produced by mixing nitrocellulose and camphor, often with added dyes and other agents. Once much more common for its use as photographic film before the advent of safer methods, celluloid's common contemporary ...
in 1888–1889. His first camera, which he called the "
Kodak
The Eastman Kodak Company (referred to simply as Kodak ) is an American public company that produces various products related to its historic basis in analogue photography. The company is headquartered in Rochester, New York, and is incorpor ...
", was first offered for sale in 1888. It was a very simple
box camera
A box camera is a simple type of camera, the most common form being a cardboard or plastic box with a lens in one end and film at the other. They were sold in large numbers during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The lenses are often singl ...
with a fixed-focus lens and single shutter speed, which along with its relatively low price appealed to the average consumer. The Kodak came pre-loaded with enough film for 100 exposures and needed to be sent back to the factory for processing and reloading when the roll was finished. By the end of the 19th century Eastman had expanded his lineup to several models including both box and folding cameras.
In 1900, Eastman took mass-market photography one step further with the
Brownie, a simple and very inexpensive box camera that introduced the concept of the
snapshot
Snapshot, snapshots or snap shot may refer to:
* Snapshot (photography), a photograph taken without preparation
Computing
* Snapshot (computer storage), the state of a system at a particular point in time
* Snapshot (file format) or SNP, a file ...
. The Brownie was extremely popular and various models remained on sale until the 1960s.
Film also allowed the
movie camera
A movie camera (also known as a film camera and cine-camera) is a type of photographic camera that rapidly takes a sequence of photographs, either on an image sensor or onto film stock, in order to produce a moving image to project onto a movie sc ...
to develop from an expensive toy to a practical commercial tool.
Despite the advances in low-cost photography made possible by Eastman, plate cameras still offered higher-quality prints and remained popular well into the 20th century. To compete with rollfilm cameras, which offered a larger number of exposures per loading, many inexpensive plate cameras from this era were equipped with magazines to hold several plates at once. Special backs for plate cameras allowing them to use film packs or rollfilm were also available, as were backs that enabled rollfilm cameras to use plates.
Except for a few special types such as
Schmidt camera
A Schmidt camera, also referred to as the Schmidt telescope, is a catadioptric astrophotographic telescope designed to provide wide fields of view with limited aberrations. The design was invented by Bernhard Schmidt in 1930.
Some notable e ...
s, most professional
astrograph
An astrograph (or astrographic camera) is a telescope designed for the sole purpose of astrophotography. Astrographs are mostly used in wide-field astronomical surveys of the sky and for detection of objects such as asteroids, meteors, a ...
s continued to use plates until the end of the 20th century when electronic photography replaced them.
35 mm
![Argus C3](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/58/Argus_C3.jpg)
A number of manufacturers started to use 35 mm film for still photography between 1905 and 1913. The first 35 mm cameras available to the public, and reaching significant numbers in sales were the Tourist Multiple, in 1913, and the Simplex, in 1914.
Oskar Barnack
Oskar Barnack (Nuthe-Urstromtal, Brandenburg, 1 November 1879 – Bad Nauheim, Hesse, 16 January 1936) was a German inventor and photographer who built, in 1913, what would later become the first commercially successful 35mm still-camera, sub ...
, who was in charge of research and development at
Leitz Leitz may refer to several German companies:
*Esselte Leitz GmbH & Co KG, founded by Louis Leitz in 1896, a German manufacturer of office products
**Louis Leitz (1846–1918), German inventor and founder of Esselte Leitz GmbH & Co KG
* Leitz GmbH & ...
, decided to investigate using
35 mm cine film for still cameras while attempting to build a
compact camera capable of making high-quality enlargements. He built his prototype 35 mm camera (Ur-Leica) around 1913, though further development was delayed for several years by World War I. It wasn't until after World War I that Leica commercialized their first 35 mm cameras. Leitz test-marketed the design between 1923 and 1924, receiving enough positive feedback that the camera was put into production as the
Leica I (for Leitz camera) in 1925. The Leica's immediate popularity spawned a number of competitors, most notably the
Contax (introduced in 1932), and cemented the position of 35 mm as the format of choice for high-end compact cameras.
Kodak got into the market with the
Retina I in 1934, which introduced the 135 cartridge used in all modern 35 mm cameras. Although the Retina was comparatively inexpensive, 35 mm cameras were still out of reach for most people and rollfilm remained the format of choice for mass-market cameras. This changed in 1936 with the introduction of the inexpensive Argus A and to an even greater extent in 1939 with the arrival of the immensely popular
Argus C3
The Argus C3 was a low-priced rangefinder camera mass-produced from 1939 to 1966 by Argus in Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States. The camersold over 2.2 million units making it one of the most popular American cameras in history. Due to its shape ...
. Although the cheapest cameras still used rollfilm, 35 mm film had come to dominate the market by the time the C3 was discontinued in 1966.
The fledgling Japanese camera industry began to take off in 1936 with the
Canon
Canon or Canons may refer to:
Arts and entertainment
* Canon (fiction), the conceptual material accepted as official in a fictional universe by its fan base
* Literary canon, an accepted body of works considered as high culture
** Western ca ...
35 mm rangefinder, an improved version of the 1933 Kwanon prototype. Japanese cameras would begin to become popular in the West after Korean War veterans and soldiers stationed in Japan brought them back to the United States and elsewhere.
TLRs and SLRs
![Nikonf](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/da/Nikonf.jpg)
The first practical reflex camera was the
Franke & Heidecke
Rollei () was a German manufacturer of optical instruments founded in 1920 by and in Braunschweig, Lower Saxony, and maker of the Rolleiflex and Rolleicord series of cameras. Later products included specialty and nostalgic type films for the ...
Rolleiflex
Rolleiflex is the name of a long-running and diverse line of high-end cameras originally made by the German company Franke & Heidecke, and later Rollei-Werke.
History
The "Rolleiflex" name is most commonly used to refer to Rollei's premier ...
medium format
Medium format has traditionally referred to a film format in photography and the related cameras and equipment that use film. Nowadays, the term applies to film and digital cameras that record images on media larger than the used in 35&nbs ...
TLR of 1928. Though both single- and twin-lens reflex cameras had been available for decades, they were too bulky to achieve much popularity. The Rolleiflex, however, was sufficiently compact to achieve widespread popularity and the medium-format TLR design became popular for both high- and low-end cameras.
A similar revolution in
SLR design began in 1933 with the introduction of the
Ihagee
Ihagee was a camera manufacturer based in Dresden, Germany. Its best-known product was the Exakta single-lens reflex camera.
History
Johan Steenbergen, a Dutchman, founded a camera company called ''Industrie- und Handelsgesellschaft'' in Dres ...
Exakta
The Exakta (sometimes Exacta) was a camera produced by the ''Ihagee Kamerawerk'' in Dresden, Germany, founded as the Industrie und Handels-Gesellschaft mbH, in 1912. The inspiration and design of both the VP Exakta and the Kine Exakta are the wo ...
, a compact SLR which used
127 rollfilm. This was followed three years later by the first Western SLR to use
135 film (otherwise known as 35 mm film), the Kine Exakta (World's first true 35 mm SLR was
Soviet
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nation ...
"Sport" camera, marketed several months before Kine Exakta, though "Sport" used its own film cartridge). The 35 mm SLR design gained immediate popularity and there was an explosion of new models and innovative features after World War II. There were also a few 35 mm TLRs, the best-known of which was the
Contaflex of 1935, but for the most part these met with little success.
The first major post-war SLR innovation was the eye-level viewfinder, which first appeared on the Hungarian
Duflex in 1947 and was refined in 1948 with the
Contax S, the first camera to use a
pentaprism
A pentaprism is a five-sided reflecting prism used to deviate a beam of light by a constant 90°, even if the entry beam is not at 90° to the prism.
The beam reflects inside the prism ''twice'', allowing the transmission of an image through a r ...
. Prior to this, all SLRs were equipped with waist-level focusing screens. The Duflex was also the first SLR with an instant-return mirror, which prevented the viewfinder from being blacked out after each exposure. This same time period also saw the introduction of the
Hasselblad
Victor Hasselblad AB is a Swedish manufacturer of medium format cameras, photographic equipment and image scanners based in Gothenburg, Sweden. The company originally became known for its classic analog medium-format cameras that used a waist ...
1600F, which set the standard for medium format SLRs for decades.
In 1952 the
Asahi Optical Company (which later became well known for its Pentax cameras) introduced the first Japanese SLR using 135 film, the
Asahiflex. Several other Japanese camera makers also entered the SLR market in the 1950s, including Canon,
Yashica
Yashica was a Japanese manufacturer of cameras, originally active from 1949 until 2005 when its then-owner, Kyocera, ceased production.
In 2008, the Yashica name reappeared on cameras produced by the Hong Kong-based MF Jebsen Group. In 2015, t ...
, and
Nikon
(, ; ), also known just as Nikon, is a Japanese multinational corporation headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, specializing in optics and imaging products. The companies held by Nikon form the Nikon Group.
Nikon's products include cameras, camera ...
. Nikon's entry, the
Nikon F
The Nikon F camera, introduced in April 1959, was Nikon's first SLR camera. It was one of the most advanced cameras of its day. Although many of the concepts had already been introduced elsewhere, it was revolutionary in that it was the firs ...
, had a full line of interchangeable components and accessories and is generally regarded as the first Japanese
system camera
A system camera or camera body is a camera with interchangeable components that constitutes the core of a system. Early representatives include Leica I Schraubgewinde (1930), Exakta (1936) and the Nikon F (1959). System cameras are often sin ...
. It was the F, along with the earlier
S series of rangefinder cameras, that helped establish Nikon's reputation as a maker of professional-quality equipment and one of the world's best known brands.
Instant cameras
![Polaroid 430](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ac/Polaroid_430.jpg)
While conventional cameras were becoming more refined and sophisticated, an entirely new type of camera appeared on the market in 1949. This was the
Polaroid Model 95, the world's first viable
instant-picture camera. Known as a
Land Camera
The Land Camera is a model of self-developing film camera manufactured by Polaroid between 1948 and 1983. It is named after their inventor, the American scientist Edwin Land, who developed a process for self-developing photography between 194 ...
after its inventor,
Edwin Land
Edwin Herbert Land, ForMemRS, FRPS, Hon.MRI (May 7, 1909 – March 1, 1991) was an Russian-American scientist and inventor, best known as the co-founder of the Polaroid Corporation. He invented inexpensive filters for polarizing light, ...
, the Model 95 used a patented chemical process to produce finished positive prints from the exposed negatives in under a minute. The Land Camera caught on despite its relatively high price and the Polaroid lineup had expanded to dozens of models by the 1960s. The first Polaroid camera aimed at the popular market, the
Model 20 Swinger of 1965, was a huge success and remains one of the top-selling cameras of all time.
Automation
The first camera to feature automatic
exposure was the
selenium
Selenium is a chemical element with the symbol Se and atomic number 34. It is a nonmetal (more rarely considered a metalloid) with properties that are intermediate between the elements above and below in the periodic table, sulfur and tellurium, ...
light meter
A light meter is a device used to measure the amount of light. In photography, a light meter (more correctly an exposure meter) is used to determine the proper exposure (photography), exposure for a photograph. The meter will include either a Di ...
-equipped, fully automatic Super Kodak Six-20 pack of 1938, but its extremely high price (for the time) of $225 () kept it from achieving any degree of success. By the 1960s, however, low-cost electronic components were commonplace and cameras equipped with light meters and automatic exposure systems became increasingly widespread.
The next technological advance came in 1960, when the German
Mec 16 SB subminiature became the first camera to place the light meter behind the
lens
A lens is a transmissive optical device which focuses or disperses a light beam by means of refraction. A simple lens consists of a single piece of transparent material, while a compound lens consists of several simple lenses (''elements ...
for more accurate metering. However,
through-the-lens In photography, through-the-lens metering (TTL metering) refers to a feature of cameras whereby the intensity of light reflected from the scene is measured through the lens; as opposed to using a separate metering window or external hand-held light ...
metering ultimately became a feature more commonly found on SLRs than other types of camera; the first SLR equipped with a TTL system was the
Topcon
is a Japanese manufacturer of optical equipment for ophthalmology and surveying.
History
September 1932—TOPCON was established based on the surveying instruments division of K. Hattori & Co., Ltd. (currently SEIKO HOLDINGS CORPORATION) in o ...
RE Super of 1962.
Digital cameras
Digital camera
A digital camera is a camera that captures photographs in digital memory. Most cameras produced today are digital, largely replacing those that capture images on photographic film. Digital cameras are now widely incorporated into mobile devices ...
s differ from their analog predecessors primarily in that they do not use film, but capture and save photographs on digital memory cards or internal storage instead. Their low operating costs have relegated chemical cameras to
niche markets. Digital cameras now include wireless communication capabilities (for example
Wi-Fi
Wi-Fi () is a family of wireless network protocols, based on the IEEE 802.11 family of standards, which are commonly used for local area networking of devices and Internet access, allowing nearby digital devices to exchange data by radio wav ...
or
Bluetooth
Bluetooth is a short-range wireless technology standard that is used for exchanging data between fixed and mobile devices over short distances and building personal area networks (PANs). In the most widely used mode, transmission power is limi ...
) to transfer, print, or share photos, and are commonly found on
mobile phones.
Digital imaging technology
The first semiconductor image sensor was the CCD, invented by
Willard S. Boyle and
George E. Smith
George Elwood Smith (born May 10, 1930) is an American scientist, applied physicist, and co-inventor of the charge-coupled device (CCD). He was awarded a one-quarter share in the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physics for "the invention of an imaging semico ...
at Bell Labs in 1969. While researching MOS technology, they realized that an electric charge was the analogy of the magnetic bubble and that it could be stored on a tiny
MOS capacitor
The metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET, MOS-FET, or MOS FET) is a type of field-effect transistor (FET), most commonly fabricated by the controlled oxidation of silicon. It has an insulated gate, the voltage of which d ...
. As it was fairly straightforward to
fabricate a series of MOS capacitors in a row, they connected a suitable voltage to them so that the charge could be stepped along from one to the next.
The CCD is a semiconductor circuit that was later used in the first
digital video cameras for
television broadcasting
A television network or television broadcaster is a telecommunications network for distribution of television program content, where a central operation provides programming to many television stations or pay television providers. Until the mid- ...
.
The
NMOS active-pixel sensor
An active-pixel sensor (APS) is an image sensor where each pixel sensor unit cell has a photodetector (typically a pinned photodiode) and one or more active transistors. In a metal–oxide–semiconductor (MOS) active-pixel sensor, MOS field-e ...
(APS) was invented by
Olympus in Japan during the mid-1980s. This was enabled by advances in MOS
semiconductor device fabrication
Semiconductor device fabrication is the process used to manufacture semiconductor devices, typically integrated circuit (IC) chips such as modern computer processors, microcontrollers, and memory chips such as NAND flash and DRAM that are p ...
, with
MOSFET scaling reaching smaller
micron and then sub-micron levels.
The NMOS APS was fabricated by Tsutomu Nakamura's team at Olympus in 1985. The
CMOS active-pixel sensor (CMOS sensor) was later developed by
Eric Fossum
Eric R. Fossum (born October 17, 1957) is an American physicist and engineer, which with the help of other JPL scientists, co-developed some features of the CMOS image sensor. He is currently a professor at Thayer School of Engineering in Dartmou ...
's team at the
NASA
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil List of government space agencies, space program ...
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) is a federally funded research and development center and NASA field center in the City of La Cañada Flintridge, California, United States.
Founded in the 1930s by Caltech researchers, JPL is owned by NASA an ...
in 1993.
Early digital camera prototypes
The concept of digitizing images on scanners, and the concept of digitizing video signals, predate the concept of making still pictures by digitizing signals from an array of discrete sensor elements. Early
spy satellite
A reconnaissance satellite or intelligence satellite (commonly, although unofficially, referred to as a spy satellite) is an Earth observation satellite or communications satellite deployed for military or intelligence applications.
The ...
s used the extremely complex and expensive method of de-orbit and airborne retrieval of film canisters. Technology was pushed to skip these steps through the use of in-satellite developing and electronic scanning of the film for direct transmission to the ground. The amount of film was still a major limitation, and this was overcome and greatly simplified by the push to develop an electronic image capturing array that could be used instead of film. The first electronic imaging satellite was the
KH-11
The KH-11 KENNEN (later renamed CRYSTAL,p.199-200 then Evolved Enhanced CRYSTAL System, and codenamed 1010 and Key Hole) is a type of reconnaissance satellite first launched by the American National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) in December 1 ...
launched by the
NRO
NRO may stand for:
* National Reconciliation Ordinance, a Pakistani law
* National Reconnaissance Office, maintains United States reconnaissance
* National Repertory Orchestra, in Colorado
* ''National Review Online'', web version of the magazine ...
in late 1976. It had a
charge-coupled device
A charge-coupled device (CCD) is an integrated circuit containing an array of linked, or coupled, capacitors. Under the control of an external circuit, each capacitor can transfer its electric charge to a neighboring capacitor. CCD sensors are a ...
(CCD) array with a resolution of (0.64 megapixels). At Philips Labs in New York, Edward Stupp, Pieter Cath and Zsolt Szilagyi filed for a patent on "All Solid State Radiation Imagers" on 6 September 1968 and constructed a flat-screen target for receiving and storing an optical image on a matrix composed of an array of photodiodes connected to a capacitor to form an array of two terminal devices connected in rows and columns. Their US patent was granted on 10 November 1970. Texas Instruments engineer
Willis Adcock designed a filmless camera that was not digital and applied for a patent in 1972, but it is not known whether it was ever built.
The
Cromemco Cyclops
The Cromemco Cyclops, introduced in 1975 by Cromemco, was the first commercial all-digital camera using a digital metal-oxide-semiconductor (MOS) image sensor. It was also the first digital camera to be interfaced to a microcomputer. The digit ...
, introduced as a hobbyist construction project in 1975, was the first digital camera to be interfaced to a
microcomputer. Its
image sensor
An image sensor or imager is a sensor that detects and conveys information used to make an image. It does so by converting the variable attenuation of light waves (as they pass through or reflect off objects) into signals, small bursts of c ...
was a modified
metal-oxide-semiconductor (MOS) dynamic
RAM
Ram, ram, or RAM may refer to:
Animals
* A male sheep
* Ram cichlid, a freshwater tropical fish
People
* Ram (given name)
* Ram (surname)
* Ram (director) (Ramsubramaniam), an Indian Tamil film director
* RAM (musician) (born 1974), Dutch
* ...
(
DRAM)
memory chip
Semiconductor memory is a digital electronic semiconductor device used for digital data storage, such as computer memory. It typically refers to devices in which data is stored within metal–oxide–semiconductor (MOS) memory cells on a sil ...
.
The first recorded attempt at building a self-contained digital camera was in 1975 by
Steven Sasson, an engineer at Eastman Kodak. It used the then-new solid-state CCD
image sensor
An image sensor or imager is a sensor that detects and conveys information used to make an image. It does so by converting the variable attenuation of light waves (as they pass through or reflect off objects) into signals, small bursts of c ...
chips developed by
Fairchild Semiconductor in 1973. The camera weighed 8 pounds (3.6 kg), recorded black-and-white images to a compact cassette tape, had a resolution of 0.01 megapixels (10,000 pixels), and took 23 seconds to capture its first image in December 1975. The prototype camera was a technical exercise, not intended for production.
Analog electronic cameras
![Sony Mavica 1981 prototype CP+ 2011](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a1/Sony_Mavica_1981_prototype_CP%2B_2011.jpg)
Handheld electronic cameras, in the sense of a device meant to be carried and used as a handheld film camera, appeared in 1981 with the demonstration of the
Sony Mavica
Mavica (''Magnetic Video Camera'') is a discontinued brand of Sony cameras which use removable disks as the main recording medium. On August 25th 1981, Sony unveiled a prototype of the Sony Mavica as the world's first electronic still video cam ...
(Magnetic Video Camera). This is not to be confused with the later cameras by Sony that also bore the Mavica name. This was an analog camera, in that it recorded pixel signals continuously, as videotape machines did, without converting them to discrete levels; it recorded television-like signals to a 2 × 2 inch "
video floppy
A Video Floppy () is an analog recording storage medium in the form of a 2-inch magnetic floppy disk used to store still frames of composite analog video. A video floppy, also known as a VF disk, could store up to 25 frames either in the NTSC or P ...
".
In essence, it was a video movie camera that recorded single frames, 50 per disk in field mode, and 25 per disk in frame mode. The image quality was considered equal to that of then-current televisions.
![Canon RC-701 img 0829](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/54/Canon_RC-701_img_0829.jpg)
Analog electronic cameras do not appear to have reached the market until 1986 with the Canon RC-701. Canon demonstrated a prototype of this model at the
1984 Summer Olympics
The 1984 Summer Olympics (officially the Games of the XXIII Olympiad and also known as Los Angeles 1984) were an international multi-sport event held from July 28 to August 12, 1984, in Los Angeles, California, United States. It marked the sec ...
, printing the images in the ''
Yomiuri Shinbun
The (lit. ''Reading-selling Newspaper'' or ''Selling by Reading Newspaper'') is a Japanese newspaper published in Tokyo, Osaka, Fukuoka, and other major Japanese cities. It is one of the five major newspapers in Japan; the other four are t ...
'', a Japanese newspaper. In the United States, the first publication to use these cameras for real reportage was
USA Today
''USA Today'' (stylized in all uppercase) is an American daily middle-market newspaper and news broadcasting company. Founded by Al Neuharth on September 15, 1982, the newspaper operates from Gannett's corporate headquarters in Tysons, Virgi ...
, in its coverage of World Series baseball. Several factors held back the widespread adoption of analog cameras; the cost (upwards of
$20,000, ), poor image quality compared to film, and the lack of quality affordable printers. Capturing and printing an image originally required access to equipment such as a frame grabber, which was beyond the reach of the average consumer. The "video floppy" disks later had several reader devices available for viewing on a screen but were never standardized as a computer drive.
The early adopters tended to be in the news media, where the cost was negated by the utility and the ability to transmit images by telephone lines. The poor image quality was offset by the low resolution of newspaper graphics. This capability to transmit images without a satellite link was useful during the
1989 Tiananmen Square protests
The Tiananmen Square protests, known in Chinese as the June Fourth Incident (), were student-led demonstrations held in Tiananmen Square, Beijing during 1989. In what is known as the Tiananmen Square Massacre, or in Chinese the June Fourth ...
and the first
Gulf War
The Gulf War was a 1990–1991 armed campaign waged by a Coalition of the Gulf War, 35-country military coalition in response to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. Spearheaded by the United States, the coalition's efforts against Ba'athist Iraq, ...
in 1991.
US government agencies also took a strong interest in the still video concept, notably the US Navy for use as a real-time air-to-sea surveillance system.
The first analog electronic camera marketed to consumers may have been the Casio VS-101 in 1987. A notable analog camera produced the same year was th
Nikon QV-1000C designed as a press camera and not offered for sale to general users, which sold only a few hundred units. It recorded images in
greyscale
In digital photography, computer-generated imagery, and colorimetry, a grayscale image is one in which the value of each pixel is a single sample representing only an ''amount'' of light; that is, it carries only intensity information. Gray ...
, and the quality in newspaper print was equal to film cameras. In appearance it closely resembled a modern digital
single-lens reflex camera. Images were stored on video floppy disks.
Silicon Film, a proposed digital sensor cartridge for film cameras that would allow 35 mm cameras to take digital photographs without modification was announced in late 1998. Silicon Film was to work as a roll of 35 mm film, with a 1.3
megapixel
In digital imaging, a pixel (abbreviated px), pel, or picture element is the smallest addressable element in a raster image, or the smallest point in an all points addressable display device.
In most digital display devices, pixels are the sm ...
sensor behind the lens and a battery and storage unit fitting in the film holder in the camera. The product, which was never released, became increasingly obsolete due to improvements in digital camera technology and affordability. Silicon Films' parent company filed for bankruptcy in 2001.
Early true digital cameras
![Capas-d1](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/57/Capas-d1.jpg)
By the late 1970s, the technology required to produce truly commercial digital cameras existed. The first true portable digital camera that recorded images as a computerized file was likely the
Fuji Fuji may refer to:
Places China
* Fuji, Xiangcheng City (付集镇), town in Xiangcheng City, Henan
Japan
* Mount Fuji, the tallest mountain in Japan
* Fuji River
* Fuji, Saga, town in Saga Prefecture
* Fuji, Shizuoka, city in Shizuoka Prefec ...
DS-1P of 1988, which recorded to a 2 MB
SRAM (static
RAM
Ram, ram, or RAM may refer to:
Animals
* A male sheep
* Ram cichlid, a freshwater tropical fish
People
* Ram (given name)
* Ram (surname)
* Ram (director) (Ramsubramaniam), an Indian Tamil film director
* RAM (musician) (born 1974), Dutch
* ...
)
memory card
A memory card is an electronic data storage device used for storing digital information, typically using flash memory. These are commonly used in digital portable electronic devices. They allow adding memory to such devices using a card in a so ...
that used a battery to keep the data in memory. This camera was never marketed to the public.
The first digital camera of any kind ever sold commercially was possibly the MegaVision Tessera in 1987 though there is not extensive documentation of its sale known. The first ''portable'' digital camera that was actually marketed commercially was sold in December 1989 in Japan, the DS-X by
Fuji The first commercially available portable digital camera in the United States was the Dycam Model 1, first shipped in November 1990. It was originally a commercial failure because it was black-and-white, low in resolution, and cost nearly $1,000 (). It later saw modest success when it was re-sold as the
Logitech
Logitech International S.A. ( ; often shortened to Logi) is a Swiss multinational manufacturer of computer peripherals and software, with headquarters in Lausanne, Switzerland, and Newark, California. The company has offices throughout Europe, ...
Fotoman in 1992. It used a CCD
image sensor
An image sensor or imager is a sensor that detects and conveys information used to make an image. It does so by converting the variable attenuation of light waves (as they pass through or reflect off objects) into signals, small bursts of c ...
, stored pictures digitally, and connected directly to a computer for download.
Digital SLRs (DSLRs)
Nikon
(, ; ), also known just as Nikon, is a Japanese multinational corporation headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, specializing in optics and imaging products. The companies held by Nikon form the Nikon Group.
Nikon's products include cameras, camera ...
was interested in digital photography since the mid-1980s. In JULY of 1986, while presenting to
Photokina
Photokina (rendered in the promoters' branding as "photokina") is a trade fair held in Europe for the photographic and imaging industries. It is the world's largest such trade fair. The first Photokina was held in Cologne, Germany, in 1950, a ...
, Nikon introduced an operational prototype of the first
SLR-type digital camera (Still Video Camera), manufactured by
Panasonic
formerly between 1935 and 2008 and the first incarnation of between 2008 and 2022, is a major Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation, headquartered in Kadoma, Osaka. It was founded by Kōnosuke Matsushita in 1918 as a lightbulb ...
.
[David D. Busch (2011)]
''Nikon D70 Digital Field Guide'', page 11
John Wiley & Sons
John Wiley & Sons, Inc., commonly known as Wiley (), is an American multinational publishing company founded in 1807 that focuses on academic publishing and instructional materials. The company produces books, journals, and encyclopedias, ...
The Nikon SVC was built around a sensor 2/3 "
charge-coupled device
A charge-coupled device (CCD) is an integrated circuit containing an array of linked, or coupled, capacitors. Under the control of an external circuit, each capacitor can transfer its electric charge to a neighboring capacitor. CCD sensors are a ...
of 300,000
pixels
In digital imaging, a pixel (abbreviated px), pel, or picture element is the smallest addressable element in a raster image, or the smallest point in an all points addressable display device.
In most digital display devices, pixels are the sm ...
. Storage media, a magnetic floppy inside the camera allows recording 25 or 50 B&W images, depending on the definition. In 1988, Nikon released the first commercial DSLR camera, the QV-1000C.
In 1991, Kodak brought to market the
Kodak DCS
The Kodak Digital Camera System is a series of digital single-lens reflex cameras and digital camera backs that were released by Kodak in the 1990s and 2000s, and discontinued in 2005. They are all based on existing 35mm film SLRs from Nikon, Cano ...
(Kodak Digital Camera System), the beginning of a long line of professional
Kodak DCS
The Kodak Digital Camera System is a series of digital single-lens reflex cameras and digital camera backs that were released by Kodak in the 1990s and 2000s, and discontinued in 2005. They are all based on existing 35mm film SLRs from Nikon, Cano ...
SLR cameras that were based in part on film bodies, often Nikons. It used a 1.3 megapixel sensor, had a bulky external digital storage system and was priced at $13,000 (). At the arrival of the Kodak DCS-200, the
Kodak DCS
The Kodak Digital Camera System is a series of digital single-lens reflex cameras and digital camera backs that were released by Kodak in the 1990s and 2000s, and discontinued in 2005. They are all based on existing 35mm film SLRs from Nikon, Cano ...
was dubbed
Kodak DCS-100
The Kodak Professional Digital Camera System or DCS, later unofficially named DCS 100, was the first commercially available digital single-lens reflex (DSLR) camera. It was a customized camera back bearing the digital image sensor, mounted on a Ni ...
.
The move to digital formats was helped by the formation of the first
JPEG and
MPEG
The Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) is an alliance of working groups established jointly by ISO and IEC that sets standards for media coding, including compression coding of audio, video, graphics, and genomic data; and transmission and f ...
standards in 1988, which allowed image and video files to be compressed for storage. The first consumer camera with a liquid crystal display on the back was the
Casio
is a Japanese multinational electronics manufacturing corporation headquartered in Shibuya, Tokyo, Japan. Its products include calculators, mobile phones, digital cameras, electronic musical instruments, and analogue and digital watches. I ...
QV-10 developed by a team led by Hiroyuki Suetaka in 1995. The first camera to use
CompactFlash
CompactFlash (CF) is a flash memory mass storage device used mainly in portable electronic devices. The format was specified and the devices were first manufactured by SanDisk in 1994.
CompactFlash became one of the most successful of the e ...
was the Kodak DC-25 in 1996. The first camera that offered the ability to record
video
Video is an electronic medium for the recording, copying, playback, broadcasting, and display of moving visual media. Video was first developed for mechanical television systems, which were quickly replaced by cathode-ray tube (CRT) syst ...
clips may have been the
Ricoh
is a Japanese Multinational corporation, multinational imaging and electronics company (law), company. It was founded by the now-defunct commercial division of the Riken, Institute of Physical and Chemical Research (Riken) known as the ''Riken ...
RDC-1 in 1995.
In 1995 Minolta introduced the
RD-175, which was based on the Minolta 500si SLR with a splitter and three independent CCDs. This combination delivered 1.75M pixels. The benefit of using an SLR base was the ability to use any existing Minolta AF mount lens. 1999 saw the introduction of the
Nikon D1
The Nikon D1 is a digital single-lens reflex camera (DSLR) made by Nikon Corporation introduced on June 15, 1999. It featured a 2.7-megapixel image sensor, 4.5-frames-per-second continuous shooting, and accepted the full range of Nikon F-mount l ...
, a 2.74 megapixel camera that was the first
digital SLR
A digital single-lens reflex camera (digital SLR or DSLR) is a digital camera that combines the optics and the mechanisms of a single-lens reflex camera with a digital imaging sensor.
The reflex design scheme is the primary difference between ...
developed entirely from the ground up by a major manufacturer, and at a cost of under $6,000 () at introduction was affordable by professional photographers and high-end consumers. This camera also used Nikon F-mount lenses, which meant film photographers could use many of the same lenses they already owned.
Digital camera sales continued to flourish, driven by technology advances. The digital market segmented into different categories, Compact Digital Still Cameras, Bridge Cameras, Mirrorless Compacts and Digital SLRs.
Since 2003, digital cameras have outsold film cameras and
Kodak
The Eastman Kodak Company (referred to simply as Kodak ) is an American public company that produces various products related to its historic basis in analogue photography. The company is headquartered in Rochester, New York, and is incorpor ...
announced in January 2004 that they would no longer sell Kodak-branded film cameras in the
developed world
A developed country (or industrialized country, high-income country, more economically developed country (MEDC), advanced country) is a sovereign state that has a high quality of life, developed economy and advanced technological infrastruct ...
– and in 2012 filed for bankruptcy after struggling to adapt to the changing industry.
Camera phones
The first commercial
camera phone
A camera phone is a mobile phone which is able to capture photographs and often record video using one or more built-in digital cameras. It can also send the resulting image wirelessly and conveniently. The first commercial phone with color ca ...
was the
Kyocera
is a Japanese multinational ceramics and electronics manufacturer headquartered in Kyoto, Japan. It was founded as in 1959 by Kazuo Inamori and renamed in 1982. It manufactures industrial ceramics, solar power generating systems, telecommunic ...
Visual Phone VP-210, released in Japan in May 1999.
It was called a "mobile videophone" at the time, and had a 110,000-
pixel
In digital imaging, a pixel (abbreviated px), pel, or picture element is the smallest addressable element in a raster image, or the smallest point in an all points addressable display device.
In most digital display devices, pixels are the ...
front-facing camera
A front-facing camera, commonly known as a selfie camera, is a common feature of cameras, mobile phones, smartphones, tablets, laptops, and some handheld video game consoles. While stand-alone cameras face forward, away from the operator, tab ...
.
It stored up to 20
JPEG digital images, which could be sent over
e-mail
Electronic mail (email or e-mail) is a method of exchanging messages ("mail") between people using electronic devices. Email was thus conceived as the electronic (digital) version of, or counterpart to, mail, at a time when "mail" meant ...
, or the phone could send up to two images per second over Japan's
Personal Handy-phone System
The Personal Handy-phone System (PHS), also marketed as the Personal Communication Telephone (PCT) in Thailand, and the Personal Access System (PAS) and commercially branded as ''Xiaolingtong'' () in Mainland China, was a mobile network system o ...
(PHS)
cellular network.
The
Samsung
The Samsung Group (or simply Samsung) ( ko, 삼성 ) is a South Korean multinational manufacturing conglomerate headquartered in Samsung Town, Seoul, South Korea. It comprises numerous affiliated businesses, most of them united under the ...
SCH-V200, released in
South Korea
South Korea, officially the Republic of Korea (ROK), is a country in East Asia, constituting the southern part of the Korean Peninsula and sharing a land border with North Korea. Its western border is formed by the Yellow Sea, while its eas ...
in June 2000, was also one of the first phones with a built-in camera. It had a
TFT liquid-crystal display (LCD) and stored up to 20
digital photos at 350,000-pixel resolution. However, it could not send the resulting image over the telephone function, but required a
computer connection to access photos.
The first mass-market camera phone was the
J-SH04
The J-SH04 was a mobile phone made by Sharp Corporation and released by J-Phone ( SoftBank Mobile). It was only available in Japan, and was released in November 2000. It was Japan's first phone with a built-in, back-facing camera. It has a 110,0 ...
, a
Sharp
Sharp or SHARP may refer to:
Acronyms
* SHARP (helmet ratings) (Safety Helmet Assessment and Rating Programme), a British motorcycle helmet safety rating scheme
* Self Help Addiction Recovery Program, a charitable organisation founded in 19 ...
J-Phone
is a Japanese multinational conglomerate holding company headquartered in Minato, Tokyo which focuses on investment management. The Group primarily invests in companies operating in technology, energy, and financial sectors. It also runs th ...
model sold in Japan in November 2000.
It could instantly transmit pictures via cell phone
telecommunication
Telecommunication is the transmission of information by various types of technologies over wire, radio, optical, or other electromagnetic systems. It has its origin in the desire of humans for communication over a distance greater than that fe ...
.
One of the major technology advances was the development of
CMOS sensor
An active-pixel sensor (APS) is an image sensor where each pixel sensor unit cell has a photodetector (typically a pinned photodiode) and one or more active transistors. In a metal–oxide–semiconductor (MOS) active-pixel sensor, MOS field-effec ...
s, which helped drive sensor costs low enough to enable the widespread adoption of camera phones.
Smartphone
A smartphone is a portable computer device that combines mobile telephone and computing functions into one unit. They are distinguished from feature phones by their stronger hardware capabilities and extensive mobile operating systems, whic ...
s now routinely include high resolution digital cameras.
See also
*
History of photography
The history of photography began in remote antiquity with the discovery of two critical principles: camera obscura image projection and the observation that some substances are visibly altered by exposure to light. There are no artifacts or de ...
*
Photographic lens design
The design of photographic lenses for use in still or cine cameras is intended to produce a lens that yields the most acceptable rendition of the subject being photographed within a range of constraints that include cost, weight and materials. F ...
*
Movie camera
A movie camera (also known as a film camera and cine-camera) is a type of photographic camera that rapidly takes a sequence of photographs, either on an image sensor or onto film stock, in order to produce a moving image to project onto a movie sc ...
References
{{reflist
External links
The Digital Camera Museum, with history section
The Definitive Complete History of the Camera
Cameras
Camera
A camera is an optical instrument that can capture an image. Most cameras can capture 2D images, with some more advanced models being able to capture 3D images. At a basic level, most cameras consist of sealed boxes (the camera body), with a ...
Camera
A camera is an optical instrument that can capture an image. Most cameras can capture 2D images, with some more advanced models being able to capture 3D images. At a basic level, most cameras consist of sealed boxes (the camera body), with a ...