In the mid-1920s, German camera maker Leica used this technology to create the first photo camera to use the 35mm format. Other film formats were also refined during this period, including medium sized roll film with a paper backing that made it easy to handle in daylight. Sheet film in sizes 4 by 5 inches and 8 by 10 inches also became common, especially for commercial photography, eliminating the need for fragile glass plates. We no longer use glass plates to capture negatives and cameras can take many photos per second. To understand how photography has evolved from processes such as the daguerreotype to the iPhone camera, one must read the history of the medium. This history is intertwined with other developments of the past two centuries, including political unrest, the liberation of women and the civil rights movement.
Holland Day, Alfred Stieglitz and Edward Steichen clear the way with Stieglitz, in which they remarkably introduced photography in collections of museums and art galleries. The first digital photography was made in 1957; That is almost 20 years before the Kodak engineer invented the first digital camera. The image shows Russell Kirsch’s son and has a resolution of 176 × 176, a square photo worthy of any Instagram profile. The first photo of the world taken on camera was taken in 1826 by Joseph Nicéphore Niépce. The photo was taken from the windows above the Niépce estate in the French Burgundy region. This image was captured by a process known as heliography, using Judean bitumen covered with a piece of glass or metal; the bitumen that hardened in proportion to the amount of light that fell on it.
Although these plates were much more sensitive to light, they had to develop quickly. Photographers had to have chemistry on hand and many traveled in cars that doubled like a dark room. The first camera obscura used a hole in a tent to project an image from outside the store to the dark area. Only in the 17th century did the camera obscura become small enough to be portable.
Muybridge continued his studies from 1884 to 1887, this time in collaboration with the University of Pennsylvania and a local zoo, where he used his technique to photograph moving animals and humans. The results of his studies, a total of 100,000 images presented as 781 records, were published in 1887 in the book Animal Locomotion, a milestone in the history of photography. The exposure times were long and the resulting images have a romantic and spiritual quality. He often wanted to portray innocence, piety and wisdom through his photos, or portray figures and scenes of religion or literature.
After each exposure, the camera was turned to the next part of the panorama to make a new negative. The Kodak Brownie camera was one of the most popular cameras in photography history. Brownie popularized cheap photography and introduced the concept of snapshot to an audience eager to preserve their personal and family memories. With its simple operation and the starting price of $ 1, it was intended as a camera that everyone could pay and use for. These blueprints, or sunprints as they were sometimes called, are considered the first photographic images. However, the Niepce process required eight hours of light exposure to create an image that would fade quickly.
The next attempt was made by Nicéphore Niépce, who used silver chloride coated paper in 1816 to take negative photos. He is the oldest surviving photo from 1827 or 1828 and must be exhibited for 8 hours to a few days. His partner Louis Daguerre refined the process and took the first photo he had of people and a much shorter exposure time. William Henry Fox Talbot improved the fixation of the photos and a calotype process that allowed the reproduction of photos of a translucent negative image. They also experimented with different materials that gave different image quality and required different exposure times. Talbot’s first “sensitive papers” experiments with silver chloride required camera positions of an hour or more.
The exposure time was further shortened so that the camera could finally hold in hand, rather than ride a tripod and move photographed objects. At the same time, the Englishman William Henry Fox experimented with what would eventually become his calotype method, patented in February 1841. Talbot’s innovations included creating a paper negative and new technology that brought about the transformation from the negative to a positive image, enabling more than one copy of the image. The boudoir photographer in crawfordsville Indiana remarkable detail of Talbot’s method can be seen in his famous photo, The Open Door, which captures the view through a medieval-looking entrance. The texture of the rough stones around the door, the vines that grow up the walls and the rustic broom that leans into the doorway show the minute details captured by Talbot’s photographic improvements. Eugene Atget worked in Paris between 1897 and 1927 and saw himself as a documentary photographer, capturing the sights of the old town.