Photo 101—a (brief) history of photography
An early “camera” from the 1800’s.
Did you know that the word “photography” is literally translated to mean “drawing with light”? The word has been attributed to British Scientist, Sir John Herschel circa 1839. The term is derived from the Greek words ‘phos or phōtós’ (meaning light) and ‘graphê’ (meaning drawing or writing).
Similarly to the word “photography” the term “camera” is also derived from the greeks and is translated to mean “vaulted chamber” or “vaulted building”. The first camera (dating as far back as 500BC) was actually a huge room with a tiny hole pricked into the side, called a Camera Obscura, hence the translation to building or chamber. Images were simply projected onto surfaces, it would take hundreds of years before we were capable of ‘fixing’ a photograph onto any material for keeping. That didn’t come until the early 1800’s.
The first camera (dating as far back as 500BC) was actually a huge room with a tiny hole pricked into the side, called a Camera Obscura,
Just as the computer was once the size of a room, so was the camera! Can you imagine? It can be easy to take advantage of our ability to walk around with tiny cameras in our pocket every day but at one time this invention was only accessible to a select few, typically painters who were trying to achieve photo-realism in their paintings. Some of the painters thought to have used the Camera Obscura in their work include painters like Rembrandt and Vermeer! They would place their canvases inside the room so that the ‘image’ was projected onto their work surface allowing them to “trace” the image and more accurately match the real-world colors present in a scene.
The original ‘camera’ was the Camera Obscura. It was the size of a room and included a very small hole (or aperture) in the side of it to allow light to enter. When the light entered this tiny hole, it would be projected onto the nearest surface but it would appear upside down. Modern lenses help redirect the light at the point of refraction so that it is turned right-side up. Did you know that our eyes also function this way? There is a lens inside of our own eyes that takes the incoming light and flips it back right-side up so that we aren’t seeing the whole world upside down!
Image credit: wikimedia.org
If you have ever heard of a pinhole camera, then you might be familiar with the concept of the Camera Obscura. When I was in high school, we created these pinhole cameras out of shoeboxes. A photosensitive paper is placed in the back of the shoebox and then the shoebox is sealed tight, making sure no light is allowed in. A tiny hole the size of a pin is then poked into one side of the box. If you’re feeling adventurous or have kiddos who might be interested in a fun and adventurous activity you can make your own. Unless you are familiar with developing photos and have the chemicals on hand, you won’t be able to fix the image but you can make a ‘screen’ of sorts that lets you see what is being projected into the box. You can even buy pinhole camera kits! Check out this great resource by National Geographic that walks through the steps to creating one yourself.
Okay, I know you probably feel like you're back in school now so I’ll try to keep this succinct. But come on, how cool is learning that cameras and photos are just making something out of something we are all capable of attaining, light!
So now comes the part that is the most relevant to us today, the act of “fixing” the photograph or making it permanent. For years, photographers were able to bring the light into a space, small or large, and see the corresponding image on a surface. As time went on they even figured out ways to flip the image using mirrors so that by the time it was projected, it appeared as the eye had seen it, all right side up and such. But the trickiest part was figuring out how to take that image and make it “stick” to the surface. The first successful attempt that we are aware of didn’t come until 1827 with Joseph Nicéphore Niépce and an image out of his apartment window.
One of the first permanent images to still exist is by Joseph Nicéphore Niépce. It’s still up for debate what the image actually depicts but it is mostly agreed upon that it is a view of the buildings out his window. Can you believe that at the time it took 8-9 hours to take this type of image? This is called the “shutter speed”. The shutter was open for 9 hours! Just to put it in perspective, to take that same image today we could use a shutter speed of 1/2000th of a second.
It’s at this time where things start to snowball at a pace we hadn’t seen before. Once the world get’s ahold of the technology required to “fix” images, everything goes haywire! Suddenly, photo studios start popping up and cameras get smaller and smaller. In 1888, George Eastman (the founder of Kodak) released the very first film camera. Allowing for regular people to buy a ready-to-use camera! Film could be brought into shops to be developed. This was the beginning of access to photography for the masses and the world of portable cameras that us modern folks take for granted.
The first digital camera was made by Kodak in 1975. It weighed 8 pounds! Image courtesy of the George Eastman Museum.
The next phase of photography was the invention of the digital sensor, removing the need for film and bringing us up to speed with the modern practice of most photographers today. With film, the light was being projected onto a light sensitive surface (through the aperture, think of that opening in the side of the Camera Obscura) to create a negative that then required development to become a positive image reflecting what we saw with our eyes. Now, with digital photographs, the light enters the camera onto a digital sensor which then saves the information in pixel form. The newest development in digital photography removes the mirror that typically would invert the image seen through the lens and instead replaces it with a digital image that has already been ‘flipped’ right-side up by the computer inside the camera itself. Currently, mirrorless cameras are looking like the future but with all of the progress we’ve made in the last 150 years there is not doubt it will be the last iteration of the camera!
Next time you take out your phone to snap a picture, imagine the work you would have had to go through just 50 years ago to take the same image. What will the cameras of the next generation look like?
