History Of Photography Includes 11th Century Pinhole Camera
The first photograph was taken in 1826, requiring eight hours of bight sunlight exposure on a polished pewter plate the idea for the camera has been around since the 11th century. The invention of the camera obscura was probably the first step in the history of photography, but it was not until the use of silver nitrate and silver chloride that photography began making strides towards creating a permanent image. This early camera, and the pinhole camera was used to view an area through a small hole with the image showing in the back of the box in which it was located.
Although disputed by many realism artists, it has been claimed that the early pinhole cameras were used by artists as they traced the image that appeared on the inner walls. It has been argued that many of the paintings were made by a small hole cut in the wall of a darkened room and the artist then painted over the image that was reflected on the opposite wall, joining the history of photography. Some say it likens the process to the images shown in cartoons of the cave dweller period that has the image shining through being chiseled onto a stone.
Experimentation of using silver on a copper plate produced the first daguerreotype prints, usually reserved for royal portraits. In 1840, the first intermediate negatives were produced that allowed for printing a positive image. This development however, was patented and slowed the growth of photographic negatives and enlargements, stalling the history of photography and its use by everyone.
Color Finally Appears In Photographs
It was not until about 1861 that color images were produced, but the problem was making the silver solutions able to produce blue and green. As techniques improved, the first color photographs required three glass negatives, one sensitized to each primary color, and when the print was brought together, a color image was formed. It is perhaps this period of the history of photography that many of the changes began to bring the camera to everyone.
In 1973, the first digital image, using a charge-couple device, CCD, which is the basics of today's digital photography, consisting of an image of 100 rows and 100 columns. It was not until 1986 that Kodak scientists developed the megapixel sensor that boosted the history of photography into today's photographic world.
Despite the first pinhole camera development centuries ago, the history of photography as it is known today, is less than 200 years old, and the innovations that have made it one of the most popular hobbies in the world came about only in the last 40 or 50 years.
