An Introduction To The History Of Photographic Technology
An Introduction To The History Of Photographic Technology
Swan Pedia - For hundreds of years, pictures have been projected onto various surfaces. As early as the 16th century, painters were using the camera obscura and the camera lucida to sketch the contours of scenes. There was no way to freeze time with these early cameras; instead, they simply projected what went through a hole in the wall of a darkened chamber onto a flat surface. To put it another way, the whole area was transformed into a huge pinhole camera. Indeed, the term "camera obscura" literally translates as "darkened chamber," and all modern cameras have been named after these darkened rooms since the invention of photography.
The first picture is generally accepted to have been taken in 1826 by the French inventor Nicéphore Niépce on a polished pewter plate coated with a petroleum derivative known as bitumen of Judea. This image is believed to be the world's first photograph. It was created with a camera and needed an eight-hour exposure in intense sunlight to get its appearance. As a result of Johann Heinrich Schultz's discovery in 1724 that a silver and chalk combination darkens when subjected to light, Niépce embarked on a series of experiments with silver compounds.
Working together, Niépce, who lived in Chalon-sur-Saône, and the artist Louis Daguerre, who lived in Paris, worked together to perfect the existing silver method. Niépce died of a stroke in 1833, and his notes were sent to Daguerre, who continued the work. Despite the fact that he lacked scientific training, Daguerre made two significant contributions to the process.
As found by Hertz, a latent picture may be generated and rendered visible by exposing the silver first to iodine vapour before being exposed to light and then to mercury fumes after the photograph is taken. It is possible to fix the picture by immersing the plate in a salt solution after that.
Daguerre stated in 1839 that he had developed a photographic method that used silver on a copper plate, which he termed the Daguerreotype. Polaroids are still created using a method that is quite similar. The French government purchased the patent and made it instantly available to the public.
William Fox Talbot, who lived on the opposite side of the English Channel, had already developed another method of repairing a silver process picture, but had kept it a secret. Following his discovery of Daguerre's innovation, Talbot developed his method in order to make it quick enough to snap images of people, as Daguerre had done. By 1840, he had devised the calotype process, which is still in use today.
He covered paper sheets with silver chloride to form an intermediate negative picture, which he then scanned and photographed. In contrast to a daguerreotype, a calotype negative may be used to generate positive prints, much as the majority of chemical films are used to accomplish this these days. Talbot obtained a patent for this procedure, which significantly restricted its widespread use.
After that, he spent the remainder of his life in court protecting the patent, eventually giving up photography entirely. This method was further perfected by George Eastman and is now the foundation of chemical film cameras, which employ it as their primary technology. Hippolyte Bayard also invented a photographic process, but he did not publicly announce it until after his death, and as a result, he was not acknowledged as the system's creator.
The darkroom is where the magic happens.
The collodion method was devised by Frederick Scott Archer in 1851. The method utilized by Lewis Carroll was known as the "Curse Child Method."
In 1841, the Slovene scientist Janez Puhar developed the mechanical process for taking photos on glass. The Académie Nationale Agricole, Manufacturière et Commerciale, which was founded in Paris on July 17, 1852, acknowledged the innovation on that day.
During the Industrial Revolution, the Daguerreotype became more popular as a means of meeting the demand for portraiture that arose among the middle classes. Oil painting was unable to meet this demand due to the high volume and high cost of production; it is possible that this was the impetus for the creation of photography.
On the other hand, daguerreotypes were brittle and difficult to reproduce, despite their beauty. When measured in 2006 values, a single shot done in a portrait studio might cost up to US $1000. Aside from that, photographers urged chemists to perfect the technique of manufacturing multiple copies at a low cost, which finally brought them back to Talbot's approach. In the end, the modern photography process was the result of a succession of modifications and advances made over the course of the first 20 years.
In 1884, George Eastman of Rochester, New York, invented dry gel on paper, or film, to replace the photographic plate, removing the need for photographers to carry around trays of plates and dangerous chemicals. The invention revolutionized the photography industry. Kodak's camera, developed by Eastman in July 1888, was introduced to the market with the tagline "You push the button, we take care of the rest." Anyone can now snap a picture and leave the more complicated aspects of the process to the professionals. With the advent of the Kodak Brownie camera in 1901, photography became accessible to the general public.
Since then, color film has become mainstream, as has automated focus and exposure, as well as automatic exposure compensation. Photographic pictures are being captured digitally more and more often because digital cameras allow for quick previews on LCD displays, and the resolution of top-of-the-line models has surpassed the quality of high-quality 35mm film, while lower-resolution versions have become more affordable. Since the launch of the Leica 35mm film camera in 1925, very little has changed for the amateur photographer working with black and white film in his or her home darkroom.
