Photography has come a long way since Joseph Niépce took the first fixed image on that hot summer day in 1927. It’s as well the sun was shining or he might have got nothing and threw the equipment away in disgust! Even so, it took 8 hours to get the image, not quite a commercial proposition but a tremendous advance nevertheless.

Although Niépce was the first, it was his successor and eventual partner that was to turn the process into a practical product that could be used to form permanent images.  An operatic scene painter, his burning ambition was to capture the images of the performances he regularly saw, and it was several years before he reduced the exposure time to half an hour, and was able to create images that did not disappear.

His system was called the Daguerreotype and it became the standard form of photography in its day, even though the equipment needed was expensive.  This was eventually to count against it once Henry Fox Talbot, the British photographic pioneer, came up with his Calotype which could allow reusable negatives to be produced from which copies could be made. However, he was way ahead of his time and Daguerreotype remained the method of choice for most 19th century photographers, while Talbot defended his patents and eventually gave up.  However, his process was refined by Eastman and is now the basis of modern film cameras.

The major advance after that was the discovery of light sensitive materials that could be coated onto plate glass. Initially a wet emulsion was applied to the glass and had to be used immediately.  Then a dry form of emulsion was developed which would allow the transfer of the coating from a glass plate to a roll of film.  This is what allowed the portable box camera to become a reality. It was George Eastman that pioneered the development of the photographic film using the Talbot process, and his early camera was preloaded and the film developed once it was returned to the factory after use, a reloaded camera then being returned to the customer.

Commercially viable color systems were made available in the 1940s, and although the basic tricolour system used is still being used today, the quality then was relatively poor and not light-fast.  Although Kodak introduced Kodachrome film in 1935, black and white was the order of the day for consumer cameras until well into the 1950s.

Cellulose nitrate (or nitrocellulose) film allowed the development of movie film in rolls, and the first 35 mm film was developed for the camera in the 1920s.  The development of the twin lens reflex camera in 1929 was made possible with medium-format 60 mm roll film.  There followed some innovations such as the Polaroid or instant camera, often referred to as the Land camera because it was invented by Edwin Herbert land, and in 1986 Fuji introduced the disposable camera.

Now, however, it is digital, made possible by the development of the charge-coupled device (CCD) by Bole and Smith of ST&T Bell Labs.  The first such camera was unveiled by Sony in 1981.  It was the Sony Mavica, but the camera was not completely digital and the images had to be displayed on television:  they could not be printed. The 1990 Kodak DCS-100 was the first proper commercial digital camera, but the high price tag rendered it suitable only for commercial use.  Digital cameras now allow higher quality images than the best 35 mm film results, and the majority of manufacturers no longer develop 35 mm film cameras.

In the meantime, however, there might still be a use for film cameras due to the ethical issues involved with digital images that can be edited using simple photo-editing software. Many courts will not accept digital photographs as evidence for this reason.  Photography has come a long way in 150 years, and it is difficult to see what the next major develop will be; but we wait in anticipation.

A Photography Buying Guide.

Photographic equipment is very popular in the digital age because the images are instant and there is no need to purchase film.  There are many product buying guides, but what is most helpful is a review or comparison site to enable you to make a choice based upon knowledge of a wider range of products than if you visited a High Street shop selling only their own products,.  However, here are a few pointers to keep in mind when buying cameras and photographic equipment.

1.  Megapixels and Pixel Size
First a few words about megapixels, since this is generally misunderstood. It is not just the pixel count that determines quality of image, but also many other factors.  One is noise and the pixel size. A larger pixel has less noise and produces better images, so in many cases 5 meg of large pixels is better than 7 meg of small pixels. A lot depends on the size of your print, and for a 6” x 4” print, 2.2 megapixels at 300 pixels/inch is good. However, if you want larger prints, then 10 x 8 would need seven or eight megapixels and 14 x 11 fourteen megapixels.