1900 - The Kodak Brownie

The Kodak Brownie was a highly popularised low cost camera, and was the first camera to introduce the idea of a snapshot. It was named “Brownie” because it was a brown leatherette covered cardboard box with a wooden film carrier.  The Brownie was produced cheaply so that anyone could afford to own one, and it was also very simple and easy for even a novice photographer to use. It used to cost only $2.00 for the camera, film and to get the film processed once the pictures had been taken

Pros:

-          Cheap

-          Easy to use

-          Film was easily accessible

Cons:

-          It was quite a large box

1844 - The Megaskop Camera

The Megaskop camera was the first camera that was able to take a panoramic image. The lenses were able to rotate 110 degrees to 360 degrees to get a quality image of the landscape. It was operated by a handle and gears and used the same copper plates as the Daguerrotype Camera.

Pros:

-          First camera to get a detailed panoramic image

Cons:

-          Uses a very poisonous chemical (mercury) to pruduce the image

-          Takes 3 hours to hand polish one plate

1839 - Daguerrotype Camera

The Daguerrotype Camera was developed by a man named Louis Jacques Mande Daguerre and Joseph Nicéphorre Niéce. They were both inventors, and discovered that if a copper plate coated with silver iodine was exposed to the light in a camera, fumed with mercury vapour and made permanent by a solution of salt, that a permanent image would be created.

Pros:

-          Very good, clear image

-          Unlimited dynamic range

Cons:

-          Uses a very poisonous chemical (mercury) to produce the image

-          Take 3 hours to hand polish one plate

16th Century - Camera Obscura

Although the idea had been tested earlier on, the Camera Obscura became available to the public in the 16^th century. The idea for making this camera dates back to the times of the Ancient Greeks. Aristotle noticed a beam of light passing through a crack in the wall of a dark room, and the image was reversed onto the opposing wall. The theory was also used to test whether light travelled in a straight line in the 10^th Century, and to see the sun in the 13^th Century. In the 16^th Century, the camera was a valuable aid to artists, which enabled them to create clearer drawings with more detail and accurate perspective. It was a large box, with a small pinhole at the end, which enabled light to reflect a flipped image onto the back surface, which could then be traced.

The pros and cons for the Camera Obscura are as follows:

Pros:
- Easy to make (using a cardboard box)
- Large depth of field

Cons:
- Unable to zoom in on a focus, or out to get a wider range of image
- Image had to be traced.
- Quite large, was hard to carry around
- No memory - unable to 'save' images
- Resolution was poor