Sunday, 12 October 2014

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




Thursday, 9 October 2014

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




Swing lens panoramic camera

Wednesday, 1 October 2014

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



Friday, 12 September 2014

16th Century - Camera Obscura

Although the idea had been tested earlier on, the Camera Obscura became available to the public in the 16th 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 10th Century, and to see the sun in the 13th Century. In the 16th 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

Camera Obscura History