Photography, an instant history
by John Bailey
Our history time-line now moves to the mid 60's with the first experiments which led to the development of the modern digital cameras.
The first recorded experiments with how light could be captured by semi-conductor technology were in 1969. History indicates that the first ‘digital camera’ was put together by Steve Sasson in the Kodak laboratories in 1975. It was made from odd bits and pieces acquired from the Kodak companies products and a cassette recorder was used to store the images. This was then played into a TV set to view the images. A patent was granted for the device.
From then onwards development to something looking like a film camera took place. Film was replaced by a semiconductor sensor known as a Charge Coupled device (CCD), which was fixed inside the camera. High capacity batteries, a screen for viewing the pictures and magnetic cards for storing the images added to existing optics were all under constant development. Cameras that looked like standard film cameras began to appear at the beginning of the 21st century.
After this, developments took place at a high speed and various brands of digital cameras appeared manufactured by existing film camera manufacturers and new ones, in particular Sony and Samsung. My first digital camera, an Olympus, was purchased in 2000 and is now in my historical collection! Since then development has been unbelievably fast with new cameras appearing by the month and the price falling until good basic digital cameras are now available at supermarket prices.
So why has this dramatic change taken place, virtually wiping out over a hundred years of the film camera and all the supporting industry of film production and processing? Here are some of the reasons for this change.
It is an every day occurrence to find small digital cameras in handbags and inside pockets. The features that attract many people to the current range of small digital cameras, are the ease of use, just ‘point and shoot’, the ability to see on the screen the pictures just taken , ability to delete any disasters and latterly the ability to store a large number of pictures. The digital camera thus has also become a form of album for showing family pictures to relations and friends. More recently shooting movies has become another option included in many of this type of camera.
As this type of camera has become very popular, so the price has dropped and a camera with high specifications can be obtained for well under £100.
For dedicated photographers, the development of the Digital Single Lens Reflex (DSLR) camera has taken place with the ability to use a wide range of lenses fitted to what is known as a “Digital Back”, a replacement of the original film back. The resolution, the ability to see greater picture detail, has now increased to a level very close if not equivalent to that of the original film stock. This allows a small part of a picture to be selected and expanded to a larger size without loss of sharpness by the use of image editing software. Once the images have been taken then they can be edited by a range of very powerful image editing software to produce images of extremely high quality. These cameras are aimed at the semi or full professional photographer, are generally heavy and with some of the very expensive lenses that you see at football matches can weigh several kilograms and cost thousands of pounds. Another type of digital camera that has become increasingly popular is what is known as a “bridge” camera, a camera that has a fixed lens but many of the features of the digital back. Many of the DSLR’s and Bridge cameras also incorporate a movie option. These cameras are not as bulky as the full DSLR cameras, offer fewer facilities but allow a range of adjustments for the keen amateur photographer.
I am not going to deal with the parallel developments of cameras in the modern telephones although the question arises as to whether a camera will be needed at all in the future.
The modern digital camera provides various facilities way beyond those available in their film equivalents. For example when a picture is taken a considerable amount of additional data is also captured and added to the picture file. The time and date, the camera settings such as shutter speed, focal length, white balance etc. Face filters and Global Position Systems (GPS) are beginning to appear so that you know where each image was taken. The “point and shoot” facility implies that the camera automatically selects the best settings for a particular situation, landscape, portrait, close or distant and generally does a good job.
As mentioned earlier there is now available a range of image editing computer software that allows delicate to significant changes to be made to an existing image so beware of the comment “a camera never lies” . . . or does it?