The Evolution Of Cameras
Cameras are very common today. Everyone has a camera with them. Every phone has a camera. Camera use to be a device we capture special moments in our lives. Now we can capture very moment in our lives. Cameras are cheap and affordable things to us now but it used to be a luxury. People had to visit studios to get a camera and not everyone owned a camera.
In historic times people used to paint pictures. People’s portraits were done by painters. This usually takes from days to months. The people who were being drawn had to stand in the same place with the same costume from hours on end for the artists to get the perfect portrait.
There has always been natural phenomenon where an image on the other side of the screen is projected from a hole as an inverted image. This was identified many years prior to the creation of photography. It has been documented during the 300 – 400 BC. People had no way to store these images as photographic processes weren’t invented at the time. They had to manually trace them to preserve the image. Today images are easily preserved digitally and on roles. Further the use of security cameras such as nest cam outdoor security camera has become widespread where everything is stored on hard drives or on cloud storages.
The first cameras were room sized with room for one or more persons inside. People had to stay for a long time to get the picture taken and traced. In 1816 Nicephore Niepce used a small camera with a piece of paper coated with silver chloride. The light exposure to certain areas was able to create an image but since he was unable to remove the remaining silver chloride the whole thing turned dark when it was exposed to the light that was necessary when viewing it. Thereafter he used Bitumen of Judea which is an asphalt, and took a picture. He hardened the bright areas and the unhardened areas dissolved. One of these images still exists today and is on display today.
After the death of Niepce his partner Louis Daguerre continued improving on the process and using different chemicals. This continued as other inventors tried creating more efficient and better methods. Since the creation of gelatine dry plates. In 1878 snapshots could be taken instantaneously due to the discovery that heat ripening the gelatine resulted in increased sensitivity. The short exposure resulted in another invention, the mechanical shutter.
George Eastman pioneered the use of photography film. He was the founder of Kodak. From then onwards cameras kept on improving at a rapid rate. People became interested in it and people started using it to make movies and videos. Similarly these cameras became better are now used for many purposes. They have become devices that are part of phones, high quality indoor security camera, video cameras are some different uses.
We have come a long way from tracing images to making multiple copies and multiple pictures with ease. We have the ability to take hundreds of pictures and easily delete the one we don’t want. If not for the hard work and continuous improvement we will not be able to use a camera as it is today.