Camera Obscura

The Camera Obscura is a scientific photograph, where the image is reflected directly from the sun’s rays to diagonally flip the image upside down. To achieve this, you must be in a dim lit room with a black cover that you can poke a hole through. By doing this, the reflection will convert the image from the outside. However, this process makes it difficult to determine the origins of photography, since it’s a natural image which is shown below.

Nicephore Niepce

Niepce cleverly found a way for the camera obscura to be transformed from a projection to a photograph that he could physically hold. However, his work had a flaw as they would fade during daylight and would eventually turn fully black. The process of having this fixed image was a long one, as it took him 8 hours to produce this one. His images were also in monochrome colours, and weren’t as clear as the images made today, but at this time, this image was revolutionary.

Henry Fox Tabolt

Tabolt discovered what he called, “Photogenic Drawing”, where he realised if you use a a thin sheet of paper covered in salt and lightly coated with silver nitrate, and left if out in the sun with pieces covering certain parts to block the light out, and put it under a piece of glass, that you could make you’re own ‘Photogenic Drawing’.

Later on, he began to create ‘mouse traps’, which were essentially small wooden boxes, with a little lens and at the back, Tabolt stuck a piece of paper to it that is chemically sensitive to the light.

Louis Daguerre

Louis is known for his famous product ‘The Daguerreotype’, which was a heavy camera that makes one copy on a silvered copper plate. The images that this camera produced were detailed and accurate in black and white, making them iconic as it was the first successful type of image, like a polaroid. However, the Daguerreotype was produced around the same time as the ‘mousetraps’, but since Tabolt’s work could produce more than one copy, his work became more liked and used more often.

Richard Maddox

Maddox designed ‘dry plates’ which was a piece of glass covered with silver bromide, but his camera meant that you didn’t have to develop the images right after taking the photo. His work was revolutionary for his time, as his camera became the first camera that could be held with one hand, whereas the others had to be placed. However, the images still had to be developed in a dark room, similarly to some of the other camera designs.

George Eastman

Kodak (Brownie)

Digital Photography

Digital photography is a much simpler version of photography, compared to the Camera Obscura where they had to