The Emergence of Modern Photography - Pinholes to Pixels

Now that even disposable cell phones come with digital cameras, it is hard to imagine how far photography has come from its earliest beginnings. Starting with the pinhole camera and the camera obscura, which were first demonstrated in the 1600s, to the actual recording of positive image on metal plates in the 1850s, photography had always been a cumbersome prospect. The photographs of the Civil War involved two horse drawn wagons and a special lightproof buggy to resolve; imagine if a digital camera took two SUVs and a small compact car to carry.

Early photography was limited by available light sources. The incandescent bulb would not exist until the 1880s, while coal and gas lamps made indoor photography tricky. It was not until the concoction of the flash effect (originally powdered magnesium in a vacuum tube) that serious portrait photography took off. Consequently, metal plate positive imagery was supplanted by celluloid flexible films, making it possible to print hundreds of photos from one roll of film. Robert Eastman, who eventually founded Kodak, was the first entrepreneur to sell these new film cameras to the public. These Kodak cameras were double lens shutter boxes with a roll of film in them. To get your prints, you shipped the entire camera back to New York, where the film was secured, prints made, and the camera re-loaded before it was shipped back to the photographer. The entire process, from completing the roll to shipping it to New York to receiving your prints, took an agonizing three weeks.

These early cameras were eventually supplanted by cannistered film. In the 1930s, with the development of Kodachrome color processing, color photography was made available to the public. Through the 40s and 50s, most photograph processing took place at photography labs in major cities, while the turnaround time for processing photographs was cut to about four days.

In the late 1940s, the next phase of the photographic revolution was heralded by the chemist, Edwin Land. His intensive research resulted in the Polaroid Process. His Polaroid instant camera made it possible to take a picture, remove a print from the camera, peel off the protective layer, and see it slowly fade into view. Even with the popularity of the Polaroid camera, it would be the Japanese company, Fuji, that would make the first "disposable" camera during the mid '80s. In many ways, Fuji's disposable camera was a throw-back to the original Kodak model: you bought a camera, loaded with film, turned it in to a processing center, and got your negatives and pictures back. The processing center was worked into your corner drug store, and the turnaround time to get your pictures was only 24 short hours.

The era of film cameras was beginning to wane as early as 1988, when Fuji released the first truly digital camera, the DS-1P. Using CMOS sensors, instead of film, digital cameras could immediately display photographs, authorizing the user to delete or print them instantly. With all the range of digital cameras available, the art of taking a photograph has become even more relevant. There's a good selection of courses in photography, from a plethora of accredited schools and academies, that can help you navigate the digital and film waters of modern photography.