Hi, welcome to Digipix Photo Academy online. Here, we'll be teaching you the art of digital photography on a weekly basis and giving out Freebies, like e-books from time to time,
This week, we'll be starting with d history of photography.
The Birth of Modern Photography
Louis Daguerre was the inventor of the
first practical
process of photography. In 1829, he formed a partnership with Joseph
Nicephore Niepce to improve the process Niepce had developed.
In 1839 after several years of experimentation and Niepce's death, Daguerre
developed a more convenient and effective method of photography, naming it after
himself -
the daguerreotype.
Daguerre's process 'fixed' the images onto a sheet of silver-plated copper.
He polished the silver and coated it in iodine, creating a surface that was
sensitive to light. Then, he put the plate in a camera and exposed it for a few
minutes. After the image was painted by light, Daguerre bathed the plate in a
solution of silver chloride. This process created a lasting image, one that
would not change if exposed to light.
In 1839, Daguerre and Niepce's son sold the rights for the daguerreotype to
the French government and published a booklet describing the process. The
daguerreotype gained popularity quickly; by 1850, there were over seventy
daguerreotype studios in New York City alone.
Negative to Postive Process
The inventor of the first negative from
which multiple postive prints were made was Henry Fox Talbot, an English
botanist and mathematician and a contemporary of Daguerre.
Talbot sensitized paper to light with a silver salt solution. He then exposed
the paper to light. The background became black, and the subject was rendered in
gradations of grey. This was a negative image, and from the paper negative,
Talbot made contact prints, reversing the light and shadows to create a detailed
picture. In 1841, he perfected this paper-negative process and called it a
calotype, Greek for beautiful picture.
Tintypes
Tintypes, patented in 1856 by Hamilton Smith, were
another medium that heralded the birth of photography. A thin sheet of iron was
used to provide a base for light-sensitive material, yielding a positive image.
Wet Plate Negatives
In 1851, Frederick Scoff Archer, an English
sculptor, invented the
wet plate negative. Using a viscous solution of
collodion, he coated glass with light-sensitive silver salts. Because it was
glass and not paper, this
wet plate
created a more stable and detailed negative.
Photography advanced considerably when sensitized materials could be coated
on plate glass. However, wet plates had to be developed quickly before the
emulsion dried. In the field this meant carrying along a portable darkroom.
Dry Plate Negatives & Hand-held Cameras
In 1879, the
dry plate was invented, a glass negative plate with a
dried gelatin emulsion. Dry plates could be stored for a period of time.
Photographers no longer needed portable darkrooms and could now hire technicians
to develop their photographs. Dry processes absorbed light quickly so rapidly
that the hand-held camera was now possible.
Flexible Roll Film
In 1889,
George Eastman invented film with a base that was
flexible, unbreakable, and could be rolled. Emulsions coated on a
cellulose nitrate film base, such as Eastman's, made
the mass-produced box camera a reality.
Color Photographs
In the early 1940s, commercially viable color films
(except Kodachrome, introduced in 1935) were brought to the market. These films
used the modern technology of dye-coupled colors in which a chemical process
connects the three dye layers together to create an apparent color image.
