Photography Basics

What is a Camera?

Before moving along to the details of the history of the camera, let’s understand what a camera is first. In the simplest terms, a camera is a device used to take photographs and is the main tool used for the art of photography. Photography comes from the Greek words “photos” which means light, and “graphein” which means “to draw”. This word in photography history was first used by Sir John F.W. Herschel in 1839.

A camera therefore is a device which captures light and records the images by the action of light or other related forms of radiation on a sensitive material. A camera makes use of lenses, mirrors, its own light source, and the media on which the captured image can be saved. So now we know, in basic terms, what a camera is, let’s get into the history of the camera in more detail.

In the history of the camera, the camera obscura had been around for many years, but no one has been able to preserve the images in a photographic form. It was only in 1827 when Joseph Nicephore Niepce used the camera obscura for coming up with heliographs or sun prints which made it the first tool used in photography history. It can be said that these heliographs were the prototype of today’s modern photographs which used light to draw the picture.

The resulting photograph is very different from the photographs we know today though. Niepce made use of an engraving and a bitumen-coated metal plate which was then exposed to the light. The darker, shadowy parts on the engraving were able to block light, but lighter areas allowed just enough light to react with the chemicals on the metal plate. The image had initially been invisible, but after placing the metal plate in a solvent, it helped produce the image of the engraving. There are two major cons to this method though, it required eight hours of exposure to create the image and after it appears, it tends to fade away quickly.

Niepce had the idea of transferring images on another medium for a more permanent solution, although not enough to be counted as successful yet. Louis Daguerre, Niepce’s partner worked on his idea after Niepce died in 1833. Four years later, Daguerre succeeded in creating the daguerreotype which is the first practical photographic process. He unveiled the daguerreotype in 1839 where he showed how he used a silver-plated copper sheet that has iodine vapor to help give it a light-sensitive coating which is silver iodide. The resulting image was developed in mercury vapor which was then fixed with a strong sodium chloride solution. Quite a potent mix of chemicals don’t you think?

 

For centuries images have been projected onto surfaces. The camera obscura and the camera lucida were used by artists to trace scenes as early as the 16th century. These early cameras did not fix an image in time; they only projected what passed through an opening in the wall of a darkened room onto a surface. In effect, the entire room was turned into a large pinhole camera. Indeed, the phrase camera obscura literally means “darkened room,” and it is after these darkened rooms that all modern cameras have been named.

The first photograph is considered to be an image produced in 1826 by the French inventor Nicéphore Niépce on a polished pewter plate covered with a petroleum derivative called bitumen of Judea. It was produced with a camera, and required an eight hour exposure in bright sunshine. However this process turned out to be a dead end and Niépce began experimenting with silver compounds based on a Johann Heinrich Schultz discovery in 1724 that a silver and chalk mixture darkens when exposed to light