This site is created to give you skills about how to improve your photographs, but a bit of history is always necessary.
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| Use of obscure camera |
The official beginning of the
photography is around 1839 with the launched of the
daguerrotype. Previously there was some investigations about sensitive substances like silver salts, an the obscure camera by Nicéphore
Niepce but the images were not permanent. The
obscure camera is an optical instrument that reflects an external image over a paper or a wall. It was useful as a guide to improve drawings.
The daguerrotype owes its name to Daguerre, who was one of the inventors of the photography. The daguerrotype was a surface of polished silver which improved the exposure time and solved some technical problems of the initial procedure of Niepce.
At the same time, Hércules Florence, Hippolythe Bayard and William Fox Talbot were working in others methods without knowing between them. However, thanks to the support of the French government and the quickly use of it by French bourgeoisie, (due to the lesser cost respect to hand-made paintings of the time), the
daguerrotype had a big impulse.
Another precursor method to take photographs was the
calotype or
talbotype. The
calotype was created by William Fox Talbot and was based on a paper of silver nitrate and potassium iodide. This procedure created a negative image that could be positive in so many times. This was the main difference between the
daguerrotype which produced a one-of-a-kind positive image that could not be replicated. Despite this flexibility, calotypes did not displace the daguerrotype.
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| Collodion process |
After 1855, appeared the
collodion process and by the end of that decade it had almost entirely replaced the daguerrotype. The
collodion process or
wet plate negative was invented by Frederic Scott Archer. Using a viscose solution of collodion he coated glass, with light-sensitive silver salts. Collodion printings were done on
albumen paper and it was a very inexpensive process.
The main disadvantage was in the field, because wet plates had to be developed quickly before the emulsion dried. The only possibility was to carry a portable darkroom.
After 1880,
dry plate was invented and it was not necessary to carry a portable darkroom. A hand-held camera was now possible because dry processes absorbed light so quickly.
In 1888, George Eastman and Kodak invented a flexible film that could be rolled making real a mass-produced box camera. With the slogan "you press the button and we do the rest" Kodak created amateur photographers.
The beginnings of
colour photographs were in the XIX century, with lots of imperfections. At first, the colours vanished from the photograph. The first
colour photograph was taken by the physicist James Clark Maxwell in 1861 but the real colour photograph was know as
Autochrome, patented in December 1903 by Lumière brothers. However it was not launched until 1907.
Autochrome was manufactured in France and they were glass-based slides. The biggest collection of autochrome is conserved at Albert-Kahn Museum in France.
The first colour film, called
Kodachrome was used for the first time in 1935 and it was manufactured until 2009.
In 1913 was launched the first
Leika camera and in 1936 the first
SLR of 35 mm. Since then, the improvements of the lens and the cameras have been magnificent. Nowadays the shutter speed can be really fast and it is possible to take a photo in complete darkness. Moreover, it is possible to take images inside the human body and far away in the cyber space.
