Fox Talbot

William Henry Fox Talbot, Chess Players, 1840

Color Photography

First color image, Maxwell, 1861

Although color photography was explored throughout the 19th century, initial experiments in color could not fix the photograph and prevent the color from fading. Moreover until the 1870s the emulsions available were not sensitive to red or green light.

The first permanent color photo, an additive projected image of a tartan ribbon, was taken in 1861 by the Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell.^[7] Several patentable methods for producing images (by either additive or subtractive methods, see below) were devised from 1862 on by two French inventors (working independently), Louis Ducos du Hauron and Charles Cros.^[8] Practical methods to sensitize silver halide film to green and then orange light were discovered in 1873 and 1884 by Hermann W. Vogel (full sensitivity to red light was not achieved until the early years of the 20th century).

The first fully practical color plate, Autochrome, did not reach the market until 1907. It was based on a screen-plate method, the screen (of filters) being made using dyed dots of potato starch. The screen lets filtered red, green or blue light through each grain to a photographic emulsion in contact with it. The plate is then developed to a negative, and reversed to a positive, which when viewed through the screen restores colors approximating the original.

Other systems of color photography included that used by Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii, which involved three separate monochrome exposures (’separation negatives’) of a still scene through red, green, and blue filters. These required a special machine to display, but the results are impressive even by modern standards. His collection of glass plates was purchased from his heirs by the Library of Congress in 1948, and is now available in digital format.

Timeline of photography technology

 

• 1826 – Nicéphore Niépce takes the first permanent photograph, a landscape that required an eight hour exposure.
• 1835 – William Fox Talbot produces early permanent photographs through his own process.
• 1839 – Louis Daguerre patents the daguerreotype.
• 1839 – William Fox Talbot invented the positive / negative process widely used in modern photography. He refers to this as photogenic drawing.
• 1839 – John Herschel demonstrates hyposulfite of soda (also known as hypo, or sodium thiosulfate) as a fixer, and makes the first glass negative.
• 1851 – Introduction of the collodion process by Frederick Scott Archer
• 1854 André-Adolphe-Eugène Disdéri credited with introduction of the carte de visite (French “visiting card”). Disdéri introduced a rotating camera which could reproduce eight individually exposed images on a single negative. After printing on albumen paper, the images were cut apart and glued to calling card-sized mounts. These tiny portraits were left by visiting friends, which inspired the name carte de viste.

• 1861 – The first color photograph, an additive projected image of a tartan ribbon, is shown by James Clerk Maxwell.
• 1868 – Louis Ducos du Hauron patents a method of subtractive color photography.
• 1871 – The gelatin emulsion is invented by Richard Maddox
• 1876 – F. Hurter & V. C. Driffield begin systematic evaluation of sensitivity characteristics of film – science of sensitometry
• 1878 – Eadweard Muybridge made a high-speed photographic demonstration of a moving horse, airborne during a trot, using a trip-wire system.
• 1887 – Celluloid film base introduced.
• 1888 – Kodak n°1 box camera is mass marketed; first easy-to-use camera.
• 1887 – Gabriel Lippmann invents a “method of reproducing colours photographically based on the phenomenon of interference”.
• 1891 – Thomas Edison patents the “kinetoscopic camera” (motion pictures)
• 1895 – Auguste and Louis Lumière – Invented the cinématographe
• 1898 – Kodak introduced their Folding Pocket Kodak
• 1900 – Kodak introduced their first Brownie.
• 1901 – Kodak introduced the 120 film.
• 1902 – Arthur Korn devises practical phototelegraphy technology (reduction of photographic images to signals that can be transmitted by wire to other locations); Wire-Photos in wide use in Europe by 1910, and transmitted intercontinentally by 1922 .
• 1907 – The Autochrome Lumière is the first color photography process marketed.
• 1912 – Vest Pocket Kodak using 127 film.
• 1913 – Kinemacolor, the first commercial “natural color” system for movies is invented.
• 1914 – Kodak introduced the Autographic system.
• 1923 – Doc Harold Edgerton invents the xenon flash lamp and strobe photography
• 1925 – The Leica introduced the 35mm format to still photography.
• 1932 – The first full-color Technicolor movie, Flowers and Trees, is made by Disney
• 1934 – The 135 film cartridge was introduced, making 35mm easy to use.
• 1936 – Development of Kodachrome multi-layered reversal color film.
• 1937 – Agfacolor-Neu reversal color film.
• 1939 – Agfacolor negative-positive color material, the first modern “print” film.
• 1942 – Kodacolor, Kodak’s first “print” film.
• 1947 – Dennis Gabor invents holography.
• 1948 – The Hasselblad camera was introduced.
• 1948 – Edwin H. Land introduces the first Polaroid instant image camera.
• 1957 – First Asahi Pentax SLR introduced.
• 1959 – Nikon F introduced.
• 1959 – AGFA introduces the first fully automatic camera, the Optima.
• 1961 – Eugene F. Lally of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory published the first description of how to produce still photos in a digital domain using a mosaic photosensor.^[1]
• 1963 – Kodak introduces the Instamatic
• 1964 – First Pentax Spotmatic SLR introduced.
• 1973 – Fairchild Semiconductor releases the first large image forming CCD chip; 100 rows and 100 columns.
• 1975 – Bryce Bayer of Kodak develops the Bayer filter mosaic pattern for CCD color image sensors
• 1986 – Kodak scientists invent the world’s first megapixel sensor
• 2005 – AgfaPhoto files for bankruptcy. Production of Agfa brand consumer films ends.

Family portrait in late 19th century.

An example of a late 19th century family portrait. Note the custom of mourning the dead in a family photo during that era. A shrine to a deceased child is visible in the background. Also, two of the female members are dressed in black; a contemporary mourning tradition. (c. 1894)

Portrait Photography

The goal of portrait photography is to capture the likeness of a person or a small group of people, typically in a flattering manner. Like other types of portraiture, the focus of photograph is the person’s face, although the entire body and the background may be included. Many people enjoy having professionally made family portraits to hang in their homes, or special portraits to commemorate certain events, such as graduations or weddings.

Portrait photography has been around since the invention and popularization of the camera, and is a cheaper and often more accessible method than portrait painting, which had been used by distinguished figures before the use of the camera. The popularity of the daguerreotype in the middle of the 19th century was due in large part to the demand for inexpensive portraiture. Studios sprang up in cities around the world, some cranking out more than 500 plates a day. The style of these early works reflected the technical challenges associated with 30-second exposure times and the painterly aesthetic of the time. Subjects were generally seated against plain backgrounds and lit with the soft light of an overhead window and whatever else could be reflected with mirrors. As the equipment became more advanced, the ability to capture images with short exposure times gave photographer more creative freedom and thus created new styles of portrait photography. Contemporary portrait photographers strive not only to capture a person’s likeness, but also the person’s mood and thoughts in an instant in time.

Popularization – Portraiture of the middle classes during the Industrial Revolution

A photographer appears to be photographing himself in a 19th-century photographic studio. (c. 1893)

The daguerreotype proved popular in responding to the demand for portraiture emerging from the middle classes during the Industrial Revolution^. This demand, that could not be met in volume and in cost by oil painting, added to the push for the development of photography. By 1851 a broadside by daguerreotypist Augustus Washington was advertising prices ranging from 50 cents to $10. However, daguerreotypes were fragile and difficult to copy. Photographers encouraged chemists to refine the process of making many copies cheaply, which eventually led them back to Talbot’s process.

Ultimately, the modern photographic process came about from a series of refinements and improvements in the first 20 years. In 1884 George Eastman, of Rochester, New York, developed dry gel on paper, or film, to replace the photographic plate so that a photographer no longer needed to carry boxes of plates and toxic chemicals around. In July of 1888 Eastman’s Kodak camera went on the market with the slogan “You press the button, we do the rest”. Now anyone could take a photograph and leave the complex parts of the process to others, and photography became available for the mass-market in 1901 with the introduction of the Kodak Brownie.

In the twentieth century, photography developed rapidly as a commercial service. End-user supplies of photographic equipment accounted for only about 20 percent of industry revenue. For the modern enthusiast photographer processing black and white film, little has changed since the introduction of the 35mm film Leica camera in 1925.

What is the Industrial Revolution?

The Industrial Revolution was a major shift of technological, socioeconomic, and cultural conditions that occurred in the late 18th century and early 19th century in some Western countries. It began in Britain and spread throughout the world, a process that continues as industrialisation. The onset of the Industrial Revolution marked a major turning point in human social history, comparable to the invention of farming or the rise of the first city-states; almost every aspect of daily life and human society is, eventually, in some way influenced.

The first photograph captured of a person!

“Boulevard du Temple”, taken by Louis Daguerre in late 1838 or early 1839, was the first-ever photograph of a person. It is an image of a busy street, but because exposure time was over ten minutes, the city traffic was moving too much to appear. The exception is a man in the bottom left corner, who stood still getting his boots polished long enough to show up in the picture.

Modern photography began in the 1820s with the first permanent photographs.

Nicéphore Niépce’s earliest surviving photograph, circa 1826

The first permanent photograph was 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. Produced with a camera, the image required an eight-hour exposure in bright sunshine. Bitumen hardens with exposure to light. The unhardened material may then be washed away and the metal plate polished, rendering a negative image which then may be coated with ink and impressed upon paper, producing a print. Niépce then 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.

In partnership, Niépce (in Chalon-sur-Saône) and Louis Daguerre (in Paris) refined the existing silver process.^{[citation needed]} In 1833 Niépce died of a stroke, leaving his notes to Daguerre. While he had no scientific background, Daguerre made two pivotal contributions to the process. He discovered that exposing the silver first to iodine vapour before exposure to light, and then to mercury fumes after the photograph was taken, could form a latent image. Bathing the plate in a salt bath then fixes the image. On January 7, 1839 Daguerre announced that he had invented a process using silver on a copper plate called the daguerreotype.^[4] A similar process is still used today for Polaroid photos. The French government bought the patent and immediately made it public domain.

How do I take a photograph with a pinhole camera?

Taking pictures with a pinhole camera is one of the simplest forms of the photographic process. But wonderfully, making and using a pinhole camera provides the student with an understanding and appreciation for not only photography, but human physiology, chemistry, light physics, mathematics, art and possibly, a little magic.All cameras, from the most sophisticated to the pinhole, rely on the same elementary principles, performing in similar fashion to the human eye.Like your eyes, the camera needs light to operate. Light moves into the eye through the pupil, a hole that is made smaller or larger by the iris.

Light gets into the camera through a hole called an aperture that is made larger or smaller by a diaphragm. The camera can also shut out all light with a shutter, similar to closing your eyelids, or opening them to let the light pass.

Recall what happens when you enter a movie theater on a sunny afternoon. It takes some time for your eyes to adjust to the low light. At first you cannot see anything, but soon you began to make out objects and within a short time you can see pretty well, even in that darkened room.

This is much like a camera making a long exposure in low light. The diaphragm opens as wide as it can to allow maximum illumination. For your eyes, the iris opens wide. The eye’s retina, like the camera’s film, is sensitive to changes in light and sends messages to the brain about the images you see. As you leave the theater and return to the sunlight, the opposite situation occurs. The eye’s iris closes down as it’s flooded with light. In bright light the camera’s diaphragm closes down, or stops down.

Unlike the camera, the eye is constantly and automatically reacting to various fight and focusing and refocusing. The camera has to be adjusted for each situation. The camera, however, can bring into focus objects both near and far and record them on film at the same time. Your eye cannot.

While modern cameras and the human eye use sophisticated systems to focus images, including color correction and lenses to improve clarity and magnification, much simpler techniques can and do work.

Consequently, the pinhole camera can produce surprising results using just a light-tight box to capture the image transmitted to film through a simple hole (aperture) made with a pin or, for a better level of performance, a sewing needle .