Evolution of Photography

-Karthik Gurumurthy

Photography has this amazing thousand-year journey that’s pretty mind-blowing when you think about it! It all started with the camera obscura (literally “dark chamber” in Latin) way back in the 10th century. An Arab scientist named Alhazen first described this simple darkened room with a tiny hole that would project an upside-down image on the wall inside. Artists would stand inside these chambers to trace images – talk about a low-tech projector! By the 1500s, they figured out they could add glass lenses to make the projected images sharper.

But actual photography didn’t come until much later. In the early 1850s, an English sculptor named Frederick Scott Archer developed the collodion process, coating glass plates with this light-sensitive goop made from powdered cotton dissolved in ether (super flammable stuff!). You’d get a negative on the wet plate, then press it against photographic paper while still wet to create a positive print.

The real game-changer came in the late 1870s when George Eastman invented dry plates – glass plates coated with dried gelatin containing silver chloride. Unlike wet plates that had to be developed right away, dry plates could be exposed and developed later. This meant photographers could finally leave the darkroom behind! Eastman started his company in 1881 to sell these dry plates.

Eastman’s next brilliant move was creating flexible film in 1884. Until then, cameras had to be huge to hold those glass plates. With rollable film, cameras could shrink down dramatically. He named his company Kodak in 1888 and started making small pocket cameras for everyday people. Their famous slogan was pure genius: “You press the button, we do the rest.”

The SLR (single-lens reflex) camera was another major innovation. When you press the button to take a picture, a mirror flips out of the way so light can hit the film. With an SLR, you can adjust the aperture (that opening that controls how much light gets in) and focus the lens for the sharpest possible image.

Then in 1947, Edwin Land revolutionized things with the Polaroid instant camera. When you took a picture, a sealed film packet would pass through rollers, bursting open a pod of chemicals. The packet would slide out the front, and a minute later – boom! – you had a photo with a positive image on one side and negative on the other. Modern Polaroids used dry chemicals in the film pod.

Digital cameras came along more recently, converting light patterns into digital format and storing them as electrical impulses in the computer’s memory. With a digital camera, you can take a picture and instantly see it on screen, print it out, or share it online – no film development needed!

Recent trends have made cameras smaller, easier to use with auto-focus (just point and shoot), and thanks to microchip technology, even amateur photographers can take near-professional quality shots. There are even disposable cameras made of plastic and cardboard that cost barely more than a roll of film.

Beyond regular photography, specialized cameras can capture types of electromagnetic radiation invisible to humans – everything from radio waves and infrared to ultraviolet, X-rays, and gamma rays. The military uses these for surveillance.

It’s wild to think how we went from rooms with tiny holes to the sophisticated digital cameras we carry in our pockets today!