Historic events

The Advent of Photography

The advent of photography has had enormous impact on our civilization. Our record of the late 19th century is much richer and more complete than that of the early 19th century, in part because of the use of photographs to document historic events, places, and people. The story of photography really begins with the camera obscura (c. 1580 AD). This was a dark room with a lens mounted in one wall, which projected a scene onto the opposite wall. An artist could sit in the room and trace the image to produce a very accurate record of the scene. In 1725, Schulze discovered that silver nitrate was light sensitive. A sheet of paper soaked in silver nitrate would turn black wherever light hit it as silver ions were reduced to silver metal. The image was not fixed, however, in the sense that when the photograph was brought into daylight, the whole image would turn black. It was almost 100 years later (1819) that sodium hyposulfite was found to remove the unexposed silver ions, leaving a permanent or "fixed" image behind. The first widely used photographic process was developed by Daguerre and Niepce in 1839. They used copper plates coated with silver, which had been exposed to iodine vapours (producing silver iodide). Wherever light hit the silver iodide coating, the silver ions were reduced to silver metal. The unexposed areas were removed with sodium hyposulfite, leaving exposed copper. Thus the image was bright (silver) where light had exposed the plate, and dark (copper) where it had been unexposed.

Silver processes were improved continuously throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries. Silver bromide replaced the earlier silver chloride and iodide processes beginning in 1885. The first celluloid films were introduced in 1895. This film was composed of nitrocellulose, which is extremely flammable. Celluloid was phased out in the 1930's with the advent of safety film. Colour photography was commercialized in 1935 with the introduction of Kodachrome. Polaroid instant prints were introduced in 1948. Today almost all photographic film consists of silver bromide on acetate film. Almost all photographic paper is silver bromide on various papers.

Most photography is based on silver as the light-sensitive agent. But there are several non-silver processes. Cyanotypes (blueprints) are based on photosensitive iron compounds. Platinotypes are based on platinum chloride. And the gum bichromate process is based on light-sensitive chromium compounds. The gum bichromate process was popular from about 1880 to 1920, particularly among artists. It has the advantage of relatively simple chemistry and colour photography is as easy as black and white with this process. It has the disadvantage that it is less sensitive than silver bromide and so exposure times are much longer. Consequently the bichromate process has been used only for prints, not for negatives. After the invention of colour silver bromide photography, the bichromate process fell into obscurity. Beginning in the late 1970's the bichromate process regained some popularity in artistic circles.

Early Photojournalism

PJ is very much a 20^th century pursuit. It wasn’t until the turn of the previous century that all the necessary technology was in place to enable photographs to be reproduced in newspapers.

First newspaper "pictures" were actually artists’ impressions of real photographs. Woodcuts had to be made so the pictures could be reproduced using the archaic printing process of the time. These were met with some scepticism as it was felt that images on the printed page only detracted from the far more important pursuit of reading.

One man, Joseph Pulitzer, changed all that in 1883 when he bought the NY based World newspaper and began putting sensationalist pictures amongst its pages. Pictures of criminals, crime and death were used to cries of bad taste from many readers. The photographers who tool these pictures were subjected to public anger, but Putlitzer continued to print the images and in three years he turned World newspaper into the most profitable paper ever published.

The early 1900’s saw the halftone process perfected which enabled actual photographs to be published, without the need for intermediate drawings. The process used a ruled glass screen, which broke the images into thousands of small dots. The reproduction was far more realistic, but it took some time before the process was universally adopted.

More and more newspapers started using photographs and so the rise of photojournalism began. An early purveyor of the medium was Lewis Hine who pricked the American conscience by producing disturbing images of immigrants in over-populated slums, often doing pitiful jobs. He also exposed child labour practices. Indeed, much of the early PJ work came from America, although it soon became a worldwide vocation.

The Evolution of Film

1839

The earliest commercially successful photographic process was the Daguerreotype, perfected by Frenchman Louis Daguerre. Daguerre devised a process using a thin sheet of silver soldered to a copper plate, made sensitive to light by exposure to iodine fumes. The plate was then placed in a light-tight holder and loaded in a camera on a tripod. After a 15 to 30 minutes exposure – during which the subjects had to keep still – the plate was developed using hazardous mercury vapours. The image was fixed permanently by washing the plate in a strong solution of salt and hot water, dissolving unexposed silver iodine particles. The result: an unclear direct positive mirror image, but with a rich tonality that caused a sensation throughout Europe and America. It was the Englishman Henry Fox Talbot, who invented a grainy paper negative-positive process. This process provided the basic formula for all photographic processes that followed.

1841

Calotype process patented.

1888

Photography was made accessible to millions of people by George Eastman, an American who began selling dry gelatin-coated glass plates to photo dealers in New York. He invented 70mm wide high speed roll film, eliminating the need for a tripod. He designed and patented the perfect amateur camera, and coined the word Kodak, which has been synonymous with photography ever since.

1889

Thomas Edison was designed his movie camera, and needed to standardise on a film width. He slit long rolls of the 70mm Kodak film down the middle, and then cut perforations in both edges for the camera sprocket teeth. And so the 35mm film format was born, albeit for movies.

1925

Oscar Barnack, a designer at Ernst Leitz optics designed a small camera that used short lengths of the 35mm movie film. The Leica camera hit the German market and within a few years its design was being copied by camera makers all over the world. Understandably, the demand for 35mm cameras and film soared, especially from amateurs and photojournalists. The 35mm format became the standard for still photography, and the demand from quality film emulsions drove manufacturers in the US, Japan and Germany to satisfy it.

1938

Colour films from Kodak and Agfa made an appearance. Kodachrome was a 12 ISO slide film adapted from movie stock, which had to be sent back to Kodak for complicated processing.

1963

Edwin Land caused a sensation with his Polaroid camera and its instantly processed peel-apart print. Over the years, film manufacturers launched other camera and film formats on the international market. But the small Instamatic 126, the tiny pocket-sized 110 and the infamous Disc had grainy emulsions had poor emulsions and poor image quality. They never enjoyed the success and popularity of the 35mm format. As film emulsions improved, so did image resolution and colour reproduction. Many professional photographers were adopting 35mm camera equipment because of their superb lenses and the image quality delivered by modern films.

1970

For the first time in history more colour film than black and white film were sold.

1990’s

Advances in all fields of photography have come thick and fast. Cameras and lenses are now designed by computers. Film emulsion layers are designed down to molecular levels. Processing standards by major manufacturers are strictly monitored and controlled. In fact, today’s film emulsions are so good, that some of the biggest film and camera makers have banded together to create the Advanced Photo System (APS). The APS format is slightly smaller than 35mm, but offers photographers many useful options. Using IX (information exchange) technology, data recorded during picture taking is transferred to the lab during processing.

The Earliest Portrait?
	In 1989, a French photography expert and collector named Marc Pagneux bought a daguerreotype at the Vanves flea market. It was described as "a portrait of a man, a bit faded, milky in tone, in a pitch pine frame." And on the back was written the word Daguerre. It was enough to make even an amateur’s heart skip a beat.
Could the image have been made by Louis-Jacques-Mandè Daguerre himself? Pagneux soon learned that his discovery was dreamed. For upon opening the frame other words were found written in pencil: "M Huet, 1837." The date was vital: Until now, the first photograph of a person - a shot by Daguerre - was purported to have been taken in 1838. (In that famous photo, "Boulevard du Temple," the person’s image came about by chance: a passerby who had stopped to have his boots shined happened to be captured by the long exposure.) The newly found image would rewrite photo history - if it proved to be authentic. That now seems to be well established. After keeping his daguerreotype secret for nearly ten years, Pagneux recently announced its existence in the respected journal Etudes Photographiques. "I never doubted the authenticity of my purchase, but I needed the ultimate scientific proof," says Pagneux. The proof came from Jacques Roquecourt, a researcher and Daguerre specialist, who determined that the image was a Daguerre from 1837. Roquencourt also showed that the exposure time of the portrait did not exceed two or three minutes¾ another surprise, since exposures from thois period were thought to last at least half-hour. Who was Monsieur Huet? An artist who worked at Paris’s Museum of Natural History. It is known that during this time Daguerre made images of fossils, and historians believe he worked at the museum, where Nicholas Huet was making drawings of the same specimens. So these two men would very likely have met.
NICOLE LUCAS AND JEAN BEAUCHESNE

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Summary

200BC

The Camera Obscura was used by the Greek aristocracy to entertain people.

1400's

Leonardo da Vinci and his colleagues experimented with lenses to obtain sharper images with the Camera Obscura.

1700's

Johann Zahn, a Dutch monk, created the first working camera. It worked on the same principles as today’s single lens reflex camera.

1807

William Hyde Wollaston invented the Camera Lucida.

1827

Niepce produced the first image on a highly polished pewter plate coated in Bitumen of Judea. It required an eight hour exposure.
A fixative was also developed.

1835

William Henry Fox Talbot made the first paper negative coated in a solution of common salt and silver nitrate and exposed in the camera. The negative was then temporarily fixed with potassium iodine.

1839

Sir John Herschel made the first glass photograph and coined the terms photography, negative and positive.

1847

Victor made the first successful glass negative by coating a sheet of glass with a mixture of egg white, potassium iodine and acidified silver nitrate solution (albumen).

1851

Fredrick Scott Archer developed the collodian or wet plate process. The plates had to be exposed while wet and returned immediately to the darkroom for processing.
Talbot makes the first instantaneous photograph using electric spark illumination.

1855

The first war photographs were shot by Robert Fenton and Matthew Brady.

1860

James Clerk-Maxwell produced the first colour image comprising of three black-and-white positives each projected onto a screen through a different primary colour filter.

1870

Peter von Voigtlander, a glazier from Germany, designed and built the first modern lens with built-in adjustable apertures.

1871

Dr. Richard Leach Maddox invented the first dry plate using a mixture of cadmium bromide and silver nitrate in a solution of gelatin.

1872

John Hyatt starts manufacturing celluloid, which was later used as a base on which chemicals were placed to become the negative as we know it today.

1889

George Eastman, founder of Kodak, introduced the first gelatin emulsion onto a roll of celluloid film.

1891

Kodak introduced the first roll film that could be loaded into a camera in daylight.

1900

The Brownie becomes the first mass-marketed camera and it sold for $1.

1907

The Lumiere brothers invented the autochrome, an additive screen colour material using plates covered in potato starch and dyed in three colours.

1920

Man Ray creates the Rayogram, also called the Photogram. Objects were laid on photographic paper and exposed to white light before the paper was developed normally.

1928

The modern flashbulb was invented by Philips.

1930

Dufaycolor, a version of Autochrome, appeared with a film speed of ISO 4 (6 Weston). The PF version was rated 4 Weston.

1935

Kodak introduced Kodachrome ISO 10 slide film. At the time 18 exposures cost 12/6. It was the first integral tri-pack film using subtractive process and colour formers in its developer.
The first black and white photographs were transmitted over telephone lines.

1937

Exacta in Germany produced the first single lens reflex camera with replaceable lenses.

1942

Kodacolor was born, the first colour negative film enabling colour prints to be made.

1961

Kodacolor II was was born - a completely new emulsion with better exposure latitude, lower contrast and a faster ISO 25 rating.

1963

Kodak launched the easy to use Instamatic with drop-in 126 cartridge. Dr Edwin Land introduced his Land camera using the Polaroid film invented by him.

1975

Ektachrome E6 replaces to old E4 developing process. It is still used today.

1976

Canon introduces the AE-1, the first camera with a built-in microprocessor.