Introduction What is photography? The history of photography What this site will do for you Light: The most important element Why light is important to a photograph The many types of light Controlling light in your pictures The camera The basic function Types of cameras Choosing the right camera Putting the image together: the Lens How the lens bends light: a tutorial A brief introduction to apertures The variety of lenses Choosing a lens Exposure: a film tutorial How film records an image Understanding film speed Print vs. Slide film Film recommendations Taking Pictures Depth-of-field Apertures and shutter speeds Composition and experimentation: the basics Metering: when you can't guess The many types of picture-taking Photography with a point-and-shoot Accessories Tripods: for when you can't stay still Lens filters Post-processing: after development Scanning photos The digital darkroom Photo and equipment storage
Though you may understand why photography is an important part of our lives, you may be curious on how photography originated. In this section, I will briefly tell about the history of photography.
In the beginning...
The technique that photography originated from dates back to the early-to-mid 1600s. It started from the camera’s predecessor, the camera obscura, which actually means "dark room" in Latin. It was a box with a pinhole at the front, and a glass screen at the opposite end. When light went through the pinhole, it formed an image on the glass. Who would find this useful? Mainly artists at the time. When viewing the screen of the obscura, an artist could trace the scene that was being projected, so it took some of the legwork out of drawing a scene. Later on, a lens was added to the obscura, because it added more sharpness to the image. Many famous artists of the Renaissance, such as Leonardo da Vinci and Michaelangelo, used the obscura to help them paint some of their most famous artwork.
The first photograph
Though the camera’s design has been around since the 1300s, film did not come around until the early 1800s. In the 1820s a French scientist named Joseph Niépce was looking for a way to improve lithography, a printing technique. He discovered a way to copy engravings onto glass using a variety of materials (mainly bitumen, a light-reacting asphalt). When light shined through paper, it burned an image into a dark bitumen, which created an almost identical image from the original. Because of this discovery, Niépce captured the first picture in 1826, which was called View from the Window at Le Gras.
Photography’s popularity rises
It wasn’t until the early 1900s that photography became available to everybody. Photography’s fame started with George Eastman, who was the founder of the Eastman Kodak company. The first camera available to the public was the Kodak no. 1, Kodak’s very first camera. It was about $100-150, which was a rather expensive price at the time. The camera was basically a box with a shutter, lens, and a roll of about 100 exposures loaded in it. When one finished the roll, he/she sent the camera back to Kodak for developing, and the developed pictures and the camera were sent back to them. Since the Kodak, the camera has become a household possession.