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Photography has always been a fast changing industry that has been on the cutting edge of social and scientific advances. Every photographer plays a role in pushing the boundaries and increasing the breadth of the practise however, certain ideas have done more than any individual could have done individually by revolutionizing photography entirely.
It’s often the tools that a photographer has available to work with that do the most to change the artform over time; and although these inventions are often credited to one person, in reality they are usually part of a long chain of scientific progress that has evolved over time.
The Birth of Film Roll – 1881.
A film roll is a type of spool that is made from photographic film which is protected from the light by its casing. Originally, the term was used to distinguish film roll from the more commonly used sheet film. In the early days, film roll was often called a ‘film cartridge’ because it was said to look like a shotgun ammunition!
The film roll can be loaded in the light because the photographic film is protected by an opaque backing and the casing of the roll. Usually, the film roll is marked with numbers that distinguish the frames from each so that when the film roll is loaded into the camera it is visible through the viewfinder. The frame’s are pulled across the camera when the roll is wound on after each photo is taken. Once the film is finished, and all the frames have been exposed, the roll is completely rolled up back in its casing. This is then sent off to be developed and photo prints are returned to the user.
The invention of the film roll revolutionized the world of photography by enabling people who did not have access to a darkroom to take photos and have them developed by a neighborhood photo store or the manufacturer of the film rolls.
The first ever film roll camera was invented by Peter Houston. He was a farmer by trade but was also an inventor who filed his patent for the components of his film roll camera in 1881. He later went on to license the patent to the legendary George Eastman and it was used in the Kodak 1888 box camera. Following the early success of Eastman’s Kodak camera Houston sold the patent to him for $5000 in 1889, which in today’s money is worth about $150,000!
The Polaroid Camera.
Although film roll cameras had become extremely popular by the 1940s, with many war reporters relying on them to document the atrocities in Europe and the South Pacific during the World War, these camera’s still required that the film was sent off to be developed before the prints were ready.
In 1948, Edwin Land invented the first Polaroid camera which not only made photography more convenient but it also changed the way people thought about the whole process of capturing an image!
The Polaroid camera is designed so that you don’t need to develop the film in a dark room or send it off to be developed by specialists. It works by using a self developing film that quickly creates the developed prints using internal chemicals. This means that the photo is ready in a matter of moments! Also known as ‘instant photos’, the Polaroid went on to become an iconic part of American life.
The first ‘instant camera’ that was released to the public was called the 95 Land Camera, named after the inventor of the technology. Edwin Land founded the Polaroid Corporation and his first instant camera went on sale in 1948. On the very first day that the camera was released, the cameras were demonstrated to the public by Polaroid sales reps and before the day was even through the cameras were completely sold out! Edwin Land knew he was onto a winner and the Polaroid camera went mainstream over the next few years.
Digital Photography.
Most people assume that digital photography is a very new technology that only emerged in the last few decades. However, this is not quite true, because the first digital photograph was actually taken in the 1950s!
Throughout the early years of the 1950s digital signals were already being saved onto specially made magnetic tape using the earliest model of a video recorder. In 1957, Russell Kirsch created the first truly digital image in history. It was a portrait of his young son, Walden.
Despite the success of Russell Kirsch the digital photography technology was still cumbersome, extremely expensive and unviable for the consumer market. There would need to be more development in the computer sciences before digital photography could become a part of everyday life. Digital photographs are taken by using photoelectric computer based processes which would require higher levels of technology that wouldn’t be available until the end of the 20th century.
The first digital cameras that were available to the public emerged in the 1990s and although at first the uptake was fairly slow, gradually professionals and amateurs began to use these new cameras as their price came down and their quality improved. By the year 2000, digital cameras were frequently being incorporated into mobile cell phones and by 2010, superb quality digital cameras and DSLRs had taken over the world of photography, being the main go-to for most working professionals and amateurs alike.
The Gum Bichromate Process.
In the 19th century the photographic equipment was expensive and could only be operated by experts. The gum bichromate process, also known as ‘gum dichromate’, was invented in 1839 by Mungo Ponton and later improved by William Henry Fox Talbot. The process creates images that look very much like paintings and is done using multiple layers although it can also be done with one single exposure.
It was the discovery that gelatin or gum Arabic were insoluble in water after they had been exposed to the sunlight. This allowed an exposure to be created by controlling the light that is exposed to the gum bichromate sheets which are then floated, facedown, in a bath of water to complete the print.
The process was further improved on by John Pouncy in 1858 by adding colored pigments to the gum which allowed him to take the very first color images! The water washes away the excess gum and leaves the image on the page. Several bathings are usually required to get a clean image and although the technique was difficult, took a great deal of time and was not widely available, it set the stage for later developments in the newly emerging field of photography.
The Camera Phone.
Cheap consumer grade cameras had already changed the world of photography but as digital photography evolved and the technology shrank in size it started to be incorporated into mobile cell phones.
The earliest camera phone was released in the mid 1990s and although it never really took off it did set the scene for greater expectations among consumers. The J-Phone was quite bulky and the image quality was not great, but it was still a revolutionary moment in the history of photography which if anything, was too far ahead of its time to enjoy the success of later camera phones.
The camera phone didn’t start to become ubiquitous until the internet and Wifi were a central feature of modern society. The internet allowed the user of a camera phone to instantly upload their digital photos and share them with their friends, family and online followers.
By 2015 almost everybody owned a phone that also had a high quality in built camera. Never before had so many photographs been taken and with the rise of the internet there were dozens of major platforms where these digital photographs could be uploaded and shared.
People were able to capture the moments in their life which meant something important to them – a meal in a great restaurant, a friend’s wedding or a holiday at the beach; and what more, the cost of doing so had fallen to practically zero!
Digital photographs are free to take and are instantly ready to print! However, good DSLRs and other digital cameras, such as the mirrorless digital, were still fairly expensive and many amateurs didn’t want to spend the money to buy one. What they did have instead though was a mobile phone with a camera on board!
The camera phone has since been used to create art, as a valuable part of the growing trend of citizen journalism, to record precious moments in the lives of its users and of course, to take photographs of our pets!
Key Ideas and Inventions that have Changed Photography Forever.
The massive leaps forward that revolutionized photography came in starts and stops and often the future significance of the inventions was not understood until later when other technology had further developed. There are few artforms that have evolved as fast as photography has in the last 100 years and so looking forwards, one can only wonder what is waiting around the corner.
Which innovation do you think had the greatest impact on photography?
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