insights into photography
Those nice folks over at Lightstalking have conjured up this interesting piece that will inform and engage you I am sure
A little knowledge is a dangerous thing or so the saying goes. Of course, generally in photographic circles, a little knowledge is not so much dangerous as potentially embarrassing. Misquoting a tidbit of photographic information will soon be jumped upon by the elders of our community leaving you in virtual tatters, your online credibility shredded or worse still, your real life peers looking down at you. One way to combat this is to arm yourself with some entirely useless, but undeniably interesting facts about our chosen pastime, the sort of things that can regain your street cred amongst the photographic elite. So without further ado, lets look at some conversation enhancing photography trivia.
Origins of the Name Kodak
Since the day George Eastman launched perhaps the world’s most famous photographic company, there has been speculation as to the origins of it’s name. Was it derived from some deep light related Latin or Greek? Perhaps it emanated from the mystical east, where names often have spiritual meaning. The reality is a little more down to earth, Eastman liked the letter K, he thought it was strong and incisive. After playing with many combinations of letters all starting with K, the final decision was Kodak and a legend was born.
see more interesting conversation grabbers here
The BBC has an article on the first point and shoot camera, the daddy of them all.
It doesn’t look very exciting – a cardboard box about 5in (13cm) tall, covered in leatherette, with a small round opening at the front. You might have some trouble working out what it was for if you didn’t know. But the Brownie might be the most important camera ever made, writes the BBC’s Stephen Dowling.
Before it appeared in 1900, cameras were distinctly unwieldy, if not downright cumbersome. Early cameras tended to be made of a great deal of brass and mahogany and took pictures on to large glass or metal plates, often requiring exposure times measured in minutes.
To photograph far-flung places, porters and pack animals were often needed to carry the equipment. Photography was an activity involving patience, toxic chemicals, and brute strength. It was not something the ordinary people indulged in.
The Brownie democratised photography simply through the sheer volume of sales”
Michael Pritchard
US inventor George Eastman took an important step forward in the 1880s, when he popularised a flexible film that did away with the need for weighty plates. His first “Kodak Camera” went on sale in 1888, pre-loaded with enough film to take 100 photographs. When the last picture was taken, the entire camera was sent back to Kodak to be developed.
It was an uncomplicated box but it cost $25 – a significant amount of money. It was still a device for the wealthy.
The revolution came 12 years later. The Kodak Brownie, designed by Edward Brownell, looked similar to the original Kodak, but the film could be taken out of the camera after shooting and developed via Kodak stockists, chemists or even at home…..…MORE?
Bert Hardy captured two Tiller Girls using a Brownie in Blackpool in 1951
“The Brownie range became the best-selling camera range of all-time ‒ and the name is part of popular culture even though it has not been used on a camera from some 35 years,” says Pritchard
The man who brings Brownies back to life
Randy Smith is a camera repairer based in New York who specialises in restoring toy cameras – the plastic-lenses, cheap and cheerful cameras that have become something of a craze with hipsters. He also modifies and restores Kodak Brownie Hawkeyes, a Brownie model from the late 1940s....MORE
This article by Jonathan Eastland was found in the BJP and titled Kodak: The fading of the Old Yeller
©Keith Barnes
Never mind what the loss of “Old Yeller” may mean to the wider public; for photographers weaned on its iconic yellow box film and printing paper, Kodak’s financial problem feels like the dying of a dear friend. In this camp, there will be much wailing and gnashing of teeth. In the late 1990s, Eastman Kodak’s share price was up in the mid $90s. Just before it filed for bankruptcy protection in January, the price crumbled to a few cents. How did it all go so wrong?………
Enter digital
By the early 1970s, the writing was already writ large on the wall. Itek Corporation’s Earth Resources Technology Satellite mapping cameras used high-resolution electronic systems. The Philips laser video disc of 1974 and laser printers a year later were a sign of more to come. Sony’s Mavica of 1981, the 1986 Nikon/Panasonic SVS and Fuji/Toshiba’s R&D on memory cards were a clear sign of Japanese intent; by 1990, every major Japanese electronics firm had a video stills camera on sale……….
Read more: http://www.bjp-online.com/british-journal-of-photography/opinion/2154237/kodak-fading-the-old-yeller#ixzz2PtKAA6nd
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The patent number was 1582 and surprisingly was taken out by Alexander S. Wolcott a man from New York. I am sure if asked without the aid of google I would have said George Eastman of Kodak fame.
The camera used the a daguerreotype process with a concave reflector.
“Louis Daguerre (Louis Jacques Mande Daguerre) was born near Paris, France on November 18, 1789. A professional scene painter for the opera with an interest in lighting effects, Daguerre began experimenting with the effects of light upon translucent paintings in the 1820s.
Louis Daguerre regularly used a camera obscura as an aid to painting in perspective, and this led him think about ways to keep the image still. In 1826, he discovered the work of Joseph Niepce, and in 1829 began a partnership with him.
He formed a partnership with Joseph Niepce to improve upon the photography process Niepce had invented. Niepce, who died in 1833, produced the first photographic image, however, Niepce’s photographs quickly faded.
After several years of experimentation, Louis Daguerre developed a more convenient and effective method of photography, naming it after himself – the daguerreotype.”…….The daguerreotype is a direct-positive process, creating a highly detailed image on a sheet of copper plated with a thin coat of silver without the use of a negative. The process required great care. The silver-plated copper plate had first to be cleaned and polished until the surface looked like a mirror. Next, the plate was sensitized in a closed box over iodine until it took on a yellow-rose appearance. The plate, held in a lightproof holder, was then transferred to the camera. After exposure to light, the plate was developed over hot mercury until an image appeared. To fix the image, the plate was immersed in a solution of sodium thiosulfate or salt and then toned with gold chloride.
Exposure times for the earliest daguerreotypes ranged from three to fifteen minutes, making the process nearly impractical for portraiture. Modifications to the sensitization process coupled with the improvement of photographic lenses soon reduced the exposure time to less than a minute.
Although daguerreotypes are unique images, they could be copied by redaguerreotyping the original.”..…MORE
Daguerreotype Photograph 1839 John Plumbe Photographer
The inventor of the first negative from which multiple postive prints were made was Henry Fox Talbot, an English botanist and mathematician and a contemporary of Daguerre.
Talbot sensitized paper to light with a silver salt solution. He then exposed the paper to light. The background became black, and the subject was rendered in gradations of grey. This was a negative image, and from the paper negative, Talbot made contact prints, reversing the light and shadows to create a detailed picture. In 1841, he perfected this paper-negative process and called it a calotype, Greek for beautiful picture.
George Eastman of Kodak made great strides with the introduction of photography to the mass market.
“In 1888, George Eastman invented dry, transparent, and flexible, photographic film (or rolled photography film) and the Kodak cameras that could use the new film.
George Eastman was an avid photographer and became the founder of the Eastman Kodak company.
“You press the button, we do the rest” promised George Eastman in 1888 with this advertising slogan for his Kodak camera.
George Eastman wanted to simplify photography and make it available to everyone, not just trained photographers. In 1883, Eastman announced the invention of photographic film in rolls. Kodak the company was born in 1888 when the first Kodak camera entered the market. Pre-loaded with enough film for 100 exposures, the Kodak camera could easily be carried and handheld during its operation. After the film was exposed (all the shots taken), the whole camera was returned to the Kodak company in Rochester, New York, where the film was developed, prints were made, new photographic film was inserted, and then the camera and prints were returned to the customer.”….….More
Photograph Taken With Kodak Camera – Circa 1909
In 1851, Frederick Scoff Archer, an English sculptor, invented the wet plate negative. Using a viscous solution of collodion, he coated glass with light-sensitive silver salts. Because it was glass and not paper, this wet plate created a more stable and detailed negative.
Photography advanced considerably when sensitized materials could be coated on plate glass. However, wet plates had to be developed quickly before the emulsion dried. In the field this meant carrying along a portable darkroom.
Dry Plate Negatives & Hand-held Cameras
In 1879, the dry platewas invented, a glass negative plate with a dried gelatin emulsion. Dry plates could be stored for a period of time. Photographers no longer needed portable darkrooms and could now hire technicians to develop their photographs. Dry processes absorbed light quickly so rapidly that the hand-held camera was now possible.
Flexible Roll Film
In 1889, George Eastman invented film with a base that was flexible, unbreakable, and could be rolled. Emulsions coated on a cellulose nitratefilm base, such as Eastman’s, made the mass-produced box camera a reality.
In the early 1940s, commercially viable color films (except Kodachrome, introduced in 1935) were brought to the market. These films used the modern technology of dye-coupled colors in which a chemical process connects the three dye layers together to create an apparent color image.
Strip of Negative Film”
The first flexible roll films, dating to 1889, were made of cellulose nitrate, which is chemically similar to guncotton. A nitrate-based film will deteriorate over time, releasing oxidants and acidic gasses. It is also highly flammable. Special storage for this film is required.
Nitrate film is historically important because it allowed for the development of roll films. The first flexible movie films measured 35-mm wide and came in long rolls on a spool. In the mid-1920s, using this technology, 35-mm roll film was developed for the camera. By the late 1920s, medium-format roll film was created. It measured six centimeters wide and had a paper backing making it easy to handle in daylight. This led to the development of the twin-lens-reflex camera in 1929. Nitrate film was produced in sheets (4 x 5-inches) ending the need for fragile glass plates.
Triacetate film came later and was more stable, flexible, and fireproof. Most films produced up to the 1970s were based on this technology. Since the 1960s, polyester polymers have been used for gelatin base films. The plastic film base is far more stable than cellulose and is not a fire hazard.
Today, technology has produced film with T-grain emulsions. These films use light-sensitive silver halides (grains) that are T-shaped, thus rendering a much finer grain pattern. Films like this offer greater detail and higher resolution, meaning sharper images.
Digital Cameras
Texas Instruments patented a film-less electronic camera in 1972, the first to do so. In August, 1981, Sony released the Sony Mavica electronic still camera, the camera which was the first commercial electronic camera. Images were recorded onto a mini disc and then put into a video reader that was connected to a television monitor or color printer. However, the early Mavica cannot be considered a true digital camera even though it started the digital camera revolution. It was a video camera that took video freeze-frames.
Since the mid-1970s, Kodak has invented several solid-state image sensors that “converted light to digital pictures” for professional and home consumer use. In 1986, Kodak scientists invented the world’s first megapixel sensor, capable of recording 1.4 million pixels that could produce a 5×7-inch digital photo-quality print. In 1987, Kodak released seven products for recording, storing, manipulating, transmitting and printing electronic still video images. In 1990, Kodak developed the Photo CD system and proposed “the first worldwide standard for defining color in the digital environment of computers and computer peripherals.” In 1991, Kodak released the first professional digital camera system (DCS), aimed at photojournalists. It was a Nikon F-3 camera equipped by Kodak with a 1.3 megapixel sensor.
The first digital cameras for the consumer-level market that worked with a home computer via a serial cable were the Apple QuickTake 100 camera (February 17 , 1994), the Kodak DC40 camera (March 28, 1995), the Casio QV-11 (with LCD monitor, late 1995), and Sony’s Cyber-Shot Digital Still Camera (1996).
Kodak DC40
Olivier Laurentwrites in The BJP……“.Kodak has discontinued three colour reversal films, BJP can reveal, as the company continues to review its operations. However, says a spokeswoman, Kodak will continue to support its other lines of films………The discontinuation means that Kodak will no longer produce any colour reversal films – commonly used to create slides. However, it will continue to manufacture E-6 Chemicals.”..…MORE
So Kodak are planning to continue making film, I am sure they have good reasons for doing so but it is beyond my comprehension.
Less than a month after announcing that it would seek bankruptcy protection in the US, Kodak has announced that it will stop the production of digital cameras and picture frames, as well as pocket-size video cameras.
“For some time, Kodak’s strategy has been to improve margins in the capture device business by narrowing our participation in terms of product portfolio, geographies and retail outlets. Today’s announcement is the logical extension of that process, given our analysis of the industry trends,” says Pradeep Jotwani, Kodak’s chief marketing officer. writes Olivier Laurent in The BJP
Is this a sad day or just what had to be expected, no doubt Kodak film will continue to be available in some form, somewhere for some time but this is not the beginning of the end for film it is the death rattle with only a few breaths left.
Eastman Kodak, the company that invented the hand-held camera, has filed for bankruptcy protection…..Full story on the BBC website here
and finally the cause of all their problems, digital cameras
Hi I am just back from my trip to Laos, pictures to come soon.
The first thing that caught my attention that I just had to bring to you was this fascinating article By Tom de Castella on the BBC website It tells the history of digital photography and the impact it has had on the way we take pictures, how we interact with our surroundings, how we record our lives and everything we see and finally how phones with cameras have become an absolute game changer.
“Photography firm Kodak has run into hard times, with critics suggesting it has failed to effectively adapt to digital. But four decades ago Kodak was credited with building the first digital camera, an innovation that has changed the world.
The first was a box the size of a small coffee machine with a cassette stuck to the side.
Little did anyone know when it took its first image in 1975 that this Heath Robinson-esque prototype would nearly obliterate the market for camera film and turn us all into potential Robert Doisneaus or Henri Cartier-Bressons, recording everything from the banal to the beautiful on our mobile phones.
Steven Sasson invented that boxy first digital camera for Kodak. But the company has struggled to fully profit from its invention, and with its share price plunging last year there has been growing disquiet about the company’s prospects.”
Steve Sasson shows off the digital camera he invented for Kodak
Kodak DC290 (pictured above, 1999)
A camera that combined superior sensor resolution and low price. It showed the benefits of linking a camera and a computer. The camera allowed scripts to be created so that instructions would appear on the camera’s screen – such as “now photograph the bathroom” for estate agents. It was a glimpse into the future.
Canon EOS 300D (2003)
The first digital SLR (single lens reflex) camera that cost less than 1000 euros (£830). At the time amateurs, and many professionals too, could only afford digital compact cameras or what were called “bridge cameras” – models with long range zooms that couldn’t come off the body. This marked the beginning of the fall in the price of proper digital cameras.
Nikon D90 (2008)
The first digital SLR camera to feature video recording. While compact cameras could make movies for some time, the quality was poor and the lenses not very good. In the D90, amateurs could make professional quality films.
Nikon D3 (2007)
One of the biggest problems with digital cameras was that pictures taken in dim lighting were filled with millions of tiny coloured speckled dots – noise. The D3 introduced the ability to shoot in almost completely dark conditions with almost no visible noise.
Apple iPhone (2007)
It doesn’t have the best camera of any mobile phone but it is certainly the most popular. Picture sharing websites, Facebook and Twitter are dominated by pictures taken and shared via the iPhone.
welcome back, hope you had good holidays. This article comes from the Kodak website and is about an interesting photographer Todd Hido. His work has a definite style that you either get and like or don’t, not especially challenging in concept but stuffed full of atmosphere, here is a quote from the article
“Like most of my work, it emanated from place. I remember very clearly I was scouting around during the day for places to go back to at night to shoot. I remember stopping and all this water had rushed down my windshield, and I thought, “This is a beautiful scene in front of me,” because it was partially covered and partially not covered. I shot the photograph and it was one of those pictures that sat on my contact sheet for a while, and then I decided to print it. And I ended up really liking it a lot. I really liked the idea that there was an aspect of playing around with pictorialism and making my pictures painterly in some way. It’s interesting to explore what the boundaries of blurriness are, the ways you can take an image and make it into something. You smudge this and move that, or you move your camera and the location of what’s in and out of focus changes. That’s how I got started with that work. I really enjoy being out in the landscape like that, driving around — going somewhere and the weather’s not good, and you’re driving around in the car and you’re finding these places. It’s extremely satisfying. “
Oxford School of Photography 