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© Sheila Rosamond
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The earliest
versions of the camera, the Camera Obscura, was developed in the Middle Ages,
somewhere around 1000 A.D. The Camera Obscura was a pinhole camera which
projected its image upside-down, but the creator had no way of capturing the
image with the device. It wasn’t until 1827 that a Frenchman by the name of
Joseph Nicephore Niepce created the first photographic image with the Camera
Obscura by coating a metal plate with bitumen and exposing the plate to light.
Once the plate was immersed in a solvent, the image magically appeared. This drawbacks
to this first photographic invention were that it took eight hours to capture
the image on the bitumen-coated plate, and once exposed, the image faded
quickly.
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| Daguerreotype of Junius Booth, father of John Wilkes Booth Obtained from Library of Congress |
Across the next
12 years, another Frenchman, Louis Daguerre, experimented with ways to refine
the process. He and Niepce worked together from 1829 until Niepce’s death in
1833. By 1839, Daguerre had created a more effective method of capturing
“fixed” images. Using a highly-polished sheet of silver-plated copper, Daguerre
coated it in iodine, inserted the sheet into the camera, and exposed it to the
image for several minutes. Once the place was bathed in a solution of silver
chloride, a lasting image appeared. Daguerre called the captured image a
“daguerreotype.” He and Niepce’s son sold the rights to the daguerreotype to
the French government that same year, but published a booklet detailing the
process so others could duplicate it. The daguerreotype method gained
popularity, resulting in photography studios cropping up all over the world.
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| Daguerreotype of Zachary Taylor Obtained from Library of Congress |
Next came the
calotype, created by Henry Fox Talbot in 1841. The calotype was made by coating
paper with a silver salt concoction, which made it sensitive to light. Once
inserted in the camera, the light would turn the paper dark, creating a
negative of the image. Talbot could then make contact prints, reversing the
image to a positive one.
By 1851, an
English sculptor, Frederick Scott Archer, created a new photographic
technology, this time using a glass plate coated in a sticky collodion
solution. This wet plate negative created a much sharper negative image than
the earlier paper versions, but because the image had to be developed before
the emulsion dried, photographers had to employ the use of portable dark rooms
with this process.
A man by the name
of Hamilton Smith patented the tintype in 1856. The tintype photographs were
created through a very similar process to the wet-plate negative process above,
except that they were fixed on an iron plate instead of glass. Another
difference between the two was that the tintypes could be taken with a
“multiplying” camera, which would create several images on the same sheet. The
duplicate images could be cut apart with tinsnips and given to friends and
family. The tintype was a quick and inexpensive process that allowed the person
being photographed to walk out with a picture within minutes—the original
“instant” camera. This type of photograph had the longest period of popularity,
lasting from the 1850’s all the way until the 1930’s.
By 1879,
photographic technology had advanced again, this time to a dry-plate negative
process. Similar to the wet-plate negative above, it employed a glass plate,
but instead of the wet emulsion, it used a dry, gelatin-based emulsion that
could be put on the glass well ahead of time and stored until needed. Because
it was dry, the plate didn’t have to be developed immediately, so photographers
no longer needed to bring along the portable dark room. The quick exposure time
of the dry plate method led to the invention of hand-held cameras.
It was in 1889
that George Eastman created the cellulose nitrate strips of film that many of
us remember using. This film was flexible and could be rolled easily. It was
this invention that led to the mass production of cameras. By the the 1940’s, color
film was invented. And of course, digital cameras have made the older film
versions almost obsolete today.
How far we’ve
come, right? So now it’s your turn. Do you have a camera, and if so, what type
of camera do you use? Do you prefer to take photos with your cell phone, a
simple point-and-shoot, or are do you use a 35mm with the interchangeable lenses?
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Jennifer Uhlarik
discovered the western genre as a pre-teen, when she swiped the only “horse”
book she found on her older brother’s bookshelf. A new love was born. Across
the next ten years, she devoured Louis L’Amour westerns and fell in love with
the genre. In college at the University of Tampa, she began penning her own
story of the Old West. Armed with a B.A. in writing, she has won the 2012 CWOW
Phoenix Rattler, 2012 ACFW First Impressions, and 2013 FCWC contests, all in
the historical category. She is also the winner of the 2013 Central Florida
ACFW chapter's "Prompt Response" contest. In addition to writing, she
has held jobs as a private business owner, a schoolteacher, a marketing
director, and her favorite--full-time homemaker. Jennifer is active in American
Christian Fiction Writers and lifetime member of the Florida Writers
Association. She lives near Tampa, Florida, with her husband, teenaged son, and
four fur children.
