Translated from Greek, the word "photography" means "light painting". This term denotes the technology of obtaining images on photosensitive materials, as well as the result of the application of this technology. Until the end of the last century, obtaining photographs was impossible without chemical processing of materials. The advent of digital technology has significantly expanded the possibilities of photography, making it accessible to absolutely everyone.
Instructions
Step 1
The effect of light on various materials has always been of interest to people. However, people learned to use it only in the nineteenth century. The invention of photography was preceded by numerous discoveries in the field of physics and chemistry. This is the accidental discovery of the property of silver dissolved in nitric acid to change its color under the influence of sunlight, and the determination of the relationship between the action of light and temperature, and the obtaining of a fixed image. The latter belongs to the French scientist F. N. Niepsu, and it is he who can be considered the birth of photography. The first photograph in history, taken and fixed in the 20s of the 19th century, has not survived.
Step 2
Despite the fact that the first work of Niepce was irretrievably lost, he is still considered the first photographer. Back in 1826, he managed to photograph the landscape on a tin plate covered with a layer of asphalt varnish. There were no cameras, except for a pinhole camera, at that time. The photographer filmed his view from the window throughout the day. But he managed to get an image that, moreover, could be replicated.
Step 3
At the end of the 1830s, the first work on photography was published. It was also written by a Frenchman, Louis-Jacques Mandé Daguerre. The method of obtaining images, proposed by him, began to be called the daguerreotype. Daguerre used silver-plated copper plates pretreated in iodine vapor. The development of such plates was by no means harmless, since they had to be held above the mercury vapor. The photographer used table salt as a fixer. However, potassium cyanide was more commonly used as a fixer. Daguerreotype turned out to be immediately positive. They could not be copied. The negative image was invented by the English photographer W. F. Talbot. He also came up with a new technology that used silver chloride.
Step 4
The first camera was a pinhole camera. The first SLR camera was invented in England by T. Setton. It was mirrored and was a box mounted on a tripod. At the top of the box was a lid through which surveillance was conducted. The focus was caught by the lens on the glass. The image was formed using a mirror. Rolled photographic film was invented by D. I. Kodak. He also came up with the idea to make a camera adapted to work with roll film. All photos from that time were black and white. The 35mm standard appeared in the mid-30s of the last century. The first colored photographic plates appeared at the beginning of the twentieth century in France.
Step 5
The principle of operation of the film apparatus of that time was the same as it is now. The light passed through the lens diaphragm and reacted with the active substances of the film. The image quality depended on many factors - illumination, distance, exposure, the angle of incidence of the light beam, the use of certain lenses. The first photographs were taken at very slow shutter speeds. It was impossible to regulate it. Each photographer set it up independently. Cameras with adjustable shutter speed did not appear until 1935.
Step 6
Photographic equipment reached its true heyday in the second half of the last century. Cameras were very different, equipment and chemicals became available to everyone. The format was very different, from 8-mm devices such as "Kiev-30" to wide-film "Lyubitel", "Moscow", "Salut" and others. There were also photographic plates that made it possible to obtain a high-quality image due to the low magnification when printing. There were cameras with built-in exposure meters and autofocus. At some point, the one-step process that Polaroid proposed became very popular. Color photography has become very common, thanks in large part to the centralized film processing system.
Step 7
In the mid-70s, digital photography began to develop. For the first time, the new method was used to photograph the starry sky. From that moment on, digital technology began to develop rapidly. Light-sensitive materials and not always safe chemicals have been replaced by a light-sensitive matrix. Despite the fact that digital technology is now available to almost everyone, film cameras are not out of use. Film photography has lost its versatility, but remains an art form.
