For over a hundred years photographers have been witnessing and capturing history, the collective contributions of the early pioneers and those that followed allow us to see the past.
|
Thanks to their work and passion we can see some of the great moments in history as they took place. the historic flights of the Wright brothers, the faces of soldiers that fought in the Crimean war and pictures of Florence Nightingale who worked ceaselessly to care for them. It is because of the camera that we can now look back and see so many of the great moment of the twentieth century.
|
|
The camera has changed greatly since French inventor Joseph Nicéphore Niépce made the world's first known photograph, and as it developed different processes have been used to record the image. One widely used and successful method was The Collodion process, glass plates were coated with a film of light sensitive chemicals which when developed produced a negative. These plates needed to be prepared, exposed and developed quickly while they were still moist. This meant that the photographer needed to take a lot of equipment, chemicals and a portable dark room wherever he went. The Collodion process was later replaced with ‘Dry Plates’ which allowed the photographer to use already prepared plates and develop them later.
The cameras below use ‘Dry Plates’.
|
|
 |
 |
| Box Camera |
Folding Camera |
View Camera |
|
The Box camera was a popular hand camera that was simple to use, and had a relatively low price tag. As the name implies it was basically a box, with a lens at the front and a light sensitive plate at the opposite end.
The light reflecting from the object being photographed passed though the glass lens of the camera, and onto the light sensitive plate which recorded the image. Box cameras usually had set focus lenses, which did not need to be adjusted every time a picture was taken.
|
The Folding camera worked using the same principle as the Box camera. The main advantage was the bellows which folded like an accordion allowing the camera to be focused by altering the distance between the lens and the plate; it also had the advantage of allowing the camera to be folded to a more compact size when it was not being used. The Folding Hand camera was designed to be used with or without a tripod, and the more expensive models had a variety of different adjustments and attachments.
|
View Cameras were designed to be used with a tripod. They were generally bigger than a Folding hand camera, and used by amateur and professional photographers.
|
| |
