WHAT IS PHOTOGRAPHY Photography is the art and science of creating permanent images using light The word photography comes from Greek words that mean drawing with light Photographs are made with devices called cameras Modern cameras use a lens to focus the light reflected off an object onto a light sensitive surface or a digital sensor The image is recorded on light sensitive material such as film or in an electronic sensor HISTORY OF PHOTOGRAPHY As far back as ancient times people created images with something called a camera obscura Camera Comes from the Latin word for room and obscura means dark Light passes through a hole in a dark box and inside the box it creates an upside down image of the scene outside the box In the early 1800s the first photographs were made with a camera obscura and paper covered in silver compounds which reacted to light But after the paper was exposed to open light the images would fade away Subject The image in a camera obscura Camera obscura comes out upside down because en light travels in a straight line So light rays above the pinhole pass through it and hit the bottom of o the back of the box while rays from below the pinhole end up posite corn more at the top Ught rays Hole in the bo
MoDERN TIMES The first photos needed more than eight hours of exposure to light In 1838 Louis Daguerre took the first photo of a person by accident It took 10 minutes of exposure to photograph a Paris street scene One man stood still while having his boots polished Today exposure takes less than a second In the 1830s inventors such as Henry Talbot and Louis Daguerre found ways of using different chemicals to make these images permanent Daguerre made photographs on silver treated copper plates called daguerreotypes Talbot created the first photo negatives The first cameras were very large They had to be mounted on tripods and covered by black cloths to keep out the light In the late 1800s the Kodak Company started making small portable cameras that used plastic film Color photography became popular in the 1960s Over the years cameras became less expensive and accessible to amateur photographers By the late 1980s even disposable cameras became widely available Earliest known photo showing a living person HISTORY OF DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY Instead of using film digital cameras have image sensors that record the light and digitize it Digitized photos are then stored on a memory card In 1975 an engineer at Kodak built the first digital camera That camera weighed eight pounds and took 23 seconds to take a photograph The first camera that stored images on a computer was sold in stores in 1990 Most present day digital cameras can also record videos and capture the sound as well
CAMERAS AND EQUIPMENT THE DSLR CAMERA The most common professional camera used today is the DSLR digital single lens reflex An image passes through the lens onto a mirror which reflects the light into a prism made up of more mirrors The prism reflects the image to a viewfinder At the press of the shutter button the mirror flips out of the DSLR cameras usually come way so the light falls on a sensor that captures with an LCD liquid crystal display that gives a live the image The photographer can choose to preview of the photo you are adjust settings manually There are many composing Most also have a viewfinder which is a small interchangeable lenses including wide angle window that you look through macro and telephoto lenses to see the scene you are photographing The LCDworks well in low light but can be hard to see in bright light U of ANOTHER KIND OF CAMERA Mirrorless cameras also have an interchangeable lens but do not use mirrors to capture an image The image in the form of light passes directly onto a sensor then to an LCD screen for a preview These cameras are lighter and smaller than DSLR cameras They were invented in the early twenty first century Since they are smaller easier to carry and use they are very popular with photographers Mirrorless cameras such as this Olympus OM D are lightweight and compact but more expensive thana typical
PoINT AND SHOOT Point and shoot cameras made it possible for everyone to take photos They are small and light and have automatic focus and built in flashes These fixed lens cameras have been popular since the 1970s though many people today have switched to using their smartphone cameras Digital camera quality is measured in megapixels One megapixel is a million pixels The more pixels in an image sensor the higher the resolution of the images it can record Point and shoot cameras often have a zoom lens SMARTPHONE CAMERAS Today s smartphone cameras can auto focus zoom and have settings for different conditions but they do have limitations They are not as powerful as other types of cameras But they make up for that by being so convenient to use CAMERA AccESSORIES protect their lenses DSLR cameras have lens caps and point and shoot cameras retract their lenses Tripods are three legged stands that keep cameras steady A reflector is used to bounce light back onto a subject Dig cameras store images on memory cards a small square disk that slides into the camera that allows you to transfer photos from cameras directly to printers and other devices Memory cards allow you to take and store thousands of photos Rolls of film used to take only 24 or 36 photos Memory cards
