camera development

Prehistory

Pre-photographic imaging devices have a long history. The portable camera obscura, in a form that a photographer would recognize, was available in numerous versions (some incorporating a mirror to reflect the image) by the end of the 18th century, and used by artists and tourists to produce an outline of a scene or object on translucent paper. The simple box design influenced the first camera makers, while the principle of mirror viewing was taken up again from the 1860s.

The principal photographic pioneers all initially used the box camera obscura as a starting point for their chemical experiments: Thomas Wedgwood c. 1801, Nicéphore Niépce in 1816, and Henry Talbot c.1835. But although all three were able to form images they found that excessive exposure times were required, and Niépce and Talbot began to produce cameras specifically for chemical photography. Niépce constructed cameras in the shape of simple wooden boxes designed so that a smaller box moved within a larger one. Talbot reduced the size of his cameras, having reasoned that a small image produced by a lens of large aperture and short focal length would require less exposure. He used or had made a number of boxes measuring only 75 mm cubed (3 in cubed) to which he fitted a lens, and which could hold a sheet of sensitized paper. By 1839 he was having cameras made with removable paper holders.

The early period: 1839-1860

At its most basic, the photographic camera had two principal requirements, to support a lens and to hold the sensitized material, and these have governed designs to the present day. The box-form camera was the most obvious and simplest solution. The announcement in 1839 of the daguerreotype process in France and Talbot's process in England resulted in the commercial manufacture of cameras for photography. The first was designed for Daguerre and manufactured by Alphonse Giroux in Paris from 1839. It was of sliding-box design with the larger front box holding the lens, and the smaller one at the rear moving for focusing purposes and incorporating a focusing screen and a fixture for a plate holder. This design, with minor modifications, was widespread until at least the 1870s. It took 16.5 × 21.6 cm (6 1/2 × 8 1/2 in) plates, which became the standard ‘whole-plate’ size. Giroux's camera was described in Daguerre's Historique et description (1839) and shown in British patent no. 8194 of 14 August 1839.

During the early 1840s other firms began to produce cameras. Many were manufacturers of scientific or, frequently, optical instruments, such as Charles Chevalier in France, Andrew Ross in Britain, and Voigtländer in Germany. In general, cameras followed the same basic pattern of either a fixed or sliding box-form design with lens and plate holders. Each firm introduced its own particular features. Chevalier's 1840 camera was a single-box design, but was hinged so that once the lens panel and viewing screen or plate holder were removed the main box would collapse to one-third of its extended size. It was sold as a portable or travelling camera. In Germany, Steinheil's camera of 1839 was tubular, making circular pictures, and Voigtländer's camera of 1841 was conical, constructed of brass and mounted on a brass stand.

In the USA, individuals began to manufacture cameras based on Daguerre's original design. John Plumbe, c. 1842, designed a scaled-down version of it that was probably made by a local instrument maker. Alexander S. Wolcott patented his own design for a daguerreotype camera on 8 May 1840; instead of a lens, it used a large concave mirror set at the back of the camera to produce an image on a small centrally mounted plate. (Wolcott's patent was taken up by Daguerre's British licensee Richard Beard and patented on 13 June 1840 (no. 8546), and Beard used the camera in his studios from 1841.) In the later 1840s, the classic American style of daguerrean camera, a single-box design with a chamfered front end, appeared. In 1851 the Lewis type was patented (US no. 8513, 11 Nov. 1851) by W. and W. H. Lewis of New Windsor, New York, featuring a bellows between the lens board and the camera's rear section. It was the first commercially produced bellows camera in the United States.

Designs in continental Europe and the USA remained relatively fixed. In Britain, after a slow start, new ones quickly appeared that were widely adopted, and acknowledged as being of the highest quality. British cameras were generally made of polished mahogany with lacquered-brass fittings, whereas in Europe walnut was the preferred wood and metalwork was generally only lightly lacquered or left plain. As elsewhere, Talbot's calotype process had limited take-up commercially and it was initially the daguerreotype that proved more successful; hence most cameras were designed for this as the principal application, although many were advertised as being interchangeable between the daguerreotype, paper, and, later, glass processes. The London optician Ross was commissioned to make cameras for Talbot both while he was experimenting and after the announcement of his process, and sold box-form cameras commercially.

Patent restrictions on photography initially limited the development of the camera in Britain, but by the later 1840s these were increasingly ignored, and the introduction of Scott Archer's wet-plate process in 1851 cleared the field. By this time British cameras had started to show refinements beyond the basic box form. An 1845 description of a camera advertised by the London instrument maker George Knight listed several novel features, including focusing scales, a built-in lens hood, and internal baffles to minimize interior reflections; another of Knight's products offered a revolving plate holder allowing ‘portrait’ and ‘landscape’ compositions, a rising front for the lens board, and a swing and tilt plate holder for correcting perspective.

From this period, and increasingly during the 1850s, camera manufacture moved from being an adjunct of scientific instrument making to a specialized trade in its own right, and improved designs were introduced. There was a range of seven standard sizes, from 6 × 5 cm (2 1/2 × 2 in) to whole plate and larger. The basic sliding-box design was reversed in 1861 by F. R. Window, who put the small box at the front of the camera and added a rack and pinion for focusing. The larger rear box was fixed to the camera baseboard. The design remained popular for studio cameras for the rest of the century.

From the early 1850s the box-form design was increasingly supplemented by folding and collapsible cameras. Bland & Long, Thomas Ottewill, Negretti & Zambra, and others began offering hinged collapsible cameras in a variety of plate sizes. The introduction of bellows allowed cameras to become smaller, lighter, and more portable. Richard Willat had shown a camera which used a black cloth between the lens board and rear standard at the 1851 Great Exhibition, and many other designs employed bags or pleated or unpleated cloth. Captain Francis Fowke's patent of 31 May 1856 described a bellows camera which was made for the British government by Ottewill, and in 1857 the Scottish photographer C. G. H. Kinnear designed a form of bellows camera that was quickly adopted by many manufacturers and evolved into the standard form of ‘hand and stand’ camera. It featured a tapering bellows which allowed it to close more tightly than Fowke's or the American Lewis design.

The years through to the 1870s and the widespread adoption of dry plates and, later, roll-film saw the gradual refinement of the Kinnear style of bellows camera and the decline of its sliding-and solid-box precursors. Cameras were supplied for a variety of plate sizes, or for special purposes such as stereoscopic or panoramic photography, and there were ingenious accessories such as repeating backs for carte de visite or non-standard formats.

1870s-1920

This period saw increasing demand for cameras from amateur photographers as new processes, and innovations such as roll-film from the late 1880s, made photography simpler and cheaper. While the professional and studio camera did not develop significantly in its basic design, products for the serious amateur and the snapshooter changed dramatically.

More sensitive dry plates allowed cameras to become smaller, and the increasing use of metal in camera construction and the rationalization of manufacturing, especially from the 1880s, enabled them to be produced more cheaply. For the serious amateur (and some professionals) the quarter-plate (8.3 × 10.8 cm; 3 1/4 × 4 1/4 in) format became the standard as better emulsions appeared and enlarging became commonplace. Hand cameras taking single plates or magazines holding up to twelve were popular from the 1880s until the early 1900s. The 1899 Sanderson hand camera, made by Houghton, became popular with both amateurs and professionals and, with modifications, remained on sale until 1939. Smaller mahogany-and-brass field cameras of an improved Kinnear pattern were mass produced in Britain, by Lancaster mainly using outworkers and prefabrication techniques, and by Thornton-Pickard and others in factories with powered machines instead of the craft methods of earlier years.

For the snapshooter interested simply in ‘pressing the button’, the Kodak camera of 1888 offered to eliminate the chores of processing and printing altogether. Other American and European manufacturers quickly started to produce small box cameras taking roll-film, and folding bellows cameras offering a little more control. The 1900 Kodak Brownie brought the cost of a camera down to 5 shillings ($1).

During the 1880s and 1890s the use of lightweight metal alloys and improved manufacturing techniques allowed a range of miniature and disguised cameras to be produced. Most were little better than novelties but some, like Houghton's Ticka (1904) and Ensignette (1909), the former taking a drop-in roll-film cartridge, proved very popular and produced good negatives that could stand enlargement to at least postcard size. Another enormously successful and widely imitated small camera of this period was the Vest Pocket Kodak, taking a picture 41 × 64 mm (1 2/3 × 2 1/2 in); 2 million were sold during its lifespan (1912-26).

Attempts had been made to produce a single-lens reflex (SLR) camera since the 1860s, but the Anschütz camera (1889) and Kershaw patent of 1905 gave an impetus to the design that was widely adopted and remained popular to 1939. Also very influential and durable was Folmer & Schwing's 1898 Graflex. Finally, the early 20th century saw the appearance of three-colour cameras capable of producing printing plates for colour reproduction.

The First World War limited camera development, and most European manufacturers did not introduce new designs while raw materials and manpower were limited. However, some specialized cameras were introduced, most notably for aerial and reconnaissance work, by both sides in the conflict. The end of the war and resumption of trade inaugurated a new era of camera development, with Germany taking over Britain's dominant role.

1920-1945

The 1920s saw a general trend of consolidation amongst camera and photographic manufacturers. In the USA the two principal firms of Eastman Kodak and Ansco continued taking over companies with allied interests. In Germany, the Zeiss Ikon combine was established in 1926 through the merger of four long-established and independent companies. In Britain, Amalgamated Photographic Manufacturers Ltd. was established in 1921, bringing together six significant companies with interests in sensitized materials, photographic equipment, and accessories; the merger of Houghtons and Butcher, which had started with the sharing of some manufacturing capacity in 1915, was completed in 1926.

The general economic climate meant that these larger groupings continued with slightly updated pre-war lines for much of the 1920s. For snapshooters, this meant simple box and folding roll-film cameras; for the serious amateur, better-quality folding roll-film cameras and quarter-plate hand and reflex cameras; and for professionals, field cameras, bellows studio cameras, and reflex and press-type cameras. But competition, the efforts of independent camera makers, especially in Germany, and the introduction of new manufacturing materials eventually created an impetus for distinctive new products. The significant use of plastics from 1929 encouraged both aesthetic and technical innovation. The work of Walter Dorwin Teague for Eastman Kodak, for example, demonstrated the influence of art deco on styling—but also the importance of cost cutting, gimmicks, and marketing as the world economy contracted.

Of more significance at the higher end of the market was the introduction by Ernst Leitz of the Leica camera in 1925. Though not the first 35 mm camera, it was the first to have any real commercial success, thanks to new more sensitive and finer-grained film emulsions, a new lens design, and the provision of a range of lenses and accessories designed for everything from stereoscopy to macro and copy work. Zeiss Ikon's Contax (1932) was a response to the Leica's success and offered a comparable back-up system. More generally, while the American and British industries were increasingly looking to produce cheaper cameras, the German one was able to produce precision-made cameras at reasonable prices in 35 mm, roll-film, and plate or cut-film formats. Franke and Heidecke's twin-lens reflex (TLR) camera, the Rolleiflex, launched in 1928, was the first of a very successful range that competed well into the 1960s.

Miniaturization was a continual theme during the inter-war years, made possible by new films and lens designs. The success of 35 mm, so-called ‘miniature’ cameras reflected the fact that whereas formerly the larger paper-backed roll-films or plates had been considered the minimum needed to produce good-quality photographs, this was no longer true. By the 1930s, in fact, sub-miniature cameras taking films smaller than 35 mm were also arriving. Many were novelties, such as the range of coloured bakelite cameras produced by the Coronet Camera Co. in Britain. But some, like the Ensign Midget or the German Minifex of 1932, which took 16 mm roll-film, were capable amateur cameras producing good results. Walter Zapp's Latvian-made Minox (1938) took 8 × 11 mm (3/10 × 2/5 in) negatives on 9.5 mm film in a drop-in cartridge.

The Second World War again limited non-military innovation; a few cameras were developed for espionage purposes, but most effort went into producing specialized aerial reconnaissance and instrument-recording equipment.

1945-1970

After 1945 the British camera industry enjoyed a brief resurgence, protected by import controls and duties. A quality British 35 mm camera, the Reid, a copy of the Leica, was introduced, and the Wrayflex, Periflex, various models of Ensign, and cheap box and folding cameras from Coronet and Kodak Ltd. appeared. However, once import restrictions were lifted, further consolidation within the industry only delayed its inevitable decline, and by 1968 most British camera manufacture had ceased.

The German industry continued to provide well-engineered cameras from firms such as Voigtländer, Zeiss Ikon, Wirgin, and Agfa, although by the 1960s their products were looking overpriced and technically outdated by comparison with the Japanese. Voigtländer and Zeiss Ikon merged in 1970. With the exception of some ranges of cheaper cameras, and luxury products such as the Leica, Rollei, or Swedish Hasselblad that supplied a niche market, mass manufacturing had ceased in Western Europe by the early 1970s. A similar pattern was repeated in the USA, where early post-war expansion had largely ended by the mid-1950s.

Exceptions to this pattern were the USSR; the German Democratic Republic, where the VEB-Pentacon combine was formed in 1964 from Ihagee and other Dresden firms; and China. In these countries, protected by subsidies and import controls, a variety of cameras were produced, often copies of Western products, for home use and export. But although the Russian Zenith and Kiev, Chinese Seagull, and, especially, East German Praktica achieved a respectable following abroad, their quality and styling never matched Western-made products.

It was Japan which from the 1950s came to dominate camera manufacturing. Before the war, the Japanese camera industry had been negligible, with firms such as Sakura and Canon offering a limited range of products and with no mass production comparable to Europe. Most cameras were imported, principally from Germany. From 1946 photographic manufacturing was seen as a way of employing skills developed through munitions production. The first post-war cameras were often copies of German ones: the Nikon I of 1948 was largely a Contax derivative, and other firms produced extensive ranges of Leica copies. But during the 1950s investment in research and development began to yield results and the copies were gradually replaced by Japanese designs that were innovative, attractive, and affordable. The formation of the Japanese Camera Inspection Institute (JCII) in 1954 to inspect all exported cameras was vital in maintaining consumer confidence at a time when many Japanese products had a reputation for poor construction and reliability. The introduction of the Nikon F SLR in 1959, Pentax Spotmatic (1957), Canonflex (1959), and Topcon (1958), and associated lenses and accessories, was crucial in establishing the 35 mm SLR camera as the key professional outdoor and amateur camera. These and other Japanese manufacturers launched a range of models with new features with which the German industry could not compete.

The introduction of new amateur formats, the cartridge-loading 126 (1963) and 110 (1972) Kodak Instamatic series, allowed the traditional box camera to be reborn smaller and with new features such as automatic exposure control and built-in flash. The disc format (1982) and Advanced Photographic System (APS; 1996) extended this further with a range of new features associated with the film. The disc format was unsuccessful and APS saw its initial success tempered by a return to 35 mm; it was soon supplanted by digital technology. Polaroid instant photography, launched in 1948, declined rapidly as digital cameras stole many of its advantages.

High-end professional studio cameras introduced after 1946, such as the monorail Sinar, Linhof, and Cambo, dominated studio work and remain largely unchanged, although today they are more likely to sport digital backs rather than cut-film dark slides.

Since 1970

The major change to camera design since the early 1970s has been the introduction of electronics. Simple electric circuits had been added to cameras from the late 1930s with, for example, the Kodak Super Six-20 (1938) featuring automatic exposure control. During the 1950s and 1960s they were still largely restricted to linking built-in exposure meters to aperture or speed controls. But Polaroid's SX-70 camera of 1974 was an automatic, motorized SLR producing instant colour prints. Solid-state electronics, coupled with developments in the miniaturization of electric motors and battery technology, offered an opportunity for the rapid introduction of automation in cameras. Konica's C35AF of 1977 was the first point-and-shoot camera with autofocus and exposure.

SLR cameras also began to incorporate new technology. Canon's AE-1 (1976) was the first, and by the late 1970s several manufacturers had introduced multi-mode cameras offering a selection of electronically controlled exposure modes, including full automation. Minolta introduced their XD-7 (XD-11 in the USA) in 1977 with both aperture- and shutter-priority exposure, and in 1978 the Canon A1 featured five exposure modes plus manual override. Other makers, including Nikon with the FE, Olympus with the OM2N and Fujica with the AX-5, introduced similar electronically controlled cameras; but the Canon A1 was recognized as the first of a new type of camera.

The first US patent for an electronic photographic product was granted on 27 June 1972, and for a filmless electronic camera in 1977; Kodak produced the world's first operational CCD still-image camera in 1975. But it was in the 1980s that the serious development of filmless cameras began. The Sony Mavica still-video camera was unveiled in 1981 but not sold commercially, and Canon's RC-701 of July 1984 became the first commercially sold still-video camera. In 1983 seventeen leading companies agreed a single standard for magnetic disks to avoid the problems over non-standard formats that had dogged the development of video and personal computers. This was confirmed by 46 countries in 1986. Kodak, seeing its film market threatened, launched a still-video floppy-disk system for industry in 1985 and the consumer-orientated Photo CD in 1990. They introduced a professional digital camera based on a Nikon F3 body in 1992. In 1996, a key year, Canon, Nikon, and Olympus all introduced their first digital cameras resembling conventional point-and-shoot models, and from then it was simply a question of improving user-friendliness and output quality, and reducing prices. By 2003, sales of digital cameras had overtaken film cameras in the USA, photo labs were offering a full range of digital print services, and digital cameras were available for less than £30 ($50); the first disposable models were also being promoted. The same year, Canon's 300D digital SLR, with lens, broke the £1, 000 barrier.

— Michael Pritchard

Bibliography

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• White, R., Discovering Cameras 1945-1965 (1995).
• Tarrant, J., Digital Camera Techniques (2003)