Camera Inventions
Camera Inventions, when you pick up your digital camera at the end of a party and take a few snaps of someone in order to collect evidence of them dancing on a table, you probably don't stop to think how far the digital camera you are holding has come from the first pinhole camera all those years ago.
The Camera Obscura
The camera obscura is the direct forerunner of the camera. The first reference to the Camera Obscura is by Aristotle who questions how the sun can make a circular image when it shines through a square hole in Problems, c. 300 BC. Johannes Kepler was the first person to use the phrase Camera Obscura in 1604, and in 1609, Kepler went so far as to suggest the use of a lens to improve the image projected by a Camera Obscura.Pinhole Camera
Alhazen (Ibn Al-Haytham) who lived in the middle Ages around 1000 on the Gregorian calendar was a great authority on optics he described what can be called a camera obscura in his writings; manuscripts of his observations can be found in the India Office Library in London.In his essay 'On the form of the Eclipse' he wrote: 'The image of the sun at the time of the eclipse, unless it is total, demonstrates that when its light passes through a narrow, round hole and is cast on a plane opposite to the hole it takes on the form of a moon-sickle. The image of the sun shows this peculiarity only when the hole is very small. When the hole is enlarged, the picture changes... .'
He invented the pinhole camera, and even explained why the image was upside down. This is contrary to most people's belief that Della Porta invented the pinhole camera around 600 years later; the fact of the matter is that he was one of first of the Europeans to publish any information on the pinhole camera and is therefore sometimes incorrectly credited with its invention.
The earliest record of the uses of a camera obscura can be found in the writings of Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519).
Flashlight Powder
Adolf Miethe and Johannes Gaedicke Blit invented zlichtpulver or flashlight powder in Germany around 1887. Lycopodium powder (the waxy spores from club moss) was used in early flash powder and was very volatile. It is hard to imagine a camera without a flash these days, but then it was somewhat of a drama as every flash was a mini explosion.Flashbulbs
Paul Vierkotter an Austrian invented the first modern flashbulb for cameras, he used magnesium-coated wire in an evacuated glass globe, and this magnesium-coated wire was soon replaced by aluminium foil in oxygen. In 1930, German, Johannes Ostermeier, patented the first commercially available photoflash bulb.Polaroid Photos
Edwin Herbert Land invented Polaroid; he was the American inventor and physicist who found a way to create a one-step process for developing and printing photos and Polaroid cameras soon followed.Disposable Cameras
Fuji introduced the disposable camera in 1986.The best place to buy a Lumix Camera is the Panasonic website as this ensures you will get a great after sales service and free delivery.
What Digital Camera, May 2005-
'... the Lumix range is one of the best on the market.'
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