Photographic Historical Technologies

What Started It All

Camera Obscura

• Dark box with hole in one end• Small hole would result in

inverted image on opposite wall• Latin for “dark room”• Also called a “pinhole camera”• Smaller the pinhole, sharper the

image• Check it out here

The basic pinhole camera setup: light rays from an object pass through a small hole to form an inverted image

Photo taken with a pinhole camera. Note the inverted image on the far wall.

Heliography

• Used bitumen on glass or metal, which hardened when exposed to light• Sprayed with oil of lavender

and white petroleum to dissolve the areas not affected by light• Check it out here

Remember this picture that Niepce took? This is a heliograph

Carbon Process

• Made photos very high quality and prevented them from fading

• Invented in 1855 by Alphonse Poitvein

• Mixed carbon, gelatin, coloring material and potassium dichromate

• Process still used• Check it out here

Ladies’ home journal 1932

Stereoscopic Photography

• 3D photography, introduced in in 1800’s• Takes two separate

photographs 2.5” apart to mimic human eye location• Check it out here