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History of Digital Imaging
The birth of the lithograph paved the way for photograph (Grant & Meadows, 2008). Grant and Meadows (2008) noted that it was through a camera-like instrument that Joseph Niepce was able to capture his home in 1826. Niepce named the process of photographing his home heliography, representing the Greek idea of “sun writing” (Grant & Meadows, 2008, p. 230). Niepce captured a still object; it was not until 1839 that a person was captured (“History of Photography”, 2008; Grant & Meadows, 2008). Significant changes in photography occurred over the next century and built upon principles that Niepce first presented (Grant & Meadows).
Grant and Meadows (2008) noted that changes occurred in the amount of exposure time required to create a photograph. Niepce once required eight hours of sun exposure to capture his country home; over time, exposure time decreased dramatically (Grant & Meadows, 2008). It was through the evolution of photography that a photograph needed a mere 1/500th of a second or less to capture the image (Grant & Meadows, 2008). The process of photography also evolved in this process. Niepce’s business partner developed the first photography process, according to Grant and Meadows (2008); this process is known as daguerreotype. This process led to calotype, developed by William Talbot, to wet-collodion, which was developed by Frederick Archer, which eventually moved to gelatin-bromide dry plate, developed by Dr. Richard Maddox (Grant & Meadows, 2008).
The single lens reflex camera that is presently known is quite similar to the camera that was introduced in 1924 (Grant & Meadows, 2008). Grant and Meadows (2008) explained that the camera involves an intimate relationship between the film and its use of light, the amount of light that the lens lets in, and the amount of exposure the film requires. This type of camera bases its success on capturing images based to the light available (Grant & Meadows, 2008). Grant and Meadows (2008) noted that cameras remained relatively unchanged after the turn of the 20th Century; it was not until the introduction of digital photography that cameras dramatically altered.
The development of photographs with the traditional camera requires that the film is exposed to light; it is through this process that the image becomes apparent (Grant & Meadows, 2008). A leap occurred in photography, according to Grant & Meadows (2008), when instant photography was introduced in 1947 by Edwin Land. The Polaroid camera allowed individuals to print a picture in sixty seconds using a sepia colored printing method (Grant & Meadows). This instant photography process encouraged technology to move a direction that would produce almost instant results, paving the way for digital photography.
While there have been many advances in film photography during its long history, by 1990 the age of the traditional film camera was drawing to a close, and the age of digital imaging was undergoing its genesis. In 1990, the first Digital Still Camera (DSC), the Dycam, was released to the public. Digital cameras had been built previously, but this was the first to be available to the public. Although this camera was archaic by today’s standards, capturing images in monochromatic grayscale with very low resolution, it also marked the beginning of the capturing of images through pixels rather than film (Grant and Meadows, 2008).
The Dycam was the first digital camera, but at a price tag of just under $1000, it didn’t have broad appeal. The Apple Quick Take 100 was the first mass-market color DSC, and was introduced in 1994. The Quick Take had a resolution of .3 megapixels, and could store eight pictures on its internal memory chip. Following Apple to market was Kodak with their DC-40 in 1995, and Sony with its Cyber-Shot in 1996 (Grant and Meadows, 2008).
Digital imaging technology has come a long way since these original digital cameras. Resolution on DSCs today make the images as good as shots taken on traditional 35mm film. Perhaps the greatest advances in digital imaging have come from the integration of cameras and computers. Imaging software today is so advanced that manipulating digital images has become child’s play. It has grown so advanced that cameras instead of the ten pounds the camera has traditionally added, it can now take that away. Indeed, photojournalists for the National Geographic decided to make the pyramids at Giza a little closer together to make for a better picture. This sort of easy digital manipulation has made shooting with DSCs even more popular for amateurs and professionals alike (Grant and Meadows, 2008).
Since the first DSCs in the early 90s, the traditional drawbacks of digital cameras have been slowly eliminated. The natural latency period of computer processing time for digital cameras known as “shutter lag” has been drastically reduced so that its effect is negligible in professional cameras, and becoming so even in point and shoot cameras. In addition, early digital cameras had resolution that was very poor compared to traditional film. Today, there are cell phones with 8 megapixel digital cameras (Grant and Meadows, 2008).
Given the advances in digital imaging, it is no wonder that digital cameras are beginning to replace traditional film cameras. Since 2000, digital cameras have outsold film cameras in the United States, and the film industry has seen a steady decline (Grant and Meadows, 2008). With the incredible leaps that digital cameras have made it is evident that, from this point on, we are in the age of digital imaging.