Photography Magazine

The first ever photograph was taken by Joseph Nicéphore Niépce in 1826 and he used a sliding wooden box camera. Photography has come a long way since then. The first camera was called Daguerreotypes created by Louis Jacques Daguerre and was followed by the Calotype created by William Fox Talbot. In that era, photography was a luxury but today, due to the technological innovations, photography is one of the most generic hobbies.

The Early Years
If we take a walk back into history, we will find that the first ever photographic film was developed by George Eastman, a man who was considered a pioneer in the world of photographic films and equipments. In 1888, he gave the world a camera called Kodak and in 1900 he created Brownie, which allowed him to enter the mass-market for camera. Today Kodak is a brand name that offers photographic films as well as digital cameras.The 35mm format, which any digital, SLR or point and shoot photographer uses as the benchmark became a popular format in 1925. The introduction of the Leica I (short for Leitz camera) brought about a revolution, and prompted Kodak to join the legion of the 35mm. Almost a decade later, the Japanese entered the worldwide camera market with the launch of Canon 35mm rangefinder and this was just the beginning of a new era in photographic equipments and precision photography.

Digital Photography Age
The development of a digital camera caused quite a stir in the industry and results point out the fact that today the digital camera has achieved higher sales within a short period of time as compared to its predecessor, the 35mm camera. The concept of a digital camera came to the forefront when Steven Sasson of Eastman Kodak who developed the camera using CCD image sensor chips. The drawback was that the camera weighed almost 8lbs and could take only Black & White images with a resolution of 0.01 megapixels. The first image was captured in 1975 by Steven Sasson’s camera.

The first truly digital camera was the Fuji DS-1P with a built-in 16MB memory card although it was never really sold commercially. It was in 1990 that the first commercial digital camera was launched and it was the Dycam Model-1 also known as Logitech Fotoman and it had CCD image sensors. Some of the top digital camera’s today include the Nikon D40x, Canon Digital Rebel, Olympus FE-130 and the Olympus E-510, Fuji F6000 etc.

Processors & Digital Camera Equipments
The performance of a digital camera is dependent on several factors like resolution, which is governed by different parameters like aspect ratio, actual pixel count etc. But the most important component of the Digital camera that assists in digital photography is the processor. Most of the top digital camera firms or manufacturers develop and manufacture their own processors like Canon’s DIGIC chip, which is an all-in-one processor. The DIGIC processor enhances different functions of a digital camera to enable faster AF, improvement in image quality, quick JPEG compression, longer battery life and even rapid continuous shooting. Zoran is another company who has launched a digital camera processor that is capable of supporting DivX Video.

Although internal processors are an integral part of a digital camera but there are several external enhancers that can influence the overall performance and is mostly used by professional photographers using DSLR’s (Digital Single Lens Reflex). The external enhancers sometimes defined under camera equipments will include different type of lens like macro, shift lens, AF lens (can be mounted on both DSLR and SLR), tele-zoom, wide angle etc. Some of the top camera firms develop/manufacture their own lens like the Canon EF200mm f2.8L II USM, which is a tele-zoom lens used mostly by sports photographers. Some of the other popular or commercial digital camera lenses and filter manufacturers include Asahi/Pentax, Canon, Nikon, Olympus, Tamron, Sigma, Fotoman, Fujifilm, Hasselblad, Horseman, Kodak, Leica, Marumi, Panasonic, Samsung etc.

The world of digital camera has become bigger, wider and more competitive as firms vie with each other to develop and manufacture compact equipments, which are easier to handle and can create a perfect digital photography experience for both amateurs and professionals.