Private Tour of the Kodak Technology Vault

* * *  See The Muppets perform Paul Simon's song, Kodachrome on stage  * * *

The first commercially successful photographic process was announced in 1839, the result of over a decade of experimentation by Louis Daguerre and Nicéphore Niépce. Eastman Kodak engineer, Steven Sasson, invented the digital camera in 1975. The first commercially available DSLR camera. was released by Kodak in 1991. It was a customized body with a digital sensor, mounted on a Nikon F3 camera.

In a bit more than two decades, the technology have overtaken analog film materials and dominate the photographic industry and practice. Take a look at my earlier post on the history of photography and how photos can be 'manipulated'.

My readers know, I have been a wildlife photographer using Canon equipment for 25 years. Through the decades, I have used almost all of Canon's cropped and full frame, film and digital cameras, EF, EF-S and Super Telephoto lenses. You can see my equipment bag and works on MichaelDanielHo.com

For those who are truly interested in photography and the history of photography, look no further than the Eastman Kodak Museum in Rochester, New York. The video below takes you on a private visit to the vast Kodak Technology Vault. It's a bit long but very interesting.

   

Who and When was Film and Digital Photography Invented?

The first commercially successful photographic process was announced in 1839, the result of over a decade of experimentation by Louis Daguerre and Nicéphore Niépce. Unfortunately, Niépce died before the daguerreotype process was realized, and is best known for his invention of the heliograph, the process by which the “first photograph” was made in 1826. 

Daguerreotypes are sharply defined, highly reflective, one-of-a-kind photographs on silver-coated copper plates, usually packaged behind glass and kept in protective cases. The daguerreotype process is demonstrated in the video below from the George Eastman House. 

Eastman Kodak engineer, Steven Sasson, invented the digital camera in 1975. In a bit more than two decades, the technology have overtaken analog film materials and dominate the photographic industry and practice. This video below, presented by George Eastman House, features a timeline of digital camera technology starting with Steven Sasson’s first completely digital camera prototype and takes us all the way to the cameras in our smartphones today. So has digital photography finally replaced the film camera for good? Find out. 

My readers know I have been a wildlife photographer for 25 years using Canon equipment. My first professional film camera was the Canon EOS-1. When Canon announced their first digital camera, the D30 in 2000, I bought it as an experiment and worked with the new medium. When Canon introduced their first 'affordable' full frame EOS-5D camera in 2005, I bought that as well because by that time I have seen the value of digital photography and needed a professional 'backup' camera. You can see my equipment bag and works on MichaelDanielHo.com