So, the camera obcura is now known. Where is the photography, then? The fact that the photography waited till 1830s for its ‘discovery’ is somehow surprising. Why? Let’s see what happened…
To make photography possible, two things were needed: an optical and a chemical process. Even though both had been known for some time. First, camera obscura, as we know, had been drawn for Leonardo in sixteenth century. In the same time, first chemical observations had been made.
Robert Boyle notices that the silver chloride turns dark under exposure; unfortunatelly, he sees its cause in the air and not in the light. In 1727, by accident, proffesor Johann Heinrich Schulze discovers photo-sensitive compound noticing a darkening on the exposed to sunlight side of a flask contaning chalk, nitric acid and silver. At the beginning of the 19th century Thomas Wedgwood captures silhouettes of opaque objects placed on leather covered with silver nitrate. Images where very fragiles to exposure them to the light stronger than candlelight, because no fixation method were known.
In july 1827 first permanent picture is made by Joseph Nicephore Niépce. He dies in 1833 leaving his plans to Luis Jacques Mande Daguerre, his partner since 1929. Daguerre, by accident, puts an exposed copper plate in his cupboard with chemicals and finds the image developed some days later. He comes to the conclusion that the mercury vapour from a broken thermometer caused it. The discovery reduce the exposure time from many hours to thirty minutes. In 1837 is able to fix the images. Daguerre, then, makes a kickoff of photography as we know it today.
On 7 January 1839, after gained support from François Arago the invention is announced by Paul Delaroche and named Daguerreotype, from its inventor’s name. French government had bought the rights to the patent from Daguerre, who obtained a yearly pension, and released them free to the people. Daguerreotype image’s quality was suprisingly good with many details, but it had some disadvantage: the image could not be reproduced (which fact can be considerated as an advantage at a time), it was very delicate, it was reversed laterally and the substances used in developing process were highly toxic. It was also expensive: equalled to a weakly wage of average worker. Exposure time, even though reduced a lot since Niépce, it was still inappropriate for portraiture. As you can notice, on the photo below there are only two people, thanks to the period of time they stayed immobile long enough. Daguerreotype required an improvement.
In fact, Henry Fox Talbot obtains permanent negative image in 1934 already. He uses paper soaked in silver chloride and fixed with a salt solution. The advantage of Calotype, as Talbot had named the method, was that it made possible to get image positive copies by contact negative print to another sheet of paper. Its quality, however , was much more inferior to what Daguerre’s technique produced. Nevertheless, it is Calotype that gaved principle to nowadays photography.
Daguerre dies in 1851. His death marks an end of an important period in history of photography. In the very same year a wet collodion process is invented by Frederick Scott Archer.
First, albumen process , with a glass plate and white of an egg as the binding , is introduced by cousin of Niépce, Abel Niépce de Saint-Victor. Though the details and quality increased, it was very slow process. Archer’s Collodion process was much more cheaper than Daguerreotype and the exposure time was increadibly shorter, reduced to few seconds. That changed a lot. Unfortunatelly, it required fairy large equipment where taking a photograph,, because the plate needed to be developed when wet. Attempts to preserve exposed plates to later developement decreased their sensitivity. The most important was the safety question: The chemicals were highly explosive, fact which lead to many injuries and death cases among the photographers. The method was good but its realization caused some problems. A dry process was a must.
Twenty years later, in 1871, Dr. Richard Leach Maddox suggests gelatin instead of collodion, which leads to dry plate process development. Use of gelatin was already suggested in 1850 by Robert Bingham, but the idea failed due to collodion announcement the next year. Charles Bennett experimented with gelatine and revealed gelatin dry plate process in 1878. Though it was slower than the collodion, its advantages – no need of equipment when taking pictures, thus exposure and development process being taken independantly – made dry plate replace collodion totally by the end of the decade.
Earlier, with the invention of celluloid, at the beginning of 1860s, photography is ready to take another turn. Inspired by John Carbutt, George Eastman introduced a flexible film in 1884. The breakthrough is a fact. In 1888 Eastman himself presents first Kodak box camera that uses celluloid film. Photography is now accesible to anyone.