Tuesday, March 26, 2013
Knowing The History Of Photography
While we moved away from film and moved into the digital age, it is just appropriate for us to find out where modern photography came from. Do you know that lighting and other photography techniques started in the 1820’s? Daguerre and Niepce were actually the first inventors of modern photography and they made use of a chemical component from chalk and silver that darkens when exposed to light. This kind of technology used a glass negative to cement the picture.
Next to this were the manual cameras with film. The negative or film captured the image on a roll and were developed in a dark room to avoid over exposure. With manual cameras, you had to understand aperture, white balance, shutter speed, and metering to get the best picture possible.
Aperture is determined by F-stops or the amount of light the lens will let in. Focusing and depth of field are also important in setting the aperture of your camera. To avoid over exposure and blurriness, you need to know what numbers allow more light to enter the lens and the converse. On the other hand, shutter speed is the amount of time a lens is open for the photo. Notice that in a dark room your camera without flash takes a while to imprint the image on a negative. This happens when the light is dim and the shutter needs to adjust. The lack of light causes a need to expose the film longer to obtain the photos while more light makes the shutter move at a faster speed.
Now, from the manual cameras we move on to automatic. This camera is lighter and at the same time its aperture and shutter speed is already programmed in the settings. You just need to choose the right settings and hold the button down to focus. However, a number of automatic cameras still have manual options being used by people who treat photography as an artistic profession.
Digital camera is the new age in photography. It allows us to view the picture we take without the use of film and negatives. It also allows us to send the pictures to our friends and to print them using our home printers. In this age, everyone can take pictures and not just a few who are skilled in taking the perfect shot.
In spite of this development, the need for professional photographers remains in demand. Light sensitivity remains important with digital cameras. One really has to learn the techniques in taking pictures when using available light, be it natural or artificial. Hence, it is important that we know past photography techniques for us to obtain quality photographs using our digital cameras.