A chance to put yourself in the picture
From 1822 until today – the technology of photography, Cambridge & Great Eastern meeting, March 2007
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| The earliest known surviving photograph: taken in 1826 |
The extraordinary
technological progress
in photography over the last 184
years was reviewed at a meeting
on 13 March 2007 organised by SCI’s
Cambridge and Great Eastern
regional group as part of the
Cambridge Science Festival. At
the meeting of over 100 delegates,
Tony Kaye detailed the
black and white and colour negative
positive process, and
brought us into the 21st century
through describing the concept
of colour management in modern
digital systems.
Kaye began with an introduction
to the history of photography.
The generally recognised
founder of the process is
Nicéphore Niépce who took the
earliest known surviving photograph
in 1826. The exposure took
over eight hours of bright sunlight!
Kaye converted this into an
film speed equivalent to 0.00001
ISO – typical modern films speeds
are 200 ISO.
He then challenged the audience
by asking the questions
‘What has changed in photography
since 1822? A little or a lot?
Are the changes fundamental or
not?’There are many similarities.
We still use lenses, shutters,
sighting aids (viewfinders or
screens) and a photosensitive
device (whether old-fashioned
film or digital CCD chips). He
concluded that technology substitution
has been the principal
change.
From this rudimentary start,
the technology of photography
developed rapidly. A major advance
was the development of
negative images for printing,
patented by William Henry Fox
Talbot, in his calotype or talbotype
process using silver halide
salts.
Racing through the subsequent
decades, Kaye addressed
the pitfalls and complexities involved
in capturing a colour
scene, using a film or digital camera,
and its conversion into a
printed image.
Kaye’s interest in photography
and imaging started at the age of
11 with his parents’ Kodak
Brownie 127 camera. His first degree
was in physics and his doctorate
was in astronomy, where
he specialised in detecting faint
light using photographic materials
and photographic materials
used in conjunction with image
intensifiers. He joined Kodak in
1978 directly from university and
has specialised in the negative
positive process throughout his
career. Recently his interests have
broadened to include both digital
capture and digitisation of film
via scanning.
John Wilkins
Cambridge and Great Eastern
Regional Group
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