CNet Tracks the History of the Digital Camera

Abby Donivosif writes "CNet has up an article about the history of the digital camera. It's fascinating to note how far the technology has come in such a short amount of time. 'The camera generally recognized as the first digital still snapper was a prototype developed by Eastman Kodak engineer Steven Sasson in 1975. He cobbled together some Motorola parts with a Kodak movie-camera lens and some newly invented Fairchild CCD electronic sensors. The resulting camera, pictured above on its first trip to Europe recently, was the size of a large toaster and weighed nearly 4kg. Black-and-white images were captured on a digital cassette tape, and viewing them required Sasson and his colleagues to develop a special screen.'"

Comments

Nostalgic?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, I recall the days of 320x240 and 640x480. Great times I'm sure.

As a digital photographer, I've come to appreciate the people behind the physical camera. Both technological and artistic.

As for future cameras, I think we'll see initially, 3x sensors allowing for on the fly HDR images. After that we'll go to static video where a framed shot can be spun around to see all the out of frame info.

After that, I suppose we'll get selective depth of field, on the fly image editing, blemish correction and on the fly multi-image splicing allowing for a static family photo to be created via sliced video.

Of course we'll have meta data including temperature, GPS, wind speed, angle, height, surrounding buildings, photographer's personal ID#, satellite upload, etc.

Film will die in the same way that pinhole cameras are dead. Sure, it's around and you can use it but what's the point? The medium isn't the art. It's the person behind the camera.

Let CNet fix that for you

[Strange Ranger]

Yes, I recall the days of 320x240 and 640x480. Great times I'm sure.

NEXT-->

As a digital photographer, I've come to appreciate the people behind the physical camera. Both technological and artistic.

NEXT-->

As for future cameras, I think we'll see initially, 3x sensors allowing for on the fly HDR images. After that we'll go to static video where a framed shot can be spun around to see all the out of frame info.

NEXT-->

After that, I suppose we'll get selective depth of field, on the fly image editing, blemish correction and on the fly multi-image splicing allowing for a static family photo to be created via sliced video.

NEXT-->

Of course we'll have meta data including temperature, GPS, wind speed, angle, height, surrounding buildings, photographer's personal ID#, satellite upload, etc.

NEXT-->

Film will die in the same way that pinhole cameras are dead. Sure, it's around and you can use it but what's the point? The medium isn't the art. It's the person behind the camera.