Photography through the years

[00:00.69] Now, pretty much everyone has a camera in their back pocket – in the form of a smartphone.

[00:07.87] It's easy to take hundreds of photos without needing to really consider set up or storage.

[00:15.57] And it's very hard to imagine that, at one time, capturing an image was an almost impossible process.

[00:23.53] Going back even before traditional film cameras, there were camera obscures.

[00:29.38] These were boxes with a small hole in them.

[00:32.30] Through one side, an image could be projected onto a wall on the opposite side of the box.

[00:37.89] However, the picture was upside down, very faint, and couldn't be captured in physical form – a bit like the images we see on modern projectors.

[00:49.32] In 1839, a French artist managed to work out a way to store and save photographs.

[00:56.49] He projected the image onto a shiny metal plate treated with chemicals.

[01:02.60] These images were in black and white.

[01:05.52] The first colour photo ever taken was of a tartan ribbon.

[01:10.04] The image was composed of three black and white photographs, each taken through a red, blue or green filter.

[01:19.07] So, how did we get from these early photographs to the kind we put into a frame and keep?

[01:26.50] Before the digital revolution, an image was captured on a negative, and this method is still chosen by some photographers today.

[01:35.81] A negative is an inverted image on a small strip of glass or plastic film which can then be exposed to light and processed onto photographic paper.

[01:46.69] When this was the main source of obtaining physical copies of photographs, it was a lengthy process with customers having to take the negatives to a shop and wait for their pictures to be developed.

[02:00.24] That was until digital photography came along in the 70s.

[02:05.28] Digital cameras captured images that could be saved as files and manipulated on a computer.

[02:11.92] Those are the kind of photos we take today on our phones.

[02:16.71] So, don't take the camera in your pocket for granted.

[02:21.22] It's been years in the making.