Smile! National Camera Day is on June 29

Close-up of a vintage Minolta camera. Compilation of 28 focus stacked images.

Smile! National Camera Day is June 29, a day to celebrate the fact that photography, once so complicated it took a scientist to understand, is now part of our everyday lives. The word “photography” is based on two Greek words that, when put together, mean “writing with light.’” It’s a beautiful way of describing what a camera lets us do — tell a story without the use of words. It all goes back more than 800 years to the invention of the camera obscura. Meaning “dark chamber,” the camera obscura was nothing more than a box with a hole on one side. Light would pass through the hole and into the dark interior of the box, where it would project an image onto the flat inner surface. Unfortunately, when the light was gone, the image disappeared — like Instagram, but without an actual photo. Fast-forward through the centuries to today, when everyone with a smartphone has a camera at their fingertips. Whether you love shooting film and changing lenses or prefer the ease of digital, use June 29 to focus on how cameras have made telling our stories easier than ever.

400 BCE
Ancient Optics Invented
The Chinese provide the earliest known written record of their exploration of camera obscura, or pinhole imagery.

1825
The First Image Printed
French scientist Joseph Nicéphore Niépce invents the heliograph, a print that required eight hours of light exposure to create and which soon faded.

1839
The Forerunner of Filming Born
Louis Jacques Daguerre invents the Daguerreotype, the first commercially successful photographic process for creating a permanent image on a metal plate.

1841
Talbot Patents the Calotype
William Henry Fox Talbot patents the Calotype process, the first negative-positive
process which makes it possible to reproduce multiple copies of a picture.

1880s
Enter Modern Film
In 1884, George Eastman invents the first flexible photographic film. He follows this up with another first in 1888, when he patents the Kodak roll-film camera.

See more: nationaltoday.com/national-camera-day/

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The best model was a dead model
Because it used to take hours of exposure to capture a single image, many of the earliest photographic portraits taken were of corpses.

No, They Weren’t Afraid to Smile
In fact, the reason people look so grim in old photos is one of necessity; it’s almost impossible to maintain a smile when you have to sit absolutely still for hours to get a single shot.

The Selfie Debuts in 1839
That was when Robert Cornelius set up his camera in the back part of his family store, removed the lens cap, and then ran into the frame to capture his own photograph, a process that took several minutes.

Taken on: June 29, 2023

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National Camera Day

Minolta Dynax 505si

Focus Stacking

Johann de Jager

Canon EF 50mm f1.4 USM

Canon EOS 5D Mark iv « less

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Camera: Canon EOS 5D Mark IV, f/7.1, 1/6 sec, 50mm, ISO 100 (more info) (hide info)

Camera:	Canon EOS 5D Mark IV
Lens:	EF50mm f/1.4 USM
Aperture:	f/7.1
Exposure Time:	0.167 sec (1/6)
Focal Length:	50mm
ISO:	100
Exposure Bias:	0 EV
Flash:	Off, Did not fire
Exposure Program:	Aperture-priority AE
Exposure Mode:	Auto
Metering Mode:	Multi-segment
White Balance:	Auto
Color Space:	sRGB
Software:	Adobe Photoshop Elements 18.0 (Windows)
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