Photography Timeline – From Chemistry to Computation

Posted on May 1, 2020March 2, 2024 by Nigel Williams

early cameras Kodak Autographic — My Kodak No 2 Folding Autographic Brownie

There are many strands in a photography timeline – the chemistry of film and processing, the physics of optics, the mechanical engineering of shutters, the electronics of metering and digital photography, and the iconic camera designs that bring everything together. At each end of the photography timeline, the science is bewilderingly complex – from the arcane chemical processes of early photography to the algorithms of computational photography, which enables cameras to go beyond capturing photons to compute pictures.

It’s not a linear journey; digital photography has been accompanied by a resurgence of interest in all things analogue, characterised by toy cameras, digital filters and apps that produce or replicate the look of film as well as the renewed growth of film photography. I started to shoot with film again in 2016 and around the time I first wrote this article, during the lockdowns of 2020, I started to expand my small collection of vintage film cameras and went back to film photography. There is an all-film gallery of the boats of Deal, Kent shot with a variety of film cameras including SLRs, TLRs and rangefinders here. It’s gratifying to see the growth of UK film businesses such as Analogue Wonderland, which supplies a vast range of film stock and The Intrepid Camera Company, which has reinvented large format photography for the twenty-first century. I’m as interested in looking forward as back however, and and follow new developments with great interest, including crowd funded ventures such as the AI powered Alice Camera.

I’ve reviewed, and borrowed from, many timelines and dozens of articles and books on the history of film, film processes, cameras, lenses, digital technology, phone camera development and computational photography to compile this photography timeline and in an attempt to combine these strands. The sections of the timeline are of my own devising.

I’ve tried to be diligent with my research and check the facts. The sources for the majority of entries are included as URLs. I have also referred to several excellent books: A History of Photography in 50 Cameras by Michael Pritchard; the Taschen books 20th Century Photography and A History of Photography; Photography A Concise History by Ian Jeffrey and Photography, the Definitive Visual History by Tom Ang, all of which I can recommend. If you spot any factual errors please feel free to share them with me along with the source(s).

There are two other timelines on this site, one for nineteenth century cameras and a year by year timeline for cameras from 1900. These exclude lens, photographic process and phone cameras covered in this article.

Photography Timeline 1826-2020

1826-1850 The Genesis of Photography

c. 1826 Joseph Nicéphore Niépce uses bitumen of Judea for photographs on metal and makes the first successful camera photograph, View From My Window at Gras

1827 Niépce addresses a memorandum on his invention to the Royal Society in London, but does not disclose details

1829 Unable to reduce the very long exposure times of his experiments, Niépce enters into a partnership with Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre

Charles Chevalier creates a compound achromatic lens to cut down on chromatic aberration, a failure of a lens to focus all colours to the same plane, for Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre’s photographic experiments

1832 Robert Hunt’s Researches on Light records the first known description employing platinum to make a photographic print, but does not succeed in producing a permanent image

1835 William Henry Fox Talbot makes his first successful camera photograph or “photogenic drawing” using paper sensitised with silver chloride,

1839 The public birthday of photography, from three inventors – Dagurerre, Fox Talbot and Bayard

Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre’s Daguerreotype becomes the first photographic process to be adopted, creating a unique image on a silvered metal plate of remarkable sharpness.

Hearing of Daguerre’s invention, Fox Talbot announces a paper process to achieve images by action of light and presents his photogenic drawings at the Royal Society in London

Hippolyte Bayard produces direct-positive images (like Daguerre’s process) on sensitized paper (like Talbot’s).

Sir John Herschel suggests fixing images in sodium thiosulphate. He also coins the terms photography, negative and positive.

The first camera to be manufactured in any quantity is the Giroux Daguerreotype, which uses a sliding box design.

Stereoscopic depth sensing is first explained by Charles Wheatstone as he invents the stereoscope

1840 The Petzval Portrait becomes the first wide-aperture portrait lens and the first photographic lens where the design was computed mathematically before construction

Alexander Wolcott opens The earliest known photography studio New York City – a “Daguerrean Parlor” for tiny portraits, using a camera with a mirror substituted for the lens

Alexander Wolcott patents a modified Daguerrotype camera using a polished concave mirror to reflect the focused light onto a photosensitive plate

The cyanotype or blue-print is invented by Sir John Herschel, the first photographic process not to use silver

Fox Talbot discovers what will be revealed as the Calotype process the following year, the first known method of multiplying an image

J.F. Goddard uses iodine to shorten exposure times for daguerreotypes

1841 Fox Talbot patents the Calotype process, or photogenic drawings that produces photographic images on salted paper – a negative-positive process that makes multiple copies possible.

The first photographic studio in Europe is opened by Richard Beard in a glasshouse on the roof of the Royal Polytechnic Institution in London

The Royal Academy of Science in Brussels displays the earliest stereographs

1843 Anna Atkins publishes the first book with photographic illustrations, using the cyanotype process.

Joseph Puchberger patents the first hand crank driven swing lens panoramic camera

1844 Fox Talbot publishes The Pencil of Nature bringing photography to the attention of a wider public

1845 The Bourquin of Paris camera is the first camera with the lens in a metal tube using a rack and pinion mechanism for focusing.

Two French Physicists, Fizeau and Foucault develop the first recognisable shutter mechanism in order to photograph the sun

1847 Louis Désiré Blanquard-Evard improves Talbot’s Calotype process and presents his research to the French Academy of Sciences

1848 Edmond Becquerel makes the first, temporary, full-colour photographs, though an exposure lasting hours or days is required and the colours sometimes fade right before the viewer’s eyes

Claude Felix Abel Niépce de Saint-Victor uses albumen on glass plates for negatives

1850 The albumen print is announced by Louis-Désiré Blanquard-Évrard, delivering greater density, contrast and sharpness than had been possible with a salted paper print.

1851-1870 Instantaneous Photography

1851 English sculptor Frederick Scott Archer invents the Collodion process, or collodion wet plate process, which is 20 times faster than all previous methods and is free from patent restrictions

The Great Exhibition transforms stereoscopy from a minor scientific interest to a craze which will not wane until the 1870s

1853 The Tintype process is first described by Adolphe-Alexandre Martin – an inexpensive direct positive on a thin sheet of metal coated with a dark lacquer or enamel

Thomas Ottewill registers the double sliding folding camera which combines the folding principle with the sliding box design

1854 James Ambrose Cutting takes out several patents relating to the Ambrotype process, underexposed or bleached wet collodion negatives that appeared positive when placed against a dark coating or backing

Parisian portrait photographer André-Adolphe-Eugène Disdéri patents the Carte-de-visite (CdV), a new style of portrait utilizing albumen paper the size of a visiting card that will become commonly traded among friends and visitors

1855 The carbon process is patented by A. L. Poitevin, producing an image resistant to fading which becomes widely used in book illustration

1857 The folding camera with tapering bellows is invented by C.G.H. Kinnear, forming the basis for subsequent bellows designs

1858 John Waterhouse invents Waterhouse stops, a system using plates with different aperture diameters that could be inserted into a slot in the lens barrel which are the earliest selectable stops.

John Harrison Powell registers his design for a portable stereoscopic camera.

Fox Talbot perfects photoglyphic engraving, the forerunner of the they dust-grain photogravure process.

1859 Thomas Sutton introduces the Panoramic Camera, which uses a spherical water-filled lens to create a panoramic photograph

Dr. J.M. Taupenot develops the dry collodion-albumen process, though adoption of dry plate photography would come later with the gelatine dry plate process

1860 John Jabez Edwin Mayall popularises the carte-de-visite with a set of portraits of the Royal Family at Buckingham Palace published in an album

1861 James Clerk Maxwell presents a projected additive colour image, the first demonstration of colour photography by the three-colour method

The first photographic single-lens reflex camera (SLR) is invented by Thomas Sutton

Oliver Wendell Holmes creates but does not patent a handheld, more economical, stereoscopic viewer than had been available before

1862 The first successful wide-angle lens is the Harrison & Schnitzer Globe

1863 The cabinet card is first introduced by Windsor & Bridge in London, a larger form of the carte-de-visite suitable for display in parlours

1866 The Rapid Rectilinear lens is introduced by John Henry Dallmeyer, reducing distortion, coma and lateral colour

The Woodburytype process is patented, producing very high quality continuous tone monochrome prints

1868 Louis Ducos du Hauron patents the process for making subtractive colour prints on paper

The South Kensington Museum (now the V&A) offers Julia Margaret Cameron space for a portrait studio, making her the museum’s first artist-in-residence

1869 Pictorialist photographer Henry Peach Robinson publishes Pictorial Effect in Photography with a goal of teaching aesthetic concepts to photographers

1871-1900 Instantaneous Photography without the Chemistry

1871 English physician Richard Leach Maddox invents the lightweight gelatin dry plate silver bromide process, assigning the complex and arduous chemistry work photographers had previously to undertake to a factory

1873 Charles Harper Bennett improves the gelatin silver process by hardening the emulsion, making it more resistant to friction

The platinotype process, which produces platinum prints, is patented by William Willis.

1877 George Eastman learns to make his own gelatin dry plates, based on the writings of the British innovators, including Charles Harper Bennett

Adolf Miethe and Johannes Gaedicke produce Blitzlicht – the first ever widely used flash powder

1878 Heat ripening of gelatin emulsions is discovered by Charles Harper Bennett, making possible very short exposures and paving the way for the snapshot

1879 George Eastman applies for a patent for an emulsion-coating machine, which enables him to mass-produce photographic dry plates

1881 Thomas Bolas patents a hand-held, box form camera he calls a detective camera

1882 Etienne Jules Marey perfects a chronophotographic gun, a device capable of taking 12 exposures a second.

1883 Ottomar Anschütz designs a camera with an internal roller blind shutter mechanism in front of the photographic plate – the first focal-plane shutter in recognisable form

William Schmid patents the first detective camera to be widely sold

1885 The first flexible photographic roll film was sold by George Eastman, though this original “film” was actually a coating on a paper base

1886 Frederick E. Ives develops the halftone engraving process, making it possible to reproduce photographic images in the same operation as printing text

The first single use camera, the Ready Fotografer, is introduced, using a dry plate, though it appears to have enjoyed very limited success

C.P. Stirn patents the Stirn Concealed Vest Camera (or waistcoat camera in the UK) which becomes a popular and much copied design

1887 The Rev. Hannibal Goodwin files a patent application for camera film on celluloid rolls, though it will be not granted until 1898, by which time George Eastman has started production of roll-film using his own process

1888 The Kodak n°1 box camera, the first ready-loaded, easy-to-use camera is introduced with the slogan “You press the button, we do the rest.”

1889 George Eastman introduces the first transparent plastic roll film, made from highly flammable cellulose nitrate film

The Loman Reflex, the first commercially produced camera with a focal-plane shutter, is introduced

1890 The Zeiss Protar, the first successful anastigmat photographic lens, designed Dr Paul Rudolph, is introduced

Hurter and Driffield introduce the “S” shaped characteristic curve which is central to sensitometry, the science of light-sensitive materials

The Ilford Manual of Photography is first published, providing detailed technical information regarding optics, chemistry and printing.

W.W. Rouch and Co. introduce the Eureka, which will become a popular detective, or hand, camera

The German manufacturer C.P. Goerz incorporates the Anschütz focal-plane shutter into a camera

1891 Bausch and Lomb introduce the first of their iris diaphragm shutters, incorporating an f-stop and shutter speed setting device

1892 Samuel N. Turner applies for a US patent for paper-backed, daylight-loading roll film. The backing paper is printed with white exposure numbers which can read through a red window in the back of the camera. The idea is incorporated in the Boston Manufacturing Company’s ‘Bullseye” camera of the same year.

1893 The Cooke triplet lens is patented by Harold Dennis Taylor of T. Cooke & Sons, the first lens system that eliminates most of the optical distortion or aberration at the outer edge of lenses

1895 The Pocket Kodak appears, the first mass-produced snapshot camera.

Samuel Kodak recognises the potential of the Samuel N. Tuner’s daylight loading process and acquires his company, having licensed the process initially.

1896 The Zeiss Planar lens, designed by Dr Paul Rudolph, is introduced.

The Dallmeyer-Bergheim soft-focus lens produces soft definition without losing the natural structure of the object being photographed

A collapsible version of the Goerz Anschütz camera, the Ango, is introduced, which becomes popular and is widely copied

1897 Kodak markets the Folding Pocket Kodak which produces a 2 1/4″ x 3 1/4″ negative – the standard size for decades

1899 The Sanderson hand camera, the first highly flexible view camera that allows photographers to retain the correct perspective, is introduced

1900-1947 The Rise of Popular Photography

1900 Kodak bring the Brownie, an inexpensive user-reloadable point-and-shoot box camera and the most successful camera range of all time, to market

1901 The popular medium format film 120 film is launched by Eastman Kodak for its Brownie No. 2, and will become the longest surviving roll film format

1902 Carl Zeiss introduces the Tessar lens, an inexpensive design that becomes extremely popular

The Thornton-Packard Company introduces The Royal Ruby, a field camera in polished mahogany with brass fittings and leather bellows, as the King of Cameras

1903 To compensate for the curl resulting from gelatine emulsion, Kodak adds a layer of gelatine coating to the back of the film and introduces it as N.C. (Non Curl) film.

1904 Realising that tarnish reduces reflection, Dennis Taylor of Cooke Company develops a chemical method for producing lens coatings

The term Straight Photography is first used in the journal Camera Work as response to Pictorialism

The Midg No. 0, a quarterplate magazine camera that takes twelve glass plates in metal holder is introduced.

1905 The Soho Reflex large-format single-lens reflex camera is introduced and becomes the definitive SLR model until after WWII

The first telephoto lens optically corrected and fixed as a system is introduced – the f/8 Busch Bis-Telar

Thomas Manly introduces the Ozobrome process, a simplified carbon process, which becomes a favourite amongst Pictorialists

1906 Panchromatic plates, sensitive to all wavelengths of visible light, are marketed by Wratten and Wainright in England

c.1906 The Ticka, a watch-style disguised camera, is introduced and goes on to become the most popular watch-form camera ever made. It is loaded with a film carried in a one-piece drop-in cartridge.

1907 The Autochrome plate is introduced, the first commercially successful colour photography product.

1908 Kodak produces the world’s first commercially practical safety film using cellulose acetate base instead of the highly flammable cellulose nitrate base.

c. 1910 Adoption of the bromoil process begins, creating the soft images reminiscent of paint popular with the Pictorialists

1911 In Italy, The Bragaglia brothers begin experiments in photodynamism

1912 Kodak introduces the Vest Pocket Kodak, or ‘VPK’

The Graflex Speed Graphic press camera is introduced and will continue in production until 1973

1913 Kodak invents 35mm film for the early motion picture industry

Oskar Barnack, creates the Ur-Leica, the prototype of a small-format 35mm camera, doubling the width of 18x24mm cinema film and running it horizontally, rather than vertically as in cinema cameras of the time

The introduction of Eastman Portrait Film begins the transition to sheet film instead of glass plates for professional photographers

1916 The first camera with a coupled rangefinder is marketed – the 3A Kodak Autographic Special

1917 Paul Strand’s essay Photography and the New God in the final issue of Camera Works argues for images to be sharply focused and clearly camera-made

1924 The first common wide aperture lens becomes available with the f/2 Ernemann Ermanox

1923 The first fisheye lens is the Beck Hill Sky (or Cloud in the UK) lens designed for scientific cloud cover studies

1925 Leica introduces the Leica I, a watershed design that makes the 35mm format truly viable

The wide aperture Ermanox becomes available with an f/1.8 lens

1928 The Rolleiflex offers photographers superb build quality, superior optics and bright viewfinders

The Zeiss Sonnar lens is patented by Zeiss Ikon. It is notable for its relatively light weight, simple design and fast aperture.

The Vacublitz, the first true flashbulb made from aluminium foil sealed in oxygen, is produced in Germany by the Hauser Company.

1929 Minolta, originally named the Nichi-Doku (which means “Japan-German”) Photographic Company, introduces its the first camera, the Nicalette, which is equipped with a German shutter and lens.

1930 The Leica I Leica Thread Mount (LTM) offers a camera with interchangeable lenses.

LOMO (Leningrad Optical Mechanical Association) produce the first Russian-manufactured camera

c. 1931 Dr Harold Eugene “Doc” Edgerton, invents of the ‘strobe’ flash, transforming the stroboscope from an obscure laboratory instrument into a common device

Rodenstock introduces the Imagon, which will become one one of the classic professional soft-focus portrait lenses, a look strongly associated with images of Old Hollywood

Kodak introduces Verichrome film, offering greater latitude and finer grain than the Kodak NC (Non-Curling) Film that had been the standard since 1903.

1932 The Leica II is launched, the first Leica camera with a rangefinder, which becomes a signature of the company

Zeiss Ikon produce the Contax I to compete with the Leica II

Group f.64 is formed – an association of California photographers who promote sharply detailed, purist photography

The first Agfacolor film is introduced, a film-based version of their Agfa-Farbenplatte (color plate) product which is similar to Autochrome

The first photo-electric light meter is introduced, the Weston Model 617

Voigtländer introduce the Prominent, a a6x4 folding bed, coupled rangefinder camera, Voigtländer’s first rangefinder camera

1933 The Leica III is introduced and is produced in parallel with the Leica II, and will remain in production in various iterations until 1960

The first Rolleicord is introduced, a simplified version of the Standard Rolleiflex, with a cheaper 75mm Zeiss Triotar lens

1934 Kodak releases the first preloaded 35mm film, the 135 film cartridge, removing the need for photographers to load their own film into reusable cassettes in a dark room

Minolta creates the first Japanese camera to use the 6 x 4.5cm format – the Semi Minolta I.

1935 Eastman Kodak markets Kodachrome film, the first colour film that uses a subtractive color method to be successfully mass-marketed

Zeiss Ikon introduce the Super Ikonta B, a premium quality, folding medium format rangefinder camera notable both for its build and image quality

Canon introduces the Hansa, the first Asian 35MM camera.

Leica introduces the Thambar, a legendary 90mm f2.2 soft focus portrait lens

Interference-based anti-reflective coatings are invented and developed by Alexander Smakula of the Carl Zeiss optics company

1936 the first widely-distributed 35mm SLR camera, the Kine Exakta, is introduced, with a design that will influence many subsequent SLRs.

Zeus Ikon launch the Contax II, the first camera with a rangefinder and a viewfinder combined in a single window.

1937 The Rolleiflex Automat introduces automatic film loading and transport.

The Minox subminiature camera is introduced, becoming one of the most suitable cameras for covert use.

1938 Kodak Introduces the Super Six-20, the world’s first camera with built-in photoelectric exposure control

The first hot shoe appears on the Univex Mercury, though hot shoes did not become common until the 1960s.

Jaeger-LeCoultre produce the Compass Camera, an Ultra-Compact 35mm Camera, machined out of solid aluminium and designed by Noel Pemberton Billing

1939 The Argus C3 is introduced and becomes the world’s best-selling 35mm camera, offering affordable 35mm rangefinder photography to amateurs

Kodak adds a ready-mount Service for 35 mm Kodachrome Film. This makes it possible to project slides as soon as they are received from the processing laboratory.

1939-40 The Zone System is formulated by Ansel Adams and Fred Archer as ” a codification of the principles of sensitometry“, based on the studies of Hurter and Driffield

1940 Kodak introduces Tri-X film in sheet film formats

The first Minolta-made lens with the “Rokkor” name appears on a portable aerial camera used for military purposes, named in honour of Mt. Rokko.

1941 The Kodak Ektra 35mm RF is introduced with the first complete anti-reflection coated lens line for a consumer camera

1942 Eastman Kodak introduces Kodacolor – the first negative film for making colour paper prints.

1945 The Kodak dye-transfer process is introduced

1946 Kodak markets Ektachrome Transparency Sheet Film, the company’s first colour film that photographers could process themselves using newly marketed chemical kits

1948-1984: The Refinement of Film Photography and the Birth of Digital

1948 Instant photography is introduced with the first instant-film camera, the Land Camera 95 or Polaroid camera.

The iconic Hasselblad 1600F camera is introduced and goes on to develop a reputation as the ultimate professional camera.

Nikon introduces the Nikon 1 rangefinder, the first Nikon-branded camera ever produced. The design is based on the Contax rangefinder but with a simpler shutter similar to that used by Leica.

1949 The modern lens aperture markings of f-numbers in geometric sequence of f/1, 1.4, 2, 2.8, 4, 5.6, 8, 11, 16, 22, 32 etc. is standardised

The Contax S camera is introduced, the first 35 mm SLR camera with a pentaprism eye-level viewfinder

1954 The Leica M is introduced with the new Leica M mount and combined rangefinder and viewfinder

Kodak introduces high-speed Tri-X black and white film on 35mm and roll film. Aimed squarely at photojournalists, it was the first fast film for general use.

1955 The Kilfitt Makro-Kilar f/3.5 is the first macro lens to provide continuous close focusing

1957 The Asahi Pentax SLR is introduced, placing controls in locations that would become standard on 35 mm SLRs

Hasselblad introduces the medium format 500 C system camera, which will go on too become one of most influential and successful cameras of all time

1958 Minolta introduces the first achromatic lens coating – two layers of magnesium fluoride deposited in different thicknesses to radically reduce glare and flare.

1959 The Nikon F is introduced, Nikon’s first SLR and the first SLR aimed at professional photographers

The the first production varifocal (zoom) lens for still 35mm photography is produced – The Zoomar 36-82mm f/2.8 for Voigtländer Bessamatic 35mm SLRs

Kodak High Speed Ektrachrome film becomes the fastest colour film on the market

1960 Konica introduces the Konica F, featuring the Hi-Synchro, the first SLR shutter with a speed of 1/2000s

1961 Eastman Kodak introduces faster Kodachrome II color film

1962 AGFA introduces the first fully automatic camera, the Optima, with an automatic programmed exposure, using a selenium-meter-driven mechanical system

The Nikkorex F is the first production single-lens reflex camera with the metal Copal square shutter

1963 Kodak introduces the Instamatic range of cameras, with the easy-to-use Kodapak 126 film cartridge and the phrase ‘load it you’ll love it’

Polaroid launches the first instant picture colour process, Polacolor

1964 The Pentax Spotmatic SLR is introduced with revolutionary stop-down light metering

1965 The word pixel is first published by Frederic C. Billingsley of JPL

1966 The VEB Pentacon Prakica is the first SLR with an electronically controlled shutter

Zeiss produce the Planar 50mm f/0.7, the world’s fastest lens, used by NASA to photograph the dark side of the moon

The Rollei 35 is introduced as the smallest full-frame 35mm camera in the world

1967 Nikon F Photomic SLR is the first camera with a centre-weighted exposure metering system

1969 The foundations for digital photography are established with the development of the charged-couple device (CCD) at Bell Labs.

1971 Nikon introduce the F2 to succeed the legendary F with a variety of finder options.

1972 Kodak reduces the popular Instamatic Camera to pocket size with the introduction of the Pocket Istamatic Camera with the new easy-load 110 Film Cartridge, extending the cartridge loading principle to what had hitherto been known as the sub-miniature camera.

Polaroid introduces the SX-70 an improvement on previous models that ejects pictures automatically and without chemical residue,

1973 Fairchild Semiconductor launch the first commercial CCD chip (0.01 Megapixels) and the MV-100, the first commercial CCD camera.

Olympus launches the OM-1, an ultra-compact 35mm SLR that initiates the compact SLR revolution of the ‘70s and ‘80s.

1975 Steven Sasson invents the world’s first digital camera while working at Eastman Kodak which shoots shoots a mere 0.01 Megapixel image.

Bryce Bayer of Kodak develops the Bayer filter mosaic pattern for CCD color image sensors, an integral part of most digital camera’s image sensor.

Olympus launch the XA series, one of the smallest rangefinder cameras ever made, featuring a fast 35mm f2.8 F. Zuiko lens, and aperture priority metering.

1976 Canon introduces the AE-1, One of the most well known and widely circulated 35mm SLR cameras ever made

Leica experiments with the first autofocus camera system but abandons it.

The Copal Compact Square Shutter (CCS), one of the most notable focal plane shutters of the ’70s, is introduced with the Konica Autoreflex TC

1977 Fuji introduces the first zoom lens to be sold as the primary lens for an interchangeable lens camera – the Fuji Fujinon-Z 43-75mm f/3.5-4.5

The Minolta XD11 is the world’s first camera with aperture priority and shutter priority, as well as a fully metered manual mode.

Kodak enters the instant picture field with a range of cameras and a new film. Kodak instant cameras do not need a mirror to reverse the image laterally, which is a requirement for Polaroid cameras, but litigation from Polaroid soon follows.

1978 Konica introduces the C35 AF, the first point-and-shoot autofocus camera.

1979 The highly portable and collapsable medium format Plaubel Makina 67 is released

1980 The Ricoh AF Rikenon 50mm f/2, the first interchangeable autofocus SLR lens, is introduced

Nikon introduces the F3, with manual and semi-automatic exposure control.

1981 Sony introduces the Mavica, a TV camera that records TV-quality still images on magnetic floppy discs.

The Sigma 21-35mm f/3.5-4 becomes the first super-wide angle zoom lens for still cameras.

International speculation on the silver market causes a significant rise in the price of silver, an important base material for the photographic industry. Agfa-Gevaert’s struggles results in the group being acquired by Bayer.

The low-tech plastic Holga camera is introduced, which will later attain cult status with the advent of Lomography and become a major source of inspiration for Instagram.

1982 Nikon introduces the FM2, which uses an improved Copal Square Shutter to achieve an unheard-of speed range of 1 to 1/4000th second and a fast flash X-sync speed of 1/250th second.

Kodacolor VR 1000 film is announced at Photokina. It is a T-Grain film, which makes possible such a high speed film with tolerable grain.

1983 The Olympus OM-4 is the first camera with a multi-spot exposure meter, taking up to eight spot measurements and averaging them

Nikon introduces the FA, the first camera to offer a multi-segmented (or matrix or evaluative) exposure light meter, which uses two segmented silicon photodiodes to divide the field of view into five segments.

1984 LOMO begin mass-producing the LC-A, achieving popularity within the USSR and kickstarting Lomography.

The Contax T, the first in a series of high quality, exceptionally compact 35mm rangefinder cameras is introduced

Leica introduces the M6, which resembles the Leica M3 but adds a modern, off-the-shutter light meter with no moving parts and LED arrows in the viewfinder.

1985-2006: Autofocus to Camera Phones

1985 Minolta introduces the world’s first fully integrated autofocus SLR with the autofocus (AF) system built into the body – the Maxxum 7000.

1986 The disposable camera is popularised by Fujifilm with the 35mm QuickSnap, which helps to define consumer photography in the late ’80s and ’90s

The Canon T90 marks the pinnacle of manual-focus 35mm SLRs

Canon launches the RC-701 ‘Realtime camera’ the first commercially available Still Video Camera

Kodak introduces T-MAX film which is smooth, fine grained and sharp – characteristics due to its use of a tabular grain emulsion. T-MAX 100 has a very high resolution of 200 lines/mm and is often used for testing the sharpness of lenses.

1987 Canon launches the EOS (Electro-Optical System), an entirely new system designed specifically to support autofocus lenses.

Canon becomes the first camera maker to successfully commercialise Ultrasonic Motor (USM) lenses which appear with the introduction of the EF 300 mm f/2.8L USM lens

1988 The Fuji DS-1P, the first digital handheld camera, is introduced, though it does not sell

The JPEG and MPEG standards are set.

Kodak introduces the DC 210, the first “Megapixel resolution” digital camera selling for under $1000 ($899).

1989 Canon introduces the 50mm f/1.0L, the fastest AF EF mount lens, and one of the fastest lenses in the world.

1990 Adobe Photoshop 1.0 image manipulation program is introduced for Apple Macintosh computer.

Eastman Kodak announces the development of its Photo CD system

The gum oil process, a painstaking and highly expressive photographic method, is invented by Karl P. Koenig.

1991 The world’s first digital SLR is introduced, The Kodak Professional Digital Camera System (DCS) based on the Nikon F3

1992 The Lomographic Society International (LSI) is founded

Leaf Systems Inc. release the first digital camera back for medium format cameras with a 4x4cm, 4-MP CCD.

1993 The f2 35 mm autofocus Konica Hexar is introduced, one of the quietest of 35mm cameras

The instantly recognisable Nikon 35Ti compact camera is released with a distinctive analog display on top

The Canon EF 1200mm f/5.6L USM is introduced, which Canon claims as the longest focal length lens available for any interchangeable-lens autofocus SLR.

1994 The Apple Quicktake 100 is the first camera to use USB to connect to a computer.

Nikon introduces the Vibration Reduction system, the first optical-stabilized lens.

1995 The Casio QV-10 is the first camera to incorporate an LCD screen on the back for image preview and playback

1996 Eastman Kodak, FujiFilm, AgfaPhoto, and Konica introduce the Advanced Photo System (APS), enabling the camera to record information other than the image

The Canon IXUS is the first IXUS APS camera, Canon’s contribution to the launch of the APS film system and an important milestone in compact camera design

Hasselblad introduces the V-system 503 C/W medium format film camera which will continue into production until 2013

1997 Philippe Kahn publicly shares a picture via a cell phone for the first time

1998 Leica launches The M6 TTL to replace the M6 with a larger, reversed shutter dial and TTL flash capability

Kodak introduces the Portra family of daylight-balanced professional colour negative films for portrait and wedding applications.

1999 The first commercial camera phone, the Kyocera Visual Phone VP-210, is launched in Japan

The Nikon D1 is the first fully integrated digital SLR designed from the ground up, rather than a digital modification to a film SLR

2000 Sharp and J-Phone introduce the first mass market camera-phone in Japan, The J-SH04

Canon introduces the EOS D30, the company’s first digital SLR produced in-house. Previously Canon had a contract with Kodak to rebrand DCS models. It was also the first DSLR with a price tag affordable to enthusiasts.

2001 Nikon produce the manual focus FM3a, the last manual focus 35mm SLR released by a major maker

Kodak lose $60 for every digital camera according to a Harvard case study

2002 Contax launch the N Digital the first full frame digital SLR digital camera

Europe gets its first camera phone with the arrival of the Nokia 6750

Canon introduces its full-frame DSLR, the Canon EOS-1Ds

Foveon X3 sensor technology is introduced in the Sigma SD9 DSLR camera

Leica introduces the M7 with auto-exposure in aperture priority mode and an electronically controlled shutter.

2003 The film market peaks with 960 million rolls of film sold

The Minolta Dimage A1 is the first model to stabilise images by shifting the sensor instead of using a lens-based system.

2004 The Epson R-D1 is the first digital rangefinder camera

The Nikon F6 is launched. It is the sixth and last high end professional film camera since the Nikon F of 1959

2005 The Canon EOS 5D is the first consumer DSLR to feature a full frame sensor

AgfaPhoto files for bankruptcy and the production of Agfa brand consumer films ends

Kyocera announces the company is to cease production of film and digital cameras, ending one of oldest brands in photography, Contax.

2006 DALSA Semiconductor announces the worlds first sensor with a total resolution of over 100 million pixels

ISO 518:2006 specifies the standard dimensions of camera accessory shoes

Konica Minolta announces the end of camera design and production, as well as the development and production of film and photo paper

2007-Present: Smart Photography and Analogue Nostalgia

2007 Apple reinvents the phone with the iPhone, replacing the keypad with a touchscreen and adding computer-like capabilities

The Samsung B710 offers a dual lens phone

2008 Panasonic releases the Lumix G1, the world’s first mirrorless interchangeable-lens camera – which uses the main image sensor for autofocus, metering and full-time electronic viewing.

The Nikon D90 is the first DSLR with HD video recording capabilities

2009 FujiFilm launches world’s first digital 3D system

The FinePix Real 3D System includes includes the FinePix Real 3D W1 digital camera, FinePix Real 3D V1 picture viewer and 3D print capability

The Leica M9 is the first full-frame digital Leica M.

2010 Instagram, the photo and video-sharing social networking service is launched on iOS.

Apple launches the iPhone 4S and pitches it as a point-and-shoot camera killer

Worldwide demand for photographic film falls to less than a tenth of what it had been ten years before

2009 Sony introduces the first consumer back-side illuminated (BSI) sensor, the “Exmor R“, which improves low-light performance

c.2010 Photographers start to use social media filters and apps such as Hipstamatic s part of a wave of analogue nostalgia

2011 Lytro releases the first pocket-sized consumer light-field camera, capable of refocusing images after they are taken

The Fujifilm FinePix X100 is introduced, the first model in the Fujifilm X-series, a range that makes the case for the benefits of APS-C over full-frame cameras

Instagram adds hashtags to help users discover both photographs and each other

2012 Sony launches the world’s first full frame compact camera – the RX1, with a fixed 35mm F2 lens

Olympus introduces the OM-D E-M5 with a 5-axis sensor-shifting image stabilisation system – the first of its kind in a consumer camera

Nokia launches the Lumia 920, the first cell phone with an optical stabilised sensor

The Nikon D800 is introduced with the world’s highest resolution DSLR sensor

2013 Sony announces the ⍺7 which starts the full frame mirrorless revolution.

Nokia launches the Lumia 1020 phone with a 1.5 inch 41 megapixel rear sensor

Sales of digital cameras in the United States of America start to fall in terms of revenue and in unit shipments, as more consumers turn to smartphones and social media

Hasselblad discontinues the 503CW medium format film camera

2014 The HTC One M8 popularises dual lens cameras

Leica introduces the Leica T (Typ 701) with Leica’s first fully-electronic, designed-for-mirrorless lens mount

2015 Google Photos delivers AI-based organisation of images

Sony announces the first camera to employ a back-side illuminated full frame sensor, the α7R II.

Leica announces the full frame, fixed-lens compact Leica Q (Typ 116) – the first full-frame Leica to incorporate an autofocus system.

2016 Apple introduces Portrait Mode, which uses the dual backside cameras to create a depth map to isolate a foreground subject and then blur the background

Apple introduces the iPhone 7 Plus. The iPhone offers a dual camera setup with different focal lengths, 23mm and 56mm, entering the realms of telephoto on a phone.

2017 Intrepid Camera launches its Kickstarter project for a light-weight, low cost, compact 10X8 film camera.

2018 The Huawei P20 Pro provides a new triple camera system

Canon officially discontinues the EOS-1V, the company’s last remaining film camera

Nikon introduces the Z6 and Z7 mirrorless cameras.

Canon introduces the mirrorless EOS R

Google Night Sight achieves similar results to a camera on a tripod with a handheld Pixel camera phone using consecutive shots reassembled into a single image via an algorithim

Production of Ektachrome film resumes

Leica introduce the Leica M10-D, a digital camera without an LCD screen designed to combine the excitement of film with digital technology.

Researchers at Dartmouth College announce the Quanta Image Sensor (QIS) which replaces pixels with jots, where each jot can detect a single particle of light (photon)

Mirrorless cameras overtake DSLRs based on value (CIPA data)

2019 Xiaomi introduce the CC9 Pro, with five rear cameras including one with 108-megapixels

The Fujifilm GFX 100 is the world’s first medium format camera to offer in-body image stabilization, with a 102MP BSI-CMOS sensor

Nikon officially releases the 58mm f/0.95 S Noct, its fastest lens.

4.5 million digital single-lens reflex (DSLR) cameras manufactured by CIPA companies are shipped, down from 16.2 million in 2012

2020 Samsung Introduces the Galaxy S20 Ultra with five cameras to capture 108MP photos, 100 x zoom and 40MP selfies

Nikon’s introduces the D780, its first DSLR to incorporate on-chip phase-detection autofocus, a feature inherited from its mirrorless Z series

Canon launches the EOS R series next-generation full-frame mirrorless cameras featuring Dual Pixel CMOS AF technology that provides autofocus in low-light conditions previously too dark to focus in.

The Apple 12 ships, with a new 7-element design with an ƒ/1.6 aperture for the primary camera as well as advancements to Smart HDR and Deep Fusion.

Digital camera shipments drop to a new low of 8.9 million units, down from 121 million units in 2010.

The Nikon F6 film SLR is discontinued

Mirrorless cameras overtake DSLRs based on unit volume (CIPA data)

The first large-scale image recognition system based on transformers, Vision Transformer (ViT), is introduced by Alexey Dosovitskiy and Thomas Kipf

2021 Sony introduces the ⍺1, a 50.1MP, 8.6K camera capable of shooting bursts at up to 30fps blackout-free, with 15 stops of dynamic range, real-time animal eye AF and anti-distortion shutter technology.

Olympus exits the camera market, completing the sale of its camera business to JIP, a Tokyo-based venture capital firm.

Canon ships its 150-millionth interchangeable lens for EOS cameras – an RF 70-200mm f2.8L IS USM lens

Nikon announces, and very late in the year, ships, the Z9 – the first professional camera to arrive without a mechanical shutter without rolling shutter thanks to its fast stacked shutter. It also offers the world’s fastest still image frame rate of 120 fps.

2022 OpenAI launches DALL-E 2. A portmanteau of ‘Dali’ (as in Salvador) and Pixar’s ‘WALL-E’, it offers a massive upgrade on its predecessor, with more realistic results and four-times higher resolution

Stability AI launches Stable Diffusion, a deep learning, text-to-image model based on diffusion techniques.

Midjourney, Inc. launches Midjourney, a generative artificial intelligence program and service.

Apple introduces the Photonic Engine with the iPhone 14, a computational photography technique that enhances photos taken in mid-to-low lighting conditions.

Leica introduces the M11 with a 60MP full-frame back side illuminated sensor

Japanese media organisation Nikkei reports that the compact ‘point-and-shoot’ market has retracted to 3.01m units as of 2021, a drop of 97% from its peak of 110.7m cameras in 2008.

2023 Sony launches the a9 III which delivers the world’s first full-frame global shutter sensor, which allows the camera to freeze motion in captured images with a max shutter speed of 1/80,000 second and 120 fps continuous shooting.

ChatGPT expands its capabilities by adding voice and image functionalities.

Around the World with a Leica Q

Posted on February 9, 2019March 25, 2024 by Nigel Williams

Nearly three years after I first posted about my new Leica Q on this site, it was stolen from a South Kensington Pub. This was after a visit to the Natural History Museum to see the 2019 Wildlife Photographer of the Year Exhibition. I am fairly sure it was a professional thief, rather than an opportunist, who stole it as the camera was right next to me in its bag and our table was never unattended – yet we saw nothing. As the pub had no CCTV the police soon closed the case. Happily the camera was insured, and I was able to replace it.

Always on the Move…

Leica Q Empty Quarter — The Empty Quarter, UAE

2016-2018 were big travel years for me as my work took me to the US, Europe, the Middle East, Africa and, for a short while, the Far East. I also went on a couple of road trips – one from Canada to Mexico, and another across Japan. I was rarely at home during those years and I took my Leica Q everywhere I went. I took around 25,000 shots along the way and came to love my camera; it took everything the world could throw at it, whilst remaining perfectly usable, was a joy to handle and allowed me to create some of my best images. In this post I’ll share what I learned along the way.

Lessons Learned

Firstly, the Leica Q is extremely tough and resilient . When I changed straps from the elegant, but thin, leather strap that came with the Q to my preferred, and wider, M strap I didn’t attach it correctly. It later came unfastened – just as I was about to shoot the Sydney Opera House. It hit the ground hard but fortunately had only a small ding on the top plate to show for it. Many other cameras would have been rendered unusable by the impact, if not damaged beyond repair.

Sydney Opera House Leica Q — This shot was taken just after my Leica Q hit the ground with some force.

The reason the Q survived the impact so well is because the top plate is machined from a solid block of aluminium that sits atop a tank -like body of magnesium alloy. For travellers there is just no substitute for a resilient camera – knocks are inevitable over time.

It’s worth mentioning that there is a knack to putting the strap on correctly to avoid testing the Q’s build quality the way I did. The easiest way is to take the metal fastener off the strap, put it on the camera first and then attach the strap. It’s actually pretty hard to get it wrong if you do it that way.

For a camera that lacks weather proofing it does very well in harsh conditions. Eventually the sensor needed cleaning, but that was after two years of shooting in some hostile climates including a couple of visits to one of the most inhospitable – the Rub al Khali desert, otherwise known as the Empty Quarter.

The Summilux f1.7 stabilised lens is unparalleled for sharpness. It’s the best lens I have ever owned, works incredibly well with the full frame sensor and of course delivers the recognisable but difficult to define Leica look. It is an aspherical (ASPH) lens, a design that tends to be more compact, sharper in the corners wide open and offers a bit more contrast.

I also found Leica’s choice of 28mm for a fixed lens to be a good one. 28mm is wide enough for landscape and urban work and you can easily crop in a little for street photography.

Shooting with the Leica Q is enjoyable and intuitive. The Q combines minimalist manual controls with modern electronic assistance to create a first class user experience.

After service is incredible. When I had the sensor cleaned (which was free of charge) Leica service replaced the chequered outer covering of the camera as part of the service!

It is worth considering both the hand grip and the Match Technical Thumbs Up for improved ergonomics. I prefer the Thumbs Up both in terms of handling and because the hand grip needs to be removed to change the battery or a memory card. It comes off quickly, but it will still slow you down a little. I use the Thumbs Up EP-SQ2 which is machined from solid brass and locks onto the hot-shoe with a hex key. It is pricey, but worth it as it is beautifully made. Once the Thumbs Up is on the camera it really does feel like it was always there and part of the original product.

When I got my replacement camera I was reminded of just how excellent the packaging is. The ‘chest of drawers’ that contains the camera, its accessories (all in their own little Leica bags) and documentation is really well designed. Just search YouTube for Leica Q unboxing to see how many people have been enthralled by the experience.

Despite its relatively small size it is a camera that attracts attention – good and bad. I keep the famous red dot logo covered, but Leica cognoscenti still comment favourably on my choice of camera from time to time. This is particularly the case in Deal, Kent where my parents live, and where I often visit. It seems there is a high concentration of Leica users there…

Cindy Sherman – Star of the Films That Never Were

Posted on March 3, 2018August 10, 2021 by Nigel Williams

Cindy Sherman is one of the world’s leading artists – for 30 years, she has starred in all her photographs – and yet the more we see of her, the less recognisable she is. She’s a Hitchcock heroine, a busty Monroe, an abuse victim, a terrified centrefold, a corpse, a Caravaggio, a Botticelli, a mutilated hermaphrodite sex doll, a man in a balaclava, a surgically-enhanced Hamptons type, a cowgirl, a desperate clown, and we’ve barely started.

Shots of movies that never existed

This lively description of Cindy Sherman comes from a Guardian interview in 2011. I first came across her work in the 1977 “Complete Untitled Film Stills”. These are a series of 69 black and white photographs described in the same article as “a brilliantly novel concept – grainy shots of movies that never existed.” The pictures were shot across a range of locations including her NY studio, New York, Long Island and Arizona. They now reside in MoMA, New York. Inspired by film, TV and pop culture imagery, full of irony and depicting clichéd characters, the series challenged cultural stereotypes of women. They created an enthralling and highly ambiguous, narrative at the same time. Her talent was evident not only as a photographer, but as a highly accomplished model, make-up artist, story-teller and stylist.

Too ambiguous to label

As a film fan and of film noir in particular there is much to like in the film stills: the concept, the noir and horror influences, Sherman’s ability to metamorphosise and the ambiguity of her images. Like David Lynch, who channels his subconscious to produce his films, Sherman appears to be an artist who works with the unconscious and interprets her work afterwards. As she said herself , “I often don’t know what I’m going after until after it’s shot. It’s amusing how far someone can stretch my intentions and make a concept that fits their theories.” To take pictures that clearly tell a story, but not one the viewer can quite make out, is something I aspire to to, but only rarely achieve. Cindy Sherman has achieved this throughout her career – through which she has had plenty of labels applied to her work. It has been called feminist, postmodernist and post-structuralist, but her work is that of a performance artists and it is often hard to categorise.

Self portraits that are anything but

Like another of my favourite photographers Brassaï, Cindy Sherman started out as a painter, working in the super-realist style. She soon moved to photography and began using a combination of costume make-up, pose, expression and location to alter her appearance. In doing so she created images of herself that were anything but self portraits. She has described herself as anonymous in her work, and has commented that she never sees herself in her own pictures. Her performance art approach and her skilled mimicry make this a highly credible claim “I’ll see a photograph of a character and try to copy them on to my face” she once said. This is an idea that I admire, but that I also find somewhat unsettling.

Challenging to hang over the sofa

In 1980 Sherman moved from black and white to colour and from there, nervous about her success, she deliberately produced less marketable work. Admirably she described it as “making things that would challenge someone to hang it over their sofa.” She started to use mannequins as well as prosthetics in much darker and more grotesque work. I will admit to liking this far less than the Untitled Film Stills, but it needs to be considered as part of the extraordinary re-invention of both herself and her work over the years.

Central in an era of consumerism and image proliferation

The importance of Cindy Sherman’s work is well described in an article on The Art Story:

Turning the camera on herself in a game of extended role playing of fantasy Hollywood, fashion, mass advertising, and “girl-next-door” roles and poses, Sherman ultimately called her audience’s attention to the powerful machinery and make-up that lay behind the countless images circulating in an incessantly public, “plugged in” culture. Sexual desire and domination, the fashioning of self identity as mass deception, these are among the unsettling subjects lying behind Sherman’s extensive series of self-portraiture in various guises. Sherman’s work is central in the era of intense consumerism and image proliferation at the close of the 20th century.

In the era of the selfie, everyone can be their own photographer, model and stylist. To re-invent yourself completely shot-by-shot as Cindy Sherman has, and for the pictures to be so durable, is another matter altogether.

Fan Ho – Smoke, Mist, Light and Shadow

Posted on November 5, 2017January 26, 2024 by Nigel Williams

Fan Ho evening in aberdeen — Evening in Aberdeen, 1958

I first came across Fan Ho’s work in a podcast from Ted Forbes‘ The Art of Photography. Some photographer’s work gives me an immediate jolt the first time I see it. Fan Ho’s photography, like that of Brassaï and William Klein, to name just a couple of others, gave me that same instant reaction. His painterly use of smoke, mist, light and shadow combined with incredible, often geometric, composition is breathtaking. An blog post on Kept Light refers to some Ho’s photographs of boats on the water as being “reminiscent of Turner’s paintings with light emanating from the work.”

His mastery of street photography has led to him being referred to as the ‘Henri Cartier-Bresson of the East,’ but I much prefer his nickname ‘the Great Master’. The influence of the European composition tradition is clearly present, but his vision is unique. Transplanted to the East, his unique blend of light and geometry that somehow combines drama with serenity has made him one of the world’s greatest photographers. As Abigail Cain put it in an article on Artsy at the time of his time of his death in 2016:

The serene and contemplative nature of Ho’s work is particularly remarkable considering the tumultuous state of Hong Kong during his most prolific decades. The artist and his family were among the many hundreds of thousands of refugees that flowed into the city in the 1950s, fleeing the reignited Nationalist-Communist Civil War that was ravaging mainland China. Between 1945 and 1951, the city’s population more than doubled. However, Ho’s photographs reveal nothing of that chaotic historical context; instead, they present timeless scenes of life in Hong Kong. The marriage of old and new—a traditional Chinese sailing vessel bobbing alongside a battleship in the harbor, a wooden rickshaw being pulled across steel train tracks—was a consistent feature of his work, as was a fascination with the natural geometry of urban alleyways and markets. And now, when the city ranks among the most densely populated locations in the world, Ho’s reflective photographs offer an experience unattainable anywhere else—solitude on a Hong Kong street

In a similar vein, Laurence Miller, a Manhattan gallery owner, described Fan Ho’s photographs as “like direct descendants of the Bauhaus, yet they were made in Hong Kong. They were abstract and humanistic at the same time.”

Street Photography

Fan Ho was born in Shanghai in 1931, and emigrated with his family to Hong Kong in 1948. He took up photography at a very young age and adopted the Rolleiflex he would use for the rest of his career at the age of 14. Living in the Central neighbourhood of Hong Kong, he was in the perfect position to document street life, though at a time when studio photography was far more common than street photography. An article I found at a site called the Red List (the link is no longer valid) describes what Fan Ho found and captured in the Hong Kong in the late 1940s and early 1950s:

The centre of a chaotic atmosphere, the city had received the thousands of refugees of Japan’s invasion and thus was marked by despair, poverty and tumult. Yet, the photographer managed to capture an almost empty city, concentrating on individual subjects and scenes whose theatricality were enhanced by his dramatic use of light, shadow and smoke within geometric compositions – no wonder one of his series was entitled Living Theatre. With his black and white images, Fan Ho illustrated a nostalgic and melancholic cinematic Hong Kong where traces of modern life and issues disappeared behind traditional lifestyles as if reality had been erased: ‘I liked to concentrate and simplify the world in black and white, it was more suitable to my nature. I could express my emotions more freely, they were more fully under my control, [and the results were] surreal and semi-abstract. I liked this distance: not too close, not too far away…’ With his reclusive photographs, Fan Ho offered a seductive fantasy to Hong Kong’s inhabitants, that of loneliness.

Fan Ho’s creative process required a great deal of patience, no least because Hong Kong was and remains one of the most densely populated places on earth, but also to get all the other elements he needed to be in place. He described how he worked to the Independent in 2014:

At the beginning you must find the ideal location. Then you must be patient to find the right subject that arouses your interest, even if it’s just a cat . You must have the precise moment to catch the spirit, the essence, the soul of the person… If you don’t have the exact moment, you have to wait for the right feeling. It’s real creative work because you have to have the feeling inside.

Ho was critically acclaimed: a fellow of the most prestigious photographic societies, he was named one of the “Top Ten Photographers of the World” by the Photographic Society of America between 1958 and 1965. He was also an Honorary Member of the Photographic Societies of many countries around the world. He simultaneously pursued a career in film, starting out with the Shaw Brothers and later becoming a film director. Ho died in 2016, in San Jose, California at the age of 84. His images of Hong Kong remain the most iconic images of the city and his photography continues to be on show in major museums around the world.

Brassaï’s Dark and Beautiful Realm

Posted on October 31, 2017August 10, 2021 by Nigel Williams

Brassai Avenue de L'Observatoire — Avenue de l’Observatoire – © ESTATE BRASSAÏ-RMN

Brassaï is one of those photographers whose work had an immediate and profound effect on me. His dreamlike nocturnal street photography and sharply observed portraits of life after dark provide a unique set of images that is as close to a time slip into 1930s Paris as most of us will ever encounter.

Paris de Nuit

His most famous work (Paris de nuit, 1933 and Voluptés de Paris 1935) opened up a dark realm that had only been captured by painters before. He was not the first to shoot at night – Alfred Stieglitz amongst others had worked at night previously, but he was the first to produce a substantial body of work. After Paris by Night, other photographers took to sustained nocturnal photography – Bill Brandt captured London in the late 1930s (it was Brassaï’s publisher who commissioned Brandt night time work) and Weegee did the same in New York in the 1940s.

“Night does not show things, it suggests them. It disturbs and surprises us with its strangeness.”

As a self-taught pioneer of night photography in his adopted home of Paris (he was a Hungarian émigré), Brassaï faced the relatively new photographic challenges of working at night, equipped as he was with a Voigtlander 6.5 x 9cm camera, slow f4.5 lens and a wooden tripod. His atmospheric landscape shots needed long exposures and were subjected to excessive contrast from street lights. Ingeniously, he used the varying lengths of his smokes, inevitably including a Gauloise, to time his exposures. He also carried copies of his work to explain his late night activities to local law enforcement. An article on Imaging Resource describes his technique:

Using his training as a painter, Brassaï framed his shots so that small areas of light pierced large areas of blacks and shadows. Light reflected in wet streets and diffused by fog, would define shapes within the dark. This contrast gave his printed images richness and depth and he called these prints his “little boxes of night.”

Ground-breaking though his night photography was, Brassaï had a wide palette. His work ranges from surgically precise photojournalism to avant garde dreamscapes. He combined the eye of an expert people watcher with a painterly ability to shade and tone his work with beautifully diffused light. A polymath, he was a journalist, artist and sculpturer as well as a master photographer. He cited Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec as an influence and was friends with Dali, Picasso and Matisse.

Curiously, Brassaï started out with a dim view of photography, comparing it unfavourably to the art he originally pursued, but it became a requirement of his journalistic assignments, and having seen the beauty of Paris at night he became determined to capture it – defining night photography in the process. He was influenced by his friend and fellow Hungarian André Kertész, a pioneer of photojournalism, of whom Henri Cartier-Bresson said: “Each time Andre Kertész’s shutter clicks, I feel his heart beating.”

A walk on the wild side

Brassaï’s walks in the Montparnasse district of Paris brought him into contact with a night time cast of prostitutes, street toughs, lamp lighters, transvestites and pleasure seekers. He is most famous for the ground-breaking and gritty images he captured of those night folk. In his own words: “Night does not show things, it suggests them. It disturbs and surprises us with its strangeness.” As he was well connected, Brassaï’s work also includes images of high society, including ballet, opera, artists (including Picasso) and the intelligentsia. Consequently his work documents 1930’s Paris from the most marginalised to high society. A New York Times Article published in 1984, the year he died, captured perhaps the most celebrated aspect of his unique vision:

A Transylvanian transplanted to Paris, he managed in the 1930’s to capture aspects of French life that had never before submitted themselves to the camera, and to do so with a directness and vigour that is a hallmark of greatness in the medium. No doubt as a émigré he saw Paris more acutely than most of its natives, but he also was able to penetrate its darker demimonde because of a relentless passion for the forbidden and deep sympathy with the outcast.

Brassaï, like William Klein and Fan Ho (all hugely influential) was an outsider in the environment he chose to shoot in and that contributes, as noted above, to his unique perspective. Although most famous for night photography and Parisians of the night, Brassaï’s work is multi-faceted. Beyond his night time shooting he used the soft, diffuse light of fog and the muted tones of rainy days to capture the essence of Paris and its inhabitants just as beautifully in daylight. He was also a connoisseur of graffiti. Day or night, high society or underground, documentary or pictorial, Brassaï’s eye captured it all.

William Klein and The Zero Degree of Street Photography

Posted on April 1, 2017January 26, 2024 by Nigel Williams

I came across the work of William Klein when browsing though photography books in a book shop. It didn’t take many turns of the pages for me to decide to buy the book (Photofile, Thomas & Hudson) and learn more about the man and his photography. I found his raw, ironic, high contrast and grainy street photography vibrant, often strange and compelling.

The anti-photograph

William Klein came to the notice of the world in the 1960s after he was talent spotted by the art director of Vogue who saw an exhibition of his early abstract work and offered him a job on the spot. Klein had studied painting in Paris but was untrained as a photographer and considered himself an an outsider – lacking any respect for the photographic technique he didn’t possess. In later years he ascribed this to a contrarian instinct: “Having little technical background, I became a photographer. Adopting a machine, I do my utmost to make it malfunction. For me, to make a photograph is to make an anti-photograph.”

Fashion photography is traditionally highly polished, and his untutored, highly dynamic and ironic approach was revolutionary. Vogue subsequently financed a street photography project in New York where Klein, encountering culture shock after his time in Paris – which he feared would soon wear off – went “in search of the rawest snapshot, the zero degree of photography”. To get there he employed “A technique of no taboos: blur, grain, contrast, cockeyed framing, accidents, whatever happens…” and adopted the role of “a make-believe ethnographer”.

Life is good…

The resulting book ‘Life is Good and Good For You in New York’ (1955) became a prize winning route to celebrity, though no American publisher was willing to publish it (and didn’t for 40 years), considering it unflattering to the point of being anti-American. Instead it was first published in Paris, Klein’s adopted home. He followed up with books on Rome, Moscow and Tokyo all in the same inimitable, rebellious style. Despite his success he became restless and turned to film making. His first film was Broadway by Jazz, described here in an article in the Financial Times in 2012:

Broadway by Light is often described as the “first pop film”, and to watch it now is still an exhilarating 11-minute roller-coaster ride through the neon of Broadway and Times Square. Klein invented his own kind of visual jazz – violent, vulgar, seductive and beautiful, with a soundtrack to match. The camera moves ceaselessly in and out of the alphabet of signs as the bulbs bloom and fade into abstract blobs of pure colour: Coca-Cola, Budweiser, Rock Hudson, The New York Times. Fascination. Continuous till 4am. Orson Welles said it was the first film in which “colour was necessary”.

Klein only returned to photography in the 1980s, where his pioneering role was recognised. Since then he has won many more awards and become known for his graphic design work, which applies bold slashes of paint to the enlarged contact sheets he had marked up in pencil years before.

The Street style of William Klein

In his street photography William Klein likes to get into the thick of things; filling the frame with the chaos of the city. He mixes and moves with his subjects, embracing a wide lens for close up shots and motion blur in a way no one has before. As he said: “sometimes, I’d take shots without aiming, just to see what happened, I’d rush into crowds – bang! bang! I liked the idea of luck and taking a chance. Other times I’d frame a composition I saw and plant myself somewhere, longing for some accident to happen.” An article in the Independent in 1998 sums up his approach:

In Klein’s New York people press themselves up against the lens, dancing around the photographer, pulling faces, pretending to shoot each other, or the photographer, with toy guns. It is the kind of photography that is impossible to do today: people are no longer delighted to be snapped in the street, do not dance or horse around in Harlem on Easter Sunday for a photographer. They were intrigued by this white guy with his beautiful French wife.

His preference for the wide angle lens came from the “contradictions and confusion” that it revealed, and enabled him to include many subjects in his innovative composition. Of the blur he said: “If you look carefully at life, you see blur. Shake your hand. Blur is part of life“. His prints use extreme contrast and grain complete the visceral effect. The combined effect is perfect for street photography, as this post in Streethunters from 2015 describes:

Perfection. We all strive for it when it comes to photography. Perfect exposure. Composition. Tack-sharp images. But, street photography isn’t about perfection. At it’s core, street photography is about capturing life. And life is far from perfect. William Klein, in his own way, mastered imperfection within street photography and became a trailblazer.

Klein’s maverick work has an immediate impact but is difficult to interpret. This is apparently by design. In what has become my favourite William Klein quote he said: “My photographs are the fragments of a shapeless cry that tries to say who knows what… What would please me most is to make photographs as incomprehensible as life.” Or maybe not as, in an interview in 2013, when asked which is the most gratifying medium he chose film on the basis that “people don’t know how to read photographs. There isn’t this dialogue….What you put in a photograph is not always perceived by the other people who look at them as what you wanted to say. There isn’t a culture of photography. You learn about music appreciation at schools or go to museums, but I found that generally people don’t study photography. There are a lot of things that can be said in photographs but people don’t relate to them.”

Many photographers have been inspired as much by his attitude as his photographs, which is why you will see so many William Klein quotes in posts and articles about his life and work. More artist than photojournalist, his lack of respect for the established order, his raw technique and the way he interacts with his subjects make him one of photography’s great sources of inspiration.

Wet Plate Photography – Alcohol, Ether and Gun Cotton

Posted on March 11, 2017August 10, 2021 by Nigel Williams

Ruined Manor Hampton Gay

Wet plate aka gun cotton photography

Wet plate photography was not easy. The wet-plate collodion process used between the 1850s and 1880s uses a solution of gun-cotton in ether and alcohol and requires the entire photographic process including coating the plate, exposing and developing it to be completed within fifteen minutes.

These and other challenges faced by early photographers were brought home to me by the a BBC documentary ‘Britain in Focus’, produced in partnership with the National Media Museum and presented by Eamonn McCabe. The first episode covered the earliest period of Photography in Britain – from polymath inventor Henry Fox Talbot in the 1840s to Peter Henry Emerson in the last years of the nineteenth century. The program surveyed some of the greatest pioneers of early photography in their most famous locations: Fox Talbot in Lacock Abbey, David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson in Newhaven, Roger Fenton in the Crimea, Julia Margaret Cameron at Little Holland House, Robert Howlett in the Isle of Dogs and Peter Henry Emerson in the Norfolk Broads.

Roger Fenton

I was familiar with the work of most of the photographers in the program, with the exception of Roger Fenton. I was hugely impressed by his images and a little research showed him to be an extremely important photographer. Born into a wealthy banking family in 1819, he studied law at Oxford and painting in Paris before he took up photography, learning the early Calotype process developed by Fox Talbot. Fenton was a founder member of the Photographic Society (later the Royal Photographic Society), the first official photographer of the British Museum and quite possibly the world’s first officially appointed war photographer, photographing the Crimean War in the first systematic coverage of a conflict in 1855.

Wet Plate Photography in The Crimean war

Fenton’s connections led to his commission by the British government to photograph the Crimean war – a conflict that pitted the Russian Empire against a somewhat unlikely alliance of Britain, France, the Ottoman Empire, and Sardinia. He took a photographic assistant, a servant and a large horse-drawn van converted from a merchant’s wine wagon to carry his cumbersome large format wet plate photographic equipment (see image, right). The wagon offered a good target for Turkish artillery and Fenton also suffered from the high temperatures, broken ribs and cholera. Nevertheless, and despite the long exposures and rapid processing required, he was able to capture 350 images, most of which were later exhibited across Britain and displayed to the British and French royal families.

Fenton was a technically accomplished photographer and his large format images from Crimea are striking. They consist mainly of posed portraits and scenes and landscapes of battle sites including the iconic The Valley of the Shadow of Death. Though he saw plenty of horrors during the conflict, he did not record any with his camera, most likely because his government patrons wanted the images that could be used as part of a campaign to counter reports of wide spread military incompetence in a war that was unpopular with both the press and the public.

The depth of field made possible by the large format, together with marvellous tone and composition make Roger Fenton’s work quite extraordinary. In addition to his war photography he shot royal portraits, architecture, landscapes (such as those of Bolton Abbey covered in the documentary) and still life. He regarded photography as both art and business and abandoned it entirely in 1863 to return to law when he saw its status was diminished to a craft – illustrated by the 1862 International Exhibition’s placement of photography in the section reserved for instruments and machinery. He died only a few years later in 1869.

Large format film photography

Large format film images, particularly those created using wet-plate photography, have a unique look that can not be reproduced with 35mm cameras – the shot of Roger Fenton’s wagon clearly shows this. However, the supporting image in this post is an homage to it. The shot of the ruined manor at Hampton Gay (which burned down in 1887) is a long exposure (40 second exposure at f13 using a black glass ND filter) shot in windy conditions. It is sepia toned and I added some grain and lens falloff in post production. I’ve shot the manor with a few medium format cameras (6X6 and 4.5) but at some point I’d love to shoot it with a large format, preferably glass plate, camera.

Fox Talbot and Early Photography

Posted on September 24, 2016August 10, 2021 by Nigel Williams

Fox Talbot Early Photography

Fox Talbot at dawn

The recent exhibition Fox Talbot: Dawn of the Photograph at the Science Museum in London which ended on September 11th 2016 was described as ‘magical to behold’ by Time Out and ‘ground-breaking’ by The Times. I found it extremely enjoyable as it told the story of the pioneers of early photography very capably as well as displaying a great body of their work.

Central to the story of early photography is William Henry Fox Talbot, who was born in February 1800. He attended Cambridge University in 1817 and went onto become a gentleman scientist, inventor, Egyptologist, member of parliament, mathematician, astronomer, archaeologist and transcriber of Chaldean cuneiform texts as well as a pioneer of photography.

It was a struggle with his sketchbook that put him on the road to photography: in 1833 at Lake Como in Italy, he found it difficult to capture the scenery adequately by sketching it with the aid of a Camera Lucida (an instrument used by draftsmen at the time which uses a prism to direct rays of light onto paper producing an image and from which a drawing can be made.) This started him on the journey of discovery with light-sensitive paper to automate the process that he was to pursue at his home in Lacock Abbey in Wiltshire.

Science, silver and sunlight

Investigations with silver nitrate and sunlight actually go back as far as Angelo Sala (1576-1637). Johann Heinrich Schulze (1687-1744) was the first to create photograms (a process that does not require a camera) with paper masks and Talbot would have been well aware of the work of Thomas Wedgwood (1771-1805) and Sir Humphry Davy (1778-1829) who also worked on photograms of leaves and other objects. These could not adequately fixed and faded quickly. Talbot built on this work, experimenting with plants and lace on paper coated with silver nitrate and fixing the images with salt to produce sciagraphs – drawings of shadows.

Talbot created the first negative in 1835, which minimized exposure time considerably compared to previous methods. He had help from his friend Sir John Herschel (1792-1871), one of the leading British scientists of the time, and another formidable polymath, who was an astronomer, mathematician, chemist, inventor and experimental photographer. It was Herschel who solved the problem of ‘fixing’ pictures (used by both Talbot and Daguerre) and was also the first to use the terms ‘photography’ and ‘negative’.

Inventors and pioneers

There is some debate as to is the inventor of photography or even who was the most influential of the pioneers. France can claim Nicéphore Niépce (1765-1833), inventor of a process known as heliography, who used a Camera Obscura to record an image of his country estate in 1826 via an eight-hour exposure. Better known is Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre, (1787-1851), a former architect and artist who collaborated with Niépce, and who had used the Camera Obscura to assist with his paintings in his earlier career. He developed the Daguerrotype process after Niépce‘s death – a process based on light-sensitive, silver-plated copper, unique in the family of photographic process, in that the image is produced on metal directly without an intervening negative. Hippolyte Bayard (1801-1887) also holds a claim as the developer of the direct positive process and the first in the world to hold a photo exhibition. Bayard’s story embodies the struggle for recognition and adds a human dimension in the midst of all the science on show at the museum. It also serves up one of the most interesting images of the exhibition. Bayard was persuaded to postpone announcing his new positive process to the French Academy of Sciences by a friend of Daguerre, which cost him the recognition he deserved, and led him to create the first staged (or faked) photograph entitled, Self Portrait as a Drowned Man, which was on show at the Science Museum exhibition. The image portrays the photographer as a corpse, and M. Bayard wrote a fake suicide note on the back:

“The corpse which you see here is that of M. Bayard, inventor of the process that has just been shown to you. As far as I know this indefatigable experimenter has been occupied for about three years with his discovery. The Government which has been only too generous to Monsieur Daguerre, has said it can do nothing for Monsieur Bayard, and the poor wretch has drowned himself. Oh the vagaries of human life….! … He has been at the morgue for several days, and no-one has recognised or claimed him. Ladies and gentlemen, you’d better pass along for fear of offending your sense of smell, for as you can observe, the face and hands of the gentleman are beginning to decay.”

Continue reading “Fox Talbot and Early Photography” →

The Leica Q – A Game Changing Camera

Posted on May 14, 2016March 25, 2024 by Nigel Williams

Inspiration

When a friend of mine purchased a Sony RX1 in 2016 I thought it was way to much to spend on a compact camera. At £2,700 this was no trivial purchase and so I looked closely at cheaper options: the Fujifilm X100T and Olympus OMD 5 Mk II. Both of these cameras have retro looks and plenty of external controls, which personally I prefer and were far less expensive than the Sony. The Leica Q was not on my list.

Temptation

Then I read started to read reviews of the Leica Q. Pocket-Lint described it as “the best fixed-lens full-frame compact ever made” but it was Craig Mod‘s blog that really got me thinking. It was a six month field test in Asia and was one of the positive and compelling reviews I have ever read of a camera.

“Make no mistake: The Q is a surgical, professional machine. It pairs best-of-class modern technology (superb autofocus, an astounding electronic view finder, workable isos up to and beyond 10,000, a fast processor, beefy sensor) with a minimalist interface packed into a small body, all swaddled in the iconic industrial design for which Leica has become famous. The result is one of the least obtrusive, most single-minded image-capturing devices I’ve laid hands on.”

“If the gf1 so many years ago set in motion an entirely new genre of camera with micro four-thirds, the Q epitomizes it. If the iPhone is the perfect every person’s mirrorless, then the Q is some specialist miracle. It should not exist. It is one of those unicorn-like consumer products that so nails nearly every aspect of its being — from industrial to software design, from interface to output — that you can’t help but wonder how it clawed its way from the r&d lab. Out of the meetings. Away from the committees. How did it manage to maintain such clarity in its point of view?”

I believe that in hindsight… the Leica Q will be seen as one of the greatest fixed-prime-lens travel photography kits of all time.”

After reading that review I realised I wanted a Leica Q quite badly – but at close to £3,000 could I justify the purchase?

A demanding specification

Thinking through what I really wanted out of a large sensor compact I came up with a fairly demanding specification:

Large sensor (full frame if possible, but no smaller than APS-C)
Silent shutter operation
Usable at high ISO
A sharp, fast lens preferably with image stabilisation
Fast autofocus
Effective viewfinder
Good handling/ergonomics
Durable magnesium alloy construction
Weather proof
Good battery life
Decent burst performance
Value for money

The Leica Q has all this nailed except for weather sealing. That said, Craig Mod’s review indicated it was pretty tough:

“Over these last six months, the Q joined me while on assignment in South Korea, trekking across Myanmar, hiking the mountains of Shikoku, and spending a few freezing nights on Mt. Kōya. It was used in searing heat, 100% humidity, covered in sweat amid rice fields beneath a relentless sun…. The Q is small but substantial. Solid. It becomes an effortless all-day companion. Strapped across my chest, it was banged sideways against rocks, motorcycles, stone walls, metal water bottles, farmers, cats. It captured everything thrown at it and into it.”

Purchasing The Leica Q

I attended the Photography Show and after testing some of Nikon’s newest gear, went to the Leica stand to see if I could get my hands on one. There was one to hand and it didn’t take me long to decide that I really wanted one. The lens was astonishingly sharp, the build quality was rock solid and the camera was a joy to handle. The good people at Leica told me that the London Camera Company had six Qs on their stand to sell at the show, so I went and promptly bought one – the alternative being a lengthy waiting list. I wondered whether I would suffer buyer’s remorse afterwards – at £2,900 the Q is by far the most expensive camera purchase I had ever made.

Q Results

My experience with the Q, and its successor the Q2, has really been an extension of my first touch of the camera – it is a delight to use. It took me quite a while to get over how sharp the f1.7 lens is – I believe it is the sharpest lens I own. What I also found is that the camera can be remote controlled from my iPhone, which has permitted some street shots that I would not have got otherwise and that I could compose in high contrast black and white whilst simultaneously shooting in raw.

The shot of the boats in Folkestone harbour is straight from the camera. The image at top is of some objects for sale in Deal Market as was shot at f1.7 focusing on the statuette at the back of the table and shows the almost 3D effect a fast, very sharp lens can produce. Here is my summary of how the Q met my requirements:

Value for money – Leica’s 28mm f/1.4 retails at £3,900 with the f/2 costing £2,700. £2,900 for a full frame camera plus an f1.7 lens suddenly seems quite reasonable
Fast burst performance – 10 fps burst
Good battery life – 300 shots (Leica/CIPA tests) which is decent
Weather proof – sadly the Leica Q is not weather sealed
Durable magnesium alloy construction – a milled aluminium top and base plates and a magnesium alloy body provide an unrivalled quality feel
Good handling/ergonomics – The camera is built in Germany, the home of the Leica M. There is a good thumb grip on the back, and the optional grip is excellent. The controls are well laid out with an excellent tactile feel to them.
Effective viewfinder – The Q’s viewfinder is electronic rather than optical, but it does a pretty good job of mimicking an the optical EVF with its high resolution EVF, which at (3.68 megapixel resolution is the highest currently available.
Fast autofocus – The Leica Q is the first full-frame Leica to incorporate an autofocus system. It has a 49-point system with multi, 1-point, tracking, face-detection and touch AF.
A sharp, fast lens preferably with image stabilisation – f1.7, 5 axis stabilisation
Usable at high ISO – up to 6,400 in my estimation with film like grain
Silent shutter operation – leaf shutter for close to silent operation (1/2000s)
Large sensor – 24 megapixel full frame sensor with no optical low-pass filter for improved detail and tone mapping

And here are some of the extra’s I didn’t expect.

Remote control from iPhone via the Leica Q App
Rapid transfer of images of to iPhone via the Leica Q App
Ability to shoot wide open in bright conditions due to the electronic shutter (1/16000s)
Excellent monochrome setting, which allows high contrast mono JPEGS to be captured along with full colour RAW images
The Outstanding macro mode with 17cm minimum focus distance, activated from the control ring on the lens. The distance markings on the lens change to a new set of macro markings in a way that really exemplifies engineering excellence.
The aperture is controlled by a ring situated at the front of the lens (as with any M lens) and is astonishingly pleasing to handle and use
Excellent bokeh, especially for a relatively wide angle lens
The lens hood is incredibly solid and attractive – it is similar to the M’s Summarit 35mm

For a compact camera the Leica Q is quite substantial – it is not, by any means a pocket camera at 130 x 80 x 93mm and 640g. The purchase price is the same, but more so – it is very substantial! However, it is the best camera I have ever owned, and for me, an important step forward in camera development. I am shooting more and shooting differently – in street photography the 28mm makes you get in close (like Robert Capa and William Klein) and that means I am shooting better with the Leica Q and that is worth a lot to me.

Postscript – The Q2 and Back to Film

My Q was stolen in London – somehow thieves hooked the camera bag out from under the table where I had put it in a London pub. I I was sad about it as it had been all over the world with me – as described in Around the World With a Leica Q. The upside is the Q2 had just become available and I upgraded, giving me both weather proofing and the ability to crop in a little more, because of the larger sensor.

During lockdown I got back into film photography. I wasn’t sure about rangefinders so I started out with a low cost option – a Yashica GSN, which is a great way to get started. Finding that I got on with the Yashica well, I saved for a M6 TTL which I have enjoyed shooting with ever since. I have not switched from Nikon for a removable lens system as the cost of the many lenses I use is prohibitive, so the Q2 is the only digital Leica I own, but for street, travel and general purpose photography it remains my go to camera. so is the Leica worth it? With the built in Summilux the Q2 offers, I say it is.

Back to Film with the Nikon F3

Posted on May 7, 2016March 22, 2024 by Nigel Williams

It’s been a while…

Before I went back to film with a Nikon F3 in 2016, my previous film camera was a Canon IXUS, from the late ’90s – a point and shoot compact which took APS film. My photos from that time date from before I actively studied photography and the shots aren’t the best. My APS films were developed on standard machines, not the specialist ones they had been designed for, which further compromised the results. So my journey with film photography journey really started with the Nikon F3..

A Fortunate Find

Whilst staying with friends in Stockholm in 2016, I came across an Aladdin’s cave of a camera shop, which had a number of film cameras for sale, including Kodak Instamatics, Rolleiflex TLRs and Nikon SLRs, including several Nikon F3 models, some fitted with external motor drives.

The Nikon F3 model I picked out showed signs of wear and had a hole in the bottom of the body (which I later discovered was due to a missing motor drive coupling cover) but I was quite taken with it and bought it on impulse.

An Early Model

This was my first Nikon film SLR. A bit of research revealed that the F3, the successor to the legendary Nikon F (also reviewed on this site) and F2, was the last of the manual-focus, pro 35mm SLR cameras. It was introduced in 1980 and stayed in production until 2001, despite being superseded by the autofocus F4 in 1988.

That’s a long run – especially as according to the MIR site, work on the F3 started back in 1974, barely three years after the debut of the Nikon F2! The formal design process started in 1977 and a prototype was ready by late 1978, which is when NASA came knocking for an automatic exposure control camera for the Space Shuttle.

A check on the serial number showed my F3 was an early model from 1981, not the more common HP (High Eyepoint) variant introduced in 1982. The HP model is identical to its predecessor except for the finder (DE-3), which allowed those wearing glasses a better view of the entire frame. This became standard on the F3, which became known as the F3HP.

Finder Tradeofs

I don’t wear glasses when shooting, preferring to use a diopter, and in this case that’s an advantage, as the trade off the HP model makes to make the whole viewfinder visible from slightly further back is fractionally lower magnification. The F3 is also slightly lighter than the HP variant as the finder HP finder weighs a little more, though the HP finder has slightly improved rubber sealing. Unless you wear glasses, there isn’t much in it.

Five Finders

The F3 has five finders (all interchangeable) to choose from: eye-level (DE-2), eye-level HP (DE-3) waist-level (DW-3), sport (DA-2), and high-magnification (DW-4). The F3 also offered a right-angle viewing attachment (DR-3) and an Eyepiece Magnifier (DG-2). I’ve stuck with the DE-2 my F3 came with.

F3 Exotics

Beyond models based on finder variants there are several more exotic models of the F3. The best known, is the F3/T titanium model, which not much lighter than the regular F3 but quite desirable.

There was also a ruggedised F3P Press/Professional model, the F3 AF autofocus model and the weighty F3H F3 High Speed, a motorised speed demon that could shoot at 13 frames per second.

The autofocus Nikon F3 AF, which became available in 1983 with 2 autofocus lenses, was Nikon’s first entry in the world of AF technology. The Nikon F-501 arrived in 1986, and the Nikon F4 in 1988.

The F3 Electronics Controversy

Unlike its predecessors, which had always been entirely mechanical, the F3 uses an electronically controlled shutter which requires batteries. Electronic shutters and dependence on battery power for anything more than a light meter was initially resisted amongst Nikon professional shooters. Their initial response was to remain loyal to their fully mechanical F2s and eschew the F3.

This controversy apparently continued for years and may still continue. As one blogger wryly commented as recently as 2019: “I mean, what could possibly go wrong in attempting a dispassionate, objective analysis of two excellent SLRs made by Nikon? Oh…right…we are dealing with two groups of people: 1) those that believe that the SLR reached perfection in 1971 and everything since is an abomination against the laws of nature, aka “Knights of the Order of F2″ (referred to henceforth as KOTOOF2), and 2) everyone else.”

The fears of Nikon pros at launch turned out to be unfounded as the F3 was demonstrated itself to be just as bulletproof as as the F and F2. Nikon was committed to increasing reliability – as an example the F3’s shutter was designed to last an incredible 150K actuations, increased from 100K for the F and F2. However, to give photographers more confidence in the new technology Nikon built in a backup mechanical shutter into the F3 that operates at 1/60 sec.

In practice, the F3’s batteries last a very long time (compared to my Leica M6 TTL for example) and the tiny LR44s are easy to carry as spares. I also have an F2 with a Photomic head, and it is excellent, but my F3 gets used more.

The F3’s Horizontal Shutter

Another issue that the professionals weren’t keen on was the slow flash sync speed. The F3 has a horizontal travel shutter which, given the 3:2 aspect ratio of film, takes longer to operate than a vertical travel shutter. The 1/80 second maximum sync speed was the same as that of the F2, but well below the semi pro models (FA, FM2, FE2) with vertical travel shutters, which offered 1/250 second. The F3 was the last of the Nikon Pro cameras with a horizontal shutter – the F4’s went the other way.

Longevity versus Mechanical Cameras

Over time electronic components can be the Achilles heel of older film cameras and initially I thought the Nikon F3’s LCD which displays the shutter speed might be a weak spot. The display in the viewfinder, the Aperture Direct Readout (ADR), is just a display window so is not subject to deterioration, but LCDs don’t always age well. They can become harder to read over time and eventually stop working entirely. Nikon predicted they would only last about seven years or so with pro usage! 35 years after leaving the factory my well used F3’s LCD is holding up perfectly well. The F3’s manual controls also mean that the camera can still be used without the LCD display, although not with automation.

The last point to consider in the electronic vs mechanical Nikon stakes are that electronic shutters usually maintain their accuracy over time better than mechanical shutters.

F3 Surprises

One surprise to me about the F3 was that it was styled by an Italian design legend: Giorgetto Giugiaro, the man who styled the Ferrari 250 GT Bertone, the Aston Martin DB4 GT Bertone, and much else.

Another surprise was that there were Space Shuttle versions of the F3. These had large magazine backs of different capacities and various other modifications for use in space. It wasn’t the first Nikon in space however, as modified Fs were used aboard Apollo 15 and Skylab.

Upgrades and Repairs

Before I could shoot with my new purchase I needed to get it serviced and replace the missing motor drive coupling cover. Reading a little more, I learned that my camera was fitted with an unusual focusing screen, a plain matte screen which lacked the usual split image rangefinder spot.

The F3 is highly modular. It’s 5 interchangeable viewfinders could be paired with 15 interchangeable focusing screens. These vary from the standard central split-image microprism rangefinder screen to those for very specific use cases such as close ups, astro and architectural photography.

Mine was fitted with a Type D, which is used for close ups and with long lenses. I called Greys of Westminster and ordered the more usual Type K type rangefinder screen, a new coupling cover and a -2 diopter.

It’s easy enough to remove the F3’s finder to change the screen. Sliding the grooved buttons on each side of the finder back towards the eye piece releases the front of the finder which can then be lifted out and removed.

All that remained was to take the body into my local camera shop, imagex, who sent it away for a much needed service, at a very reasonable cost of £69.

Adjusting to the F3

It wasn’t difficult to get used to the controls of the F3. They are simple and the dials on the top plate of were familiar looking, as I was shooting with the retro styled digital Nikon Df at the time, and the F3 only offers aperture-priority automation and manual operation.

I did fire the shutter accidently with the backup mechanical release lever (‘what does this lever do? doh!’) to the right of the lens beneath the ‘exposure memory lock’ button (AE-L on modern cameras).

LCD Display

The LCD shutter speed window in the finder isn’t especially bright and can be hard to read at times. There is button to light it up but its exceptionally hard to press and gives so little additional light that its not worth the effort. I actually prefer the needle matching system of the FM3A, FE and FE2, though that is even harder to read in low light.

80/20 Centre Weighting

An adjustment I thought I might need to make was to get used to the heavily centre-weighted metering system, apparently a request from Nikon Pros looking for greater precision. Metering is TTL and reads the light over the whole focusing screen, but nearly all (80%) of metering sensitivity is set to the central 12mm, whilst the rest of the screen gets the remaining 20%.

Nikon accomplished this weighting in an unusual way; by putting thousands of tiny little pinholes in the reflex mirror. These allow exactly 8% of the light to pass through the mirror and onto a metering cell. This didn’t make it’s way into subsequent models; the F4 reverted to 60/40. weighting.

In practice the heavy centre weighting can be useful, and certainly hasn’t presented a problem, even when I forgot about it, but that maybe because I shoot with very forgiving black and white negative film.

The F3 was the first in the F series to put the meter in the camera body. Previous models, which had the meter in the prism, featured 60/40 centre-weighted metering. This is also the case with the last of Nikon’s film cameras, the rather wonderful FM3A.

One little control that isn’t at all obvious is the Multiple Exposure Lever on the far right of the top plate. This enables you re-cock the shutter without advancing the film.

First Outing with the Nikon F3

Once the camera was back from service I bought some Ilford HP5 400 film and headed for the Victoria and Albert Museum, where I shot some of the statues in various galleries, whilst I also visited the excellent Paul Strand photographic exhibition. Initially I kept looking at the back of the camera to see what I had shot, only to be greeted by cardboard film type insert on the camera back. My first keeper is shown above – I really liked the grain and the tone of film and I was hooked.

From the Nikon F3 Onwards…and Backwards

Since I bought the F3 I have acquired several other Nikon film cameras, including the mighty F6 and the hybrid mechanical/electronic marvel that is the FM3A, all of which you can read about in detail on this site from the preceding links.

I’ve also gone back to the start of the F series with a late F from 1970 and an F2 from 1975, both of which are excellent cameras. I particularly like the way you can see rangefinder DNA in the F’s baseplate, which evolved from the Nikon SP rangefinder. The prototype for the F was built on an SP model, adding the distinctive mirror box and pentaprism of the SLR, and a new lens mount, the F mount. The letter F comes from re-F-lex.

F3 Film Nikon — A scene from the Faroe Islands, shot with the Nikon F3

Though some of my photographer friends love the later Nikon F4 and F5, I have never taken to either of them – preferring either the earlier F, F2 or F3 manual focus cameras or the final F6 model.

I’ve taken the Nikon F3 with me when I’ve travelled, including some fairly harsh environments like the Faroe Islands, and it performed very well. I thought about taking my FM2n on that trip, as it is lighter, but the more rugged F3 inspired more confidence.

The Go Anywhere F3

The Nikon F3 remains one of favourite manual Nikon film cameras. Unlike other more expensive classics, such as Leica M6 or Nikon FM3A, which most photographers (including me) fret about in use, my F3 presents no worries at all. It is extremely rugged, affordable to service (or replace), and easy to use.

I bought it slightly beaten up and it’s so tough I am comfortable taking it anywhere. I have 50mm and 28mm (Voigtländer) pancake lenses to keep the form factor to a minimum – the F3 and both pancake lenses easily fit into a small camera bag. It is versatile: the shutter is fast (up to 1/2000 second), and though I haven’t needed them to date, there is a PC connection (though a flash requires an adaptor), and it will take a standard cable release. It takes great pictures. What more could you ask for?

The Timeless Quality of Black & White Photographs

Posted on March 5, 2016June 8, 2023 by Nigel Williams

Why Timeless?

Timeless Quality of Black and White — A black white image with that timeless quality

Black and white images often possess a timeless quality that is more difficult to achieve with colour images. This is largely because colour provides more visual clues as to when a photograph was taken.

Variance in the colours themselves can sometimes suggest a specific era – the difference between the colour renditions of the 1970s for example, and today are often clearly discernible; this is due to differences in colour processing, which have changed significantly over time.

Printed colour images may also be subject to varying degrees of instability as they age, which is also helpful in dating them.

The Advance of Colour Film

The first permanent colour photograph was taken in the 1860s using the colour separation, a method which required shooting three separate black and white photos using three different coloured filters. These were then projected together to create a colour image.

By the first decade of the twentieth century colour separation using the Autochrome process which used millions of tiny colour filters made of potato starch spread over the surface of a plate of glass was available.

In the 1930s multi-layered colour film was developed, the first of which was Kodachrome. The 1960s saw the development of instant photographs by Polaroid, and in the 1970s the C-41 chromogenic colour negative process replaced the C-22 process that Kodak had introduced in the 1950s. For more on the history of photographic processes, see the article on this site ‘From Chemistry to Computation’

It was not until the 1970’s that colour photography became the form of photography. Monochrome photography continued but in niche markets such as fine art.

The Advent of Digital

With the advent of digital photography the clues provided by film have disappeared, but colour is also an element of fashion which inevitably gives a better sense of when the picture was taken. Regardless of changes in fashion, colour provides a level of detail absent from black and white pictures – there is just less information for us to process, making a picture more difficult to date. This is helpful in many genres of photography but is especially so for travel, street and portrait photography. Whilst we know the approximate date we took our pictures, if when these photos were taken is difficult to discern, it seems to imbue them with additional value. Why this should be a virtue is largely attributable to the notion of the ‘classic’ – something long-standing that does not date with age. Synonyms of the word classic give us a clue to the value implied by the term: simple, elegant, understated, uncluttered, restrained, time-honoured, timeless, ageless, abiding, enduring and immortal. Portrait photographer Anne Geddes made the point well when she said: “The best images are the ones that retain their strength and impact over the years, regardless of the number of times they are viewed.”

Photographing souls

Another aspect of timelessness, although more subjective, is that many photographers consider black and white photography promotes a stronger emotional connection with people. Canadian photographer Ted Grant’s quote on this is well known: “When you photograph people in color, you photograph their clothes. But when you photograph people in black and white, you photograph their souls!“

Souls being more durable and important than clothes (to all but the fashion industry!) this quality naturally creates a more timeless photograph.

The Weight of History

Another factor is that because black and white photography preceded colour, many of the pioneers of photography from Adams to Weston including many pioneering women, shot in black and white . Monochrome images were dominant beyond photography’s formative years – leading the way for the first 120 years or so of photography’s history. This resulted in a huge number of iconic black and white images and creates a significant pedigree and a degree of nostalgia for what is now a genre rather than a technology.

The accompanying photo is of Newcastle based photographer Irena Childers and was shot in Garth Park, Bicester, as part of a camera club shoot. It is a digital shot but it strikes me that the picture could have been taken at any time between from 1950 and the present day. This only became apparent when I performed the mono conversion with Silver Efex. The colour version just didn’t have the same timeless quality…

All About Tone

Posted on February 1, 2016January 26, 2024 by Nigel Williams

Enough to Convert a Pianist

Colossal head of Constantine

When a photograph is converted to mono and the colour removed, what remains is tone. Tone is in fact one of the reasons black and white photography has continued to be popular after the advent of colour. It was the tonal quality of Paul Strand’s work that inspired landscape legend Ansel Adams to make a career change from classical pianist/hobby photographer as a hobby to full time professional. It was the“full, luminous shadows and strong high values, in which subtle passages of tone were preserved” in Strand’s photography that Adam’s found so compelling.

Tonal Range

Tonal range refers to the range and distribution of tones in an image from the darkest to the lightest values. An image with a wide tonal range will include very dark (black) and very light (white) elements, whereas as one with a narrow tonal range will be limited to a more restricted area and will have less contrast. Lighting conditions have a great impact on tonal range. On a misty day in Oxford, UK the difference in brightness between the lightest part and the darkest parts of the scene will be relatively insignificant, but under the harsh light of the mid day sun in Arizona the range will be much greater. Extremes such as that aside, images with a wide tonal range tend have both greater contrast and greater appearance of drama and depth. A narrower tonal range makes the image look flatter, though this may be by design. Tonal range is influenced by the amount of and quality of light (harsh or soft) and the reflectance of the subject. The addition of a polarising filter, something I use extensively, improves contrast and can thus help expand the tonal range. Tonal range is different from dynamic range which refers to the ability of the camera’s sensor to capture shadow detail from the darkest values and highlight detail from the brightest values in the same shot. Dynamic range is maximised in RAW format which records all the image data the sensor is capable of recording, and is one of the main reasons this format is used. Tonal range is the number of tones an image has has to describe the dynamic range.

Tonal Contrast

Tonal contrast is created when light tones and dark tones are adjacent to one another – it has the effect of directing the viewers attention to the contrasting area and is the basis of the success of many black and white images. It is an essential element of composition, but is not as well known as other compositional rules such as leading lines, the rule of thirds, framing, and diagonals.

A tonal curve is typically applied to the image by the camera by default as the image data from the photo sites is linear (the values are directly proportional to the light received), whereas human vision is non-linear. The process is known as (tone curve correction aka gamma correction) and makes the pictures look right to the human eye on a screen display. This process generally lightens the midtones. This default tonal curve can be adjusted in the curves tool of RAW conversion programs (such as the ageing but excellent Aperture, which I still use). The Aperture user manual describes the use of the Curves tool quite well:

“You use the Curves adjustment controls when you want to manually set the tonal values of the shadows, midtones, and highlights in an image using a tonal curve. Unlike the Levels adjustment controls, the Curves controls do not reapportion the luminance values in the image by constraining the white and black points. Instead, you use the Curves controls to precisely remap the position of the midtones relative to the white and black points. Because the human eye’s perception of light is logarithmic rather than incremental, a curve is necessary to distribute the luminance values across all tonal ranges in an image in a way that matches how the eye perceives light in nature.”

Applying a Tone Curve

Applying an S-shaped curve to the data, which is initially shown as a straight line, applies a steep curve in the mid tones, which increases contrast and give the image greater impact. A correctly exposed film image has an inherently more S shaped tone curve than a digital image, and film, being based on a chemical process, and therefore essentially analogue, also creates a smoother continuum of tones than digital cameras. This difference diminishes with every generation of sensor. As much as I care about tone, the advantages of the digital dark room, for me at least, vastly outweigh any disadvantages of digital photography. Let’s take the example of dodging (applying reduced exposure locally) and burning (applying additional exposure locally), both of which are important techniques to modify tone. To quote Ansel Adams once again: “dodging and burning are steps to take care of mistakes God made in establishing tonal relationships.” Both are fiendishly difficult to master with film to the level Adams used, and far simpler with image editing programs such as PhotoShop. It is worth noting that some photographers also consider that dodging and burning can give a more natural impression than adjusting the tonal curve. I use both techniques.

The Black and White Advantage

Here are some of the advantages that the various attributes of tone confer over colour:

With only tones to work with, black and white forces the photographer to pay closer attention to composition – which is in itself an advantage.
The simplicity of a race of tones makes the subject easier to focus on, which is one of the reasons so many street photographers eschew colour.
Simplicity can be enhanced by discarding extraneous detail more easily in monochrome images. I often burn out distracting detail in dark areas to further simplify the image.
Editing a photo converted to black and white provides a much greater opportunity to redistribute the light to create finely graduated tones, which can make architecture and sculpture both more three dimensional and more beautiful.
In portraiture, skin tones are evened out.
Graphical elements and patterns are more evident.
Abstract images are stronger.
Textures often appear to have more depth.
Black and white photography is more effective in low contrast situations, such as under heavy cloud

My example of tone from Flash of Darkness is the Colossus of Constantine in the Courtyard of the Palazzo dei Conservatori of the Musei Capitolini (Capitoline Museums) on the Capitoline Hill in Rome. The statue, built c. 312-315 AD is truly immense and once stood at around 40 feet high. I have experimented with many different versions of this image, from low key to high key and with varying tone curves and application of dodge and burn. The image I prefer however is the one on this page which is fairly neutral, with only a slight increase in contrast; it seems to be the most effective at describing the shading of the marble forms and the subtle changes in the tones of the painted plasterwork.

The Importance of Form

Posted on January 16, 2016April 21, 2022 by Nigel Williams

Marina City Chicago We have had colour photography since the 1930s and the invention of Kodachrome, though it took until the 1970s for it become the norm. So why has black and white photography persisted?

Perhaps the most obvious difference between colour and b&w photography is that unlike their colour equivalents, black and white images are not direct renditions of their subjects. By omitting colour and substituting shades of grey, black and white photography presents an abstract and therefore less realistic image. This takes us into the representational world of art, where the artist tries to portray what is perceived and interpreted with the mind rather than what is seen directly by the eye. Both the artist and the photographer are working with a 3D subject in a 2D medium and this is where black and white photograph has an advantage over a colour rendition – black and white excels at tone; which describes the darkness or lightness of a particular area of an image. This is important as tone is essential to convey the illusion of form – or how the subject looks in three dimensions. Black and white draws more attention to the shadows and lines that depict form and gives a better illusion of depth. This is one of the reasons that black and white is often an effective medium for both landscapes and architectural shots as it can emphasise the shapes and forms within the scene. The case for black and white is even stronger with a side lit photo where light intensity varies across the person or object and the scene is subject to strong shadows. This is one of the reasons why I am fond of film noir which uses a lot of side lighting, shadow and contrast as opposed to the the more evenly exposed lighting of mainstream Hollywood.

On to my example, which is a shot of the columnar and iconic Marina City Towers on Chicago’s Riverfront, designed by architect Bertrand Goldberg. This is one of Chicago’s most notable buildings and was designated a city landmark in 2015. I was much taken with this 65-storey building complex, the tallest residential concrete building in the world at the time of completion in 1964, and known locally as the ‘corn cobs’, as I was driven to my hotel in a taxi. At the time I thought it was the world’s most elegant car park, but actually only the lower 19 floors are used for parking, whilst the upper floors contain apartments, restaurants and a concert hall. The towers were used as a back drop for a chase scene in Steve McQueen’s 1980 film ‘The Hunter’ . In his last film appearance, McQueen played a bounty hunter who is himself being pursued by a psychotic killer and chases a fugitive up the parking ramp in one of the towers before the car he is pursuing skids off the edge into the Chicago River.

I shot the towers from several locations, including the river, whilst on an architectural tour of the city, and eventually captured this image, which I felt depicted the organic form of the building best – the contrast between the light edges of the circular elements and the dark background, together with the sweeping curves of the tower in the foreground, draw the eye and help describe its form. It was shot in the morning, and, as usual, I used a circular polariser to darken the sky and increased the contrast between the building and its background. I took the shot with a Nikon Df with a ‘walk around’ 28-300 lens at ISO 200/45mm/f11/1/250 sec. The towers have a constantly changing pattern of light and shadow over the course of the day and are an ideal subject for black and white photography as well as a great piece of architecture. I was much taken with Chicago, which I visited for the first time in 2015 – it is undoubtedly one of the finest cities for modern architecture in the world and I am keen to return to capture more of it, but my enduring memory of my first visit is those iconic, sci-fi columns of Marina City.

The Beauty of the Long Exposure

Posted on May 10, 2015August 10, 2021 by Nigel Williams

Road to nowhere - the beauty of the long exposure I have seen some astonishing black and white photography that uses very strong neutral density (ND) filters such as the B+W ND 110 to blur cloud movement using a long exposure. I wanted to get some shots with the same effect into my portfolio. The B+W 110 is not for the faint hearted because it is so black the camera typically can’t meter or focus through it, but I’ve tried lesser NDs and they are just not strong enough for the full effect. The real full on long exposure effect can be stunning, and I obtained reasonably pleasing results on the shoot, so I’m going to keep going. The picture on the left is entitled ‘The Road to Nowhere’ and is a small road that runs just off the A41 between Aylesbury and Bicester towards Brill, where I also shot that day. After some experimentation I found the following to work quite well:

Ideally you should shoot on a cloudy day with strong winds so that you can capture the movement as a blur. The direction and speed of movement of the clouds is of interest as movement across the frame versus towards or away from you look quite different.
Set up your camera on a tripod. Make sure it is really secure, especially if you are in a high wind. If you have a strap attached to the camera make sure it is not flapping about. Ideally you should be using a cable release or remote to release the shutter.
Compose a test shot without the filter, in aperture priority mode – setting the desired aperture, which will typically be small (I mainly used f16). Typically you will want to set a low ISO, shoot using Raw and disable lens vibration reduction as it is not helpful on a tripod.
Focus using auto focus and take note of the shutter speed.
Next, screw in your B+W 110 10 stop neutral density filter, and switch to manual focus and manual mode.
In Manual mode set the shutter speed to 1000 times the shutter speed of the meter reading for the test shot, keeping the same aperture setting and using the bulb setting if necessary.
Take the shot and look at the result. Adjust the shutter setting as desired until you get the exposure you want.
Take off the ND filter, flip back to aperture mode and autofocus and take a bracket of 3 shots that can be used with the long exposure to create a properly exposed image.