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History of Digital Photography

The history of digital photography is a little more than 30 years old but there have been tremendous advances since then.

Steve Sasson and his supervisor, Gareth Lloyd were later awarded U.S. Patent 4,131,919 for their invention of the digital camera.

It was in December of 1975 that an electrical engineer of Eastman Kodak company captured the first digital image.

Steven J. Sasson convinced a lab assistant to pose for his new invention of the digital camera.

The camera itself was a beast and weighed 3.6 kilograms (about 8 pounds). It took the camera 23 seconds to record a digital image onto cassette tape and another 23 seconds to read from that cassette tape and display it to a TV screen.

The "digital photo" was in black-and-white and at a resolution of 10,000 pixels! That's 0.01 megapixels! Suffice to say, the lab assistant was not pleased :)

Since that time, in the history of digital photography, there have been tremendous advances in the kinds of imaging technologies, cameras and so on.

Today's digital cameras can record many tens of millions of pixels and their digital circuitry processes and converts light into digital images that we take for granted today.

Due to the nature of the electronic technologies within these cameras, most people could not afford such a new device.

It wasn't until late 2003 when Canon introduced the Digital Rebel. It was the first digital SLR camera with a kit lens (18-55mm) priced under $1,000!

Sub-$1000 Cameras

Once this psychological barrier of sub-$1,000 was broken, consumer attitudes changed dramatically.

Suddenly, these cameras, which were used by photojournalists and "professional" photographers were easily accessible to many people! The more people wanted these cameras, the more camera technologies improved.

Not to be outdone by their competitor, Nikon, in 2004 introduced its similarly priced flagship model, the D70. For $1,299 with an 18-70mm lens (or $999 without), Nikon attempted to challenge Canon's market share.

The history of digital photography has changed dramatically since the introduction of the Rebel XT and the D70.

And these cameras were introduced 15 years ago! Today's cameras are more sophisticated, sleeker and more powerful versions of their earlier predecessors.

And I wonder what the future of digital photography will hold in store. Today's digital SLR cameras will be fondly remembered as the front-runners of tomorrow's unparalled photo-gadgetry!

That is to say, today's SLRs will be tomorrow's history of digital photography!

Currently, there are a number of manufacturers of digital SLR cameras including such recognizable names as Sony, Olympus, Pentax and Fuji. Each have their own sensor technologies and ideas of what a camera should be.