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Nicéphore Niépce abandons silver halide photography as hopelessly impermanent and tries using thin coatings of Bitumen of Judea on metal and glass. He creates the first fixed, permanent photograph, a copy of an engraving of Pope Pius VII, by contact printing in direct sunlight without a camera or lens. It is later destroyed; the earliest surviving example of his "heliographic process" is from 1825.
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Henry Fox Talbot produces durable silver chloride camera negatives on paper and conceives the two-step negative-positive procedure used in most non-electronic photography up to the present.
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Louis Daguerre creates images on silver-plated copper, coated with silver iodide and "developed" with warmed mercury; Daguerre is awarded a state pension by the French government in exchange for publication of methods and the rights by other French citizens to use the Daguerreotype process.
1841: Talbot patents his process under the name "calotype". -
Edmond Becquerel makes the first full-color photographs, but they are only laboratory curiosities: an exposure lasting hours or days is required and the colors are so light-sensitive that they sometimes fade right before the viewer's eyes while being examined.
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Louis Le Prince makes Roundhay Garden Scene, believed to be the first motion picture on film ever made.
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The Autochrome plate is introduced and becomes the first commercially successful color photography product.
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Kodak announces a 35 mm "safety" motion picture film on an acetate base as an alternative to the highly flammable nitrate base.The motion picture industry discontinues its use after 1911 due to technical imperfections.
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Becky Sharp, the first feature film made in the full-color "three-strip" version of Technicolor, is released.
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Edwin H. Land introduces the first Polaroid instant camera.
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1959: Nikon F introduced
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Nicholas Nixon takes his first annual photograph of his wife and her sisters: "The Brown Sisters"; Steve Sasson at Kodak builds the first working CCD-based digital still camera
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First solo show of color photographs at the Museum of Modern Art, William Eggleston's Guide
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Kodak DCS-100, first digital SLR, a modified Nikon F3
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Photo CD created by Kodak
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Adobe Photoshop released.
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J-SH04 introduced by J-Phone, the first commercially available mobile phone with a camera that can take and share still pictures.
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Polaroid goes bankrupt
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Canon EOS 5D, first consumer-priced full-frame digital SLR, with a 24x36mm CMOS sensor for $3000; Portraits by Rineke Dijkstra
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Polaroid announces it is discontinuing the production of all instant film products, citing the rise of digital imaging technology.
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Lytro releases the first pocket-sized consumer light-field camera, capable of refocusing images after being taken.
