التصوير للجميع - ٢ - تاريخ التصوير الضوئي .. كتاب التصوير الضوئي

Photography for All - 2 - History of Photography ..
Book of Photography

The 1890s witnessed the emergence of small machines: folding machines equipped with bellows, the new dual-lens reflex and the laboratory machine called Todark, which processed the film inside it without the need for a laboratory (the word Todark means exactly (without a black room), i.e. without a laboratory). The problem with Todark was, of course, its name! Kodak considered it very close to its name and pursued its inventor for usurping the registered trademark. The name was cancelled. But it is true to say that Todark can be considered the great-grandfather of the instant developing machines invented in 1947 by Edwin Land under the name Polaroid.

At the beginning of this century, everyone could take pictures and Kodak responded to the public's requests for an inexpensive machine and introduced the (Brownie) in 1900 and the folding pocket machines in 1903 called (Vest Pocket).

In the late 1920s, major improvements and perfections came from Germany with small-scale precision machines. This superiority lasted for 40 years. The first and most beautiful very small machine was the “Ermanox” of 1924, equipped with a diaphragm and a lens open to 20/22. This machine enabled it to take instant photographs in the weak light available. The following year, at the Leipzig Exhibition, Leitz presented his famous Leica.

Early-era machines:

Most of today’s machines are descended from old ideas: the two-lens reflex machine on the left was made by the London Stereoscopic Company and was filled with four 4 × 5 plates (early in the century). In the middle, the Ermanox is a German high-precision machine filled with a single plate. The legendary Leica machine on the right was invented between 1911 and 1913 by Oskar Barnack, Leitz’s assistant and its maker. Ten years after the first model was made, the latter created 300 machines to test the market: since 1925, Leica machines were being manufactured in the thousands.

Pocket machines:

The miniature machines were only made possible by improving the compound with silver gelatinobromine on film. The watch-shaped Tikka was equipped with reels that allowed it to be refilled in daylight. Each small reel allowed for 25 photographs.

Informant machines:

The small machines that became popular in 1890 were called informant machines. They worked well hidden in various ways - in a book, for example, in the hand of a crutch or in a pistol. The book and the crutch used the film on the reel, while the pistol used small plates centered on a mill whose rotation put the plate in place behind the lens and fed the shutter, which was released by the trigger.