Camera obscuraA B C D E F G H IJKL M N O P R S T U VXYZWmass-produced at the time. The prototype of
the Leica was constructed by Oskar Barnack in
1914; Rolleifl ex was put on the market by Franke
and Heidecke Braunschweig in 1947, and Voigt-
lander’s zoom lens was introduced in 1959.
In the 1960s and 1970s the application of
electronics revolutionized camera and lens
design. Th e silicon chip allowed amazing feats
of miniaturization. In 1963 Eastman Kodak
introduced the 126 ‘instant loading’ cartridge,
a modernization of an old idea going back to
the Expo Watch camera of 1905. In 1972 they
produced the pocket 110, an ultraminiature
cartridge-load camera. Polaroid, in the same
year, launched the SX-70 instant photo system,
which abandoned the method whereby a protec-
tive covering had to be peeled off the print; with
SX-70, the photo image develops automatically
in the light, protected by a plastic coating.
1976 saw Canon introduce its famous AE-1,
a fully automatic SLR camera incorporating
very advanced digital electronic technology,
produced by automated methods. In the early
1980s Kodak launched its disc-camera. Th ree-
dimensional (3D) cameras also came on to the
market at this time. An off shoot of the 35mm
camera is the Advanced Photo System (APS)
off ering smaller, lighter cameras in which 35mm
fi lm is inserted into the camera in cassette form.
digitization – for popular rather than
professional use – made fi lm redundant. Picture
storage and transmission online soon became
commonplace, as was still picture-making and
video combined in the same camera. Mobile
phones quickly became cameras, their pictures
capable of being sent as swiftly as voice messages
and text. Current developments focus on
improving high-speed image resolution for
scientifi c and popular use.
Th e availability of digital cameras at moder-
ate cost has made possible the arrival of citizen
journalism (see journalism: citizen jour-
nalism), where members of the public record
events, often in advance of the professionals, and
swiftly transmit news pictures to the media. See
high-speed photography; photography,
origins.
Camera obscura Latin for ‘dark chamber’; an
early means of projecting an image – a box or
room with a lens at one end and at the other a
refl ector which throws an external image upon
a screen or table. Antonio Canaletto (1697–1768)
used the camera obscura to considerable eff ect
in his paintings of Venice, though the device was
referred to as early as Aristotle (384–322 BC).
It was French army offi cer Joseph Nicéphore1, as potentially ‘a disaster for democracy’ and
‘direct censorship for the fi rst time in 300 years’.
Calcutt recommended: (1) A statutory code of
practice for journalists and other press practitio-
ners; (2) A press complaints tribunal comprising
a judge and two lay assessors appointed by the
Lord Chancellor; (3) New criminal off ences to
cover invasion of privacy, including bugging
and the use of telephoto lenses. His report was
was highly critical of the performance of the
Press Complaints Council, which had not been
constituted, or evolved, in line with his 1990
recommendations. He dismissed the PCC as an
ineff ective regulator, too much in the hands of
the newspaper owners.
The first government response to Calcutt
Mk 2 was cool towards statutory enforcement
through recommendations (1) and (2), but more
persuaded concerning Calcutt’s third recom-
mendation – although not suffi ciently persuaded
to take any legislative action. Two decades later,
the situation remained as it was when Calcutt
made his reports. See defamation; journal-
ism: phone-hacking. See also topic guide
under commissions, committees, legisla-
tion.
Camera Th e fi rst photographic camera on sale
to the public was produced by London optician
Francis West, for ‘Photogenic Drawing’ (1839).
In the same year Baron Saguier introduced a
lightweight bellows camera with three ‘fi rsts’ in
equipment – a darkroom tent, a photographic
tripod and a ball-and-socket head. Binocular-
type cameras were introduced as early as 1853,
by John Benjamin Dancer of Manchester. In
1858 Th omas Skaife introduced his ‘Pistolgraph’:
a spring shutter worked by rubber bands was
released by a trigger. He once aimed his Pistol-
graph at Queen Victoria and was nearly arrested
for an attempt on her life. 1880 saw the fi rst twin-
refl ex camera, a quarter plate with a roller-blind
shutter attached to the taking lens, made by R. &
J. Beck of London.
George Eastman produced the first camera
incorporating roll-film, calling it the Kodak
(1888). Th e simplicity of this camera (‘Pull the
string – turn the key – press the button’) made
mass photography possible, especially as East-
man recommended the return of the camera to
the factory for development and printing. Minia-
ture cameras, as scientifi c precision instruments,
were produced from 1924 (the Ermanox made by
the Ernemann Works of Dresden).
In 1912 George P. Smith of Missouri produced
a 35mm camera taking one by one-and-a-half
inch pictures on cine-film which was being