History of the camera

The history of the camera traces how devices for forming images developed from camera obscuras and chemical photography into film cameras and digital imaging systems.

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Camera obscura: An optical device that projects an outside scene through a small opening onto an interior surface. It supplied the image-forming principle behind the earliest photographic cameras.
Photographic film: A light-sensitive strip or sheet that records an image through chemical changes during exposure and development. Flexible film enabled compact cameras and many exposures without replacing a plate.
Box camera: A simple camera with a box-shaped body, fixed lens, and basic controls. Mass-produced box cameras brought inexpensive snapshot photography to broad audiences.
Digital camera: A camera that records images electronically using an image sensor and digital data storage. It replaced film development with electronic capture, review, and copying.
Nicéphore Niépce: A French inventor who made the earliest surviving permanent photograph using a camera and light-sensitive material. His experiments turned camera obscura projections into lasting images.
Shutter (photography): A camera mechanism that controls how long light reaches the recording medium. Faster and more reliable shutters expanded the scenes cameras could capture.
Leica I: A 1925 camera that established the commercial 35 mm still-camera format. Its compact design helped make candid, portable photography a major practice.
Film camera: A camera that records images on light-sensitive photographic film. Its chemical recording process contrasts with sensor-based digital imaging.
Daguerreotype: An early photographic process that produces a detailed image on a silver-coated copper plate. Its public introduction in 1839 made photography a practical camera-based medium.
Single-lens reflex camera: A camera that uses a mirror and prism to show the lens's view through an optical finder. Its viewing system made framing and focusing through the taking lens practical.