Photography Zoom : The complete photography guide

Photography today, to all of us, seems like just a process by which we capture images using our Nikon or Sony digital cameras. But has anyone ever given a slight thought upon that how a click on the camera results in the recording of a priceless moment of our life, which we would like to look back to many a times.

This process of capturing images came into knowledge of people in mid 1800s when Louis Daugerre announced his invention of the daguerreotype process that fixed optical images permanently. But the actual effort of producing the first ever piece of a recorded image was done by a Frenchman Joseph Nicephore Niepce.

This man who had a scientific bend of mind was very much fascinated by the art of lithography which swept the whole of France in 1813. He began his experiments in early 1816 with glass plates coated with a light sensitive medium which was again his own composition. He made use of these experiments as well as the 'camera obscura' which was well known at that time for this new invention which could record images forever.

In the year 1924, Niepce was somewhat successful in copying engravings utilizing pewter plates as the support medium for the process.
How was the worlds first photograph taken :

In the summers of 1826, Niepce was finally ready to do the never done before task of recording an image with the help of pewter plate and Bitumen of Judea( an asphalt derivativeof petroleum).

In the window of his workroom, he set up camera obscura which had a 8"x6.5" pewter plate coated with Bitumen.

He removed the lens cover to give a day long exposure of eight hours.

After exposure, the pewter plate was removed.

On washing the plate with a mixture of oil of lavender and white petroleum, the bitumen which was hardened by light was dissolved away and it showed the image of the view outside the window on it. the photograph witnessed buildings, coutyard, trees and landscape as seen from that window.

Niepce named this first ever photograph 'heloigraph' meaning sun-drawing.

The most amazing part as we see about this photograph was that, it produced image without using any negative, as we use today.