The Digital camera - history

According to the British Journal of Photography magazine ( 04/03/09), the technology behind the capture and image recording system for digital cameras was researched and developed to a working model by the Eastman Kodak Company researcher, Steven Sasson, in 1975. He received the Dr. Eric Salomon Prize from Deutsche Gesellschaft fur Photographie at photokina in 2008.

Sasson's work resulted in a U.S. patent being granted to him and his co-worker Gareth Lloyd in 1978. The prototype used a CCD sensor of 100X100 pixels developed by Fairchild Technologies fitted in a 3.8kg device that used a Kodak XL movie camera lens and a tape cassette based data recording system.

But it was to be another decade before practicable digital capture systems reached the professional and enthusiast market. Nikon was one of the first with its modified 1991 F3 film slr camera but Kodak soon became a major player with models based on the compact Nikon F90 slr. The company also launched its Kodak Picture Disk in the middle of the decade. This system allowed photofinishers to copy scanned film images onto a 3.5 inch floppy disk which consumers could use to view images on a t.v or computer. It was the forerunner of Kodak's Compact Disk data storage system.

The Mavica video based image capture system developed by Sony was a market failure; Fuji developed its own CCDs and software but Minolta, Pentax, Olympus and just about everyone else in the photo industry were struggling to catch up in the first half of the 1990s. When the Kodak Canon EOS-1 based DCS 520 camera was trialled at the 1998 Nagano Winter Olympics with a sensor size closer to the APS-C/DX used today, it produced a 6mb file and cost more than the price of a medium sized family saloon car.

In September 1999 however, Nikon rolled out the D1 to great acclaim. It was immediately adopted by the world's press and has been dubbed the digital equivalent of the 1959 Nikon F. The D1's efficient ergonomic design became a benchmark for other manufacturers and throughout the first decade of the 21st century, countless new models of digital single lens reflex, rangefinder, medium format and compact cameras have been launched by manufacturers including Canon, Epson, Hasselblad, Leaf, Leica, Minox, Panasonic, Pentax, Olympus, Ricoh, Samsung, Sigma, Sinar, Sony and others.

Digital Micro Four-Thirds format cameras