Although camera Obscura goes back to ancient times, it is not a brand name, but rather a technology type. The development of cameras was progressive throughout the ages, however there seems to be no record of any dedicated manufactures prior to Johann Christoph Voigtländer. Even here, Voigtländer was an optical company specialising in lenses since 1756. It was not until 1841 that it produced its’ first camera; the all-metal daguerrotype camera (Ganzmetallkamera).
Voigtländer became a technology leader and the first manufacturer to introduce several new kinds of product that would later become commonplace. These include the first zoom lens (36–82/2.8 Zoomar) in 1960 (although zoom lenses were already in use on movie cameras at the time) and the first 35mm compact camera with built-in electronic flash (Vitrona) in 1965. From 1999 until the present (2010), Voigtländer branded products have been manufactured and marketed by Cosina (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voigtl%C3%A4nder).
A British patent was granted in 1861 for the first internal mirror SLR photographic camera, but the first production photographic SLR did not appear until 1884 in America (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_single-lens_reflex_camera), so the SLR pre-dates roll film.
35mm roll film was introduced in 1892 by William Dickson and Thomas Edison, using 70mm film stock supplied by George Eastman. Edison had it cut lengthwise to get two 35mm lengths from the one 70mm length. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/35_mm_film). It was initially used for producing movies, before it found its’ place in still photography.
It was not until 1934 that it came in cartridges known as 135 film. The term 135 was introduced by Kodak as a designation for cartridge film 35 mm (1.4 in) wide, specifically for still photography.
While the Leica camera popularised the format, there were a number of 35 mm still cameras using perforated movie film before the Leica’s introduction in the 1920s (Full scale production of the Leica did not begin until 1925). The first patent for one was issued to Leo, Audobard and Baradat in England in 1908. The first full-scale production camera was the Homeos, a stereo camera, produced by Jules Richard in 1913. It took stereo pairs, 18×24 mm, with two Tessar lenses, and was sold until 1920 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/135_film).
The first SLR in the 35mm format was the Soviet Union’s Спорт (“Sport”). Prototyped in 1934, it was a very smart design with a 24mm x 36mm frame size, but did not enter the market until 1937. The first German 35mm SLR camera was the Ihagee Kine-Exakta, produced in 1936, which was fundamentally a scaled-down Vest-Pocket Exakta. This camera used a waist-level finder. It may have just pipped the post to market over the Спорт (“Sport”). However the first “fixed” eye-level pentaprism 35mm SLR, the historic progenitor of many later SLRs that adopted this arrangement, was the Contax S from Zeiss in 1949 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_single-lens_reflex_camera).
A whole series of developments took place from this point onwards: These facts were extracted from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_single-lens_reflex_camera
The Asahi Optical Company was the first Japanese company to produce a 35mm SLR (1952). The Asahiflex IIB of 1954 was the first Japanese SLR with an instant-return mirror. Previously, the mirror would remain up and the viewfinder black until the shutter was cocked for the next shot. In 1957, the Asahi Pentax became the first Japanese fixed-pentaprism SLR, closely following Miranda’s removable pentaprism model; its success led Asahi to eventually rename itself Pentax. This was the first SLR to use the right-hand single-stroke film advance lever of the Leica M3 of 1954 and Nikon S2 of 1955. Asahi (starting with the Asahi Pentax) and many other camera makers used the M42 lens mount from the Contax S, which came to be called the Pentax screw mount. So while Asahi Pentax can’t claim inventing many of these features, they were the first to bring them all together in a 35mm SLR camera. Pentax is now part of the Hoya Corporation.
Miranda SLR cameras were sold in Japan from August 1955 with the launch of the Miranda T camera. The camera was narrowly the first Japanese-made pentaprism 35mm SLR. It featured a removable pentaprism for eye-level viewing, that could be removed for use as a waist-level finder.
The Zunow SLR, which went on sale in 1958 (in Japan only), was the first 35mm SLR camera with an automatic diaphragm, which stopped down to the preselected aperture upon release of the shutter. The automatic diaphragm feature eliminated one downside to viewing with an SLR: the darkening of the viewfinder screen image when the photographer selected a small lens aperture. The Zunow Optical Company also supplied the Miranda Camera Company with lenses for their Miranda T SLR cameras.
It seems Canon’s only record was from the Canonflex R2000, the first 35mm SLR to feature a top shutter speed of 1/2000 of a second around 1960.
Nikon’s ‘F’ model, introduced in 1959 as the world’s first system camera, became enormously successful and was the camera design that demonstrated the superiority of the SLR and of the Japanese camera manufacturers. This camera was the first SLR system that was adopted and used seriously by the general population of professional photographers, especially by those photographers covering the Vietnam War, and those news photographers utilizing motor-driven Nikon F’s with 250-exposure backs to record the various launches of the space capsules in the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo space programs, both in the 1960s. After the introduction of the Nikon F, the more expensive rangefinder cameras (those with focal plane shutters) became less attractive.
Tokyo Optical’s Topcon RE-Super (Beseler Topcon Super D in the US), just preceded the Pentax Spotmatic into production with the first TTL (through-the-lens) metering system in 1962. Topcon cameras used behind-the-lens CdS (Cadmium Sulfide Cells) light meters which were integrated into a partially silvered area of the mirror.
So while the Eastern Europeans were first off the mark with 35mm SLR camera technologies, by the 60’s the Japanese were leading in new innovation.
The Minolta XD11 was the first SLR to offer both aperture-priority and shutter-priority modes in 1977, it was not until the next year that the Canon A-1 came out with a microprocessor computer powerful enough to offer both of those modes and add the ability to automatically set both the shutter speed and lens aperture in a compromise exposure from light meter advice.
The first true 35mm SLR autofocus camera that had a successful design was the Minolta Maxxum 7000, introduced in 1985.
Canon was the first to embrace the full power of camera electronics using microprocessors and reinventing their whole range to release the EOS series in 1987, which has carried over to today’s digital range. Canon was also the first Japanese manufacturer to make a 35mm camera, although not a SLR type. That honour went to Ashai (Pentax).
In 1999, Nikon was also the first to release a digital SLR developed entirely by a single manufacturer for the professional consumer market. High-end Digital cameras before that were prohibitively expensive, limiting them to commercial use only. By 2018 Canon and Nikon brands both shared the top spot in DSLR camera sales. The “D” was added to the “SLR” (Single Lens Reflex) acronym to indicate it was a digital SLR camera. Minolta was incorporated into Konica, which later was absorbed into Sony technology. Pentax parted ways with Asahi long before 2000 and is still around in 2019. Their top-end DSLRs are value for money, but not enough to pip Canon, or Nikon from the top-selling brands.
Leica still make fine camera’s but are generally priced out of the competitive market. Most European brands are aimed at the top-end specialist professional market. Sony on the other hand is leading the charge in a new digital camera technology… Mirrorless digital cameras. Yes we have gone full circle moving away from the SLR technology again. Two of the main reasons were reduction in camera size and mitigation of SLR technology problems when shooting video.
Sometime after 2010 video functionality was introduced to still camera technology. With still photography through a DSLR camera, the mirror flips up out of the way during the exposure. With video, the exposure is continuous until recording is stopped. In all the time that the mirror is locked up you lose the viewfinder function and autofocus control.
New technologies were developed to compensate for this but most of them involved adding mirrorless technology like “liveview” screens to the DSLR cameras. They were basically becoming large mirrorless cameras with mirrors—functions were being duplicated. Canon managed to create an excellent autofocus system called “Dual Pixel AF” that worked equally well in “Liveview” mode and reflex mirror viewfinder mode. They first used it in their EOS 80D DSLR model. However it was a little late to the party. Sony had won the hybrid still/video camera technology race with their Alpha series models.
Nikon was not even in the running with DSLR video. Sony’s real challenge was coming from Panasonic, with their flagship Lumix GH series hybrid mirrorless cameras. The GH5 led the way in 5 axis image stabilisation using a hybrid of lens and body optical and electronic stabilisation. Sony has in body (IBIS) image stabilisation but their large sensor size gave the Panasonic Lumix GH5 an advantage here. Canon used lens only image stabilisation that worked well, but made lenses bigger, heavier and more expensive to build.
These new advances in technology found their way into mobile phone devices. Being able to capture nice quality stills and video footage from these devices has started to kill off the lower end dedicated camera technology. Around 2017, Nikon announced it was pulling out of the compact camera market to concentrate on its specialist and higher-end technologies.
Now video is being captured in 8K resolution. It is not yet available in consumer cameras, but 4K is. To give you an idea, a 10 mp still camera captures an image that is around 3888 by 2592. That is close to 4K. Still images at this resolution can now be captured using video technology. While the still camera can shoot video, new video cameras can produce stills. We have an interesting future ahead.
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First published here in 2011. Updated in 2019.
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