FORENSIC 101

• Berenice Abbott: 'Photography helps to see.'
• Photography


  Came from two Greek words meaning "writing with light"
• First used


  1839
• Camera obscura


  • Chinese first wrote about the basic idea in 470 BC
  • Used by artists like Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci in the 1500s to help them draw pictures
  • Made portable in the 1700s by putting it in a box with a pinhole on one side and a glass screen on the other
• Bitumen


  An asphalt used in ancient times as a cement or mortar
• Birth of photography happened when a French scientist, Joseph Nicephore Niepce, put a plate coated with bitumen in a camera obscura and took a photograph


  1826
• Portable cameras obscura


  • 2 unknown types, circa 1769
• Niepce and Daguerre


  • Niepce began sharing his findings with Daguerre, an artist who owned a theatre in Paris
  • They became partners 3 years later
• Daguerre's most important discovery came, two years after Niepce died

  1835
• Silver iodide


  Much more sensitive to light than Niepce's Bitumen
• Daguerre's process (daguerreotype)


  1. Put a copper plate coated with silver iodide in a camera obscura

  2. Exposed this plate to light for a short time

  3. Exposed to fumes of mercury

  4. Image appeared

  5. Remaining silver iodide washed away with a solution of warm water and table salt
• Daguerre's process announced to the world

  January 7, 1839
• Daguerreotype taken of Port Ripetta, Rome in Italy


  1839
• William Henry Fox Talbot

  • Developed a similar process to Daguerre
  • Coated a sheet of drawing paper with silver chloride
  • Put it in a camera obscura to produce a negative image
  • Placed the negative against another coated sheet of paper to produce a positive image
• Calotype


  Talbot's process, later improved and renamed
• Calotype is the basis for most modern film technology which relies on negative to produce many positive prints
• First commercially made daguerreotype cameras

  • Designed by Mr. Daguerre, the inventor of the daguerreotype, in 1839
• Photography arrived in America because Samuel F.B Morse, the inventor of the telegraph, saw a demonstration of the daguerreotype in Paris and returned to America to spread the news


  1839
• Photographic portraits


  • Much less expensive than painted ones
  • Took less time
  • More accurate
• People who painted people's portraits quickly went out of business or became daguerreotypists themselves
• Tintypes


  • Used an iron plate instead of a glass plate
  • Most often used during the Civil War
  • Photographers often worked from the back of horse drawn wagons photographing pioneer families and Union soldiers
• First war to be thoroughly recorded by photography

  Civil War in America
• Mathew Brady


  • Saw the importance of documenting the conflict at its beginning and organized a team of photographers to cover different battlefronts
  • They took 7,000 pictures
• Driving of the Golden Spike


  • Photograph taken by Andrew J. Russel who had worked for Mathew Brady during the Civil War
• Kodak cameras

  • George Eastman set up his Eastman Dry Plate Company in 1880
  • Introduced the first Kodak camera in 1888 that cost $25 and had a 20-foot roll of paper (enough for 100 pictures)
  • Improved Kodak camera with a roll of film instead of paper appeared a year later
  • Introduced the Kodak Brownie box roll-film camera in 1900 that cost $1
• Eastman wanted everybody to be able to take photographs
• Panchromatic film


  Film sensitive to all colors, produced in 1906
• Autochrome


  First color plates, invented in 1907 by Auguste and Louis Lumiere
• 35mm film


  Developed in 1914 by Oscar Barnack
• Leica camera


  Invented by Oscar Barnack, the first to utilize the 35mm format with the Ur-Leica in 1924
• Kodachrome


  First color film that had more than one layer of film, developed in 1936
• Breakthroughs in photo sharing

  • Memory cards (1990s)
  • Shutterfly (1999)
  • USB drives (2000)
  • Snapfish (2000)
  • iPod (2001)
  • Photobucket (2003)
  • Flickr (2004)
  • Instagram (launched October 6, 2010, acquired by Facebook in 2012 for $1 billion)
• Adobe Systems introduces Photoshop

  February 19, 1990
• Photoshop


  Fast image editing and manipulation
• Sharp's J-SH04 becomes the world's first camera phone in Japan


  2000
• Apple, Inc releases the first iPhone with a 2.0 MP rear camera and geotagging


  June 29, 2007
• Light


  Electromagnetic radiation within a certain portion of the electromagnetic spectrum, usually referring to visible light
• Two general sources of light

  • Natural light
  • Artificial light
• Natural light


  Our main source is the sun, a star that is a huge ball of gas producing energy released as light and heat
• Sunlight


  The light and energy that comes from the sun, also called insolation or solar radiation