History and Technical Development of Photographic Camera Lenses
The problems of creating a lens that would cover a large flat image plane were well known even before the invention of photography. Lenses had already been developed to work with the focal plane of the camera obscura, a device for projecting images used as a novelty and an artist's drawing aid, and had been around for hundreds of years. Since the invention of photography many types of lenses have been tried. The succession of designs was never uniform since an older design that performed a task the photographer needed (such as working better portrait versus landscape, working at the wavelength of light the film collected, etc.) would still be used in unison with newer designs. Even today the job the lens needs to do, the laws of physics, the limits of engineering, as well as the practical considerations of size, weight and cost, means there are many designs available.
| Some lens aberration encountered by early photographers | |||||||||
|
|||||||||
Read more about this topic: Camera Lens
Famous quotes containing the words history and, history, technical, development, photographic, camera and/or lenses:
“There is a constant in the average American imagination and taste, for which the past must be preserved and celebrated in full-scale authentic copy; a philosophy of immortality as duplication. It dominates the relation with the self, with the past, not infrequently with the present, always with History and, even, with the European tradition.”
—Umberto Eco (b. 1932)
“Racism is an ism to which everyone in the world today is exposed; for or against, we must take sides. And the history of the future will differ according to the decision which we make.”
—Ruth Benedict (1887–1948)
“Where there is the necessary technical skill to move mountains, there is no need for the faith that moves mountains.”
—Eric Hoffer (1902–1983)
“Every new development for the last three centuries has brought men closer to a state of affairs in which absolutely nothing would be recognized in the whole world as possessing a claim to obedience except the authority of the State. The majority of people in Europe obey nothing else.”
—Simone Weil (1909–1943)
“The photographic image ... is a message without a code.”
—Roland Barthes (1915–1980)
“If I were just curious, it would be very hard to say to someone, “I want to come to your house and have you talk to me and tell me the story of your life.” I mean people are going to say, “You’re crazy.” Plus they’re going to keep mighty guarded. But the camera is a kind of license. A lot of people, they want to be paid that much attention and that’s a reasonable kind of attention to be paid.”
—Diane Arbus (1923–1971)
“Life is a train of moods like a string of beads, and, as we pass through them, they prove to be many-colored lenses which paint the world their own hue, and each shows only what lies in its focus.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)