Focal-plane Shutter - History and Technical Development

History and Technical Development

The earliest daguerreotype (invented 1839) photographic cameras did not have shutters, because the lack of sensitivity of the process and the small apertures of available lenses meant that exposure times were measured in many minutes. A photographer could easily control exposure time by removing and returning the camera lens' lens cap or plug.

However, as one increased sensitivity process replaced another and larger apertures lenses became available during the 1800s, exposure times shortened to seconds and then to fractions of seconds. Exposure timing control mechanisms became a necessary accessory and then a standard camera feature.

Read more about this topic:  Focal-plane Shutter

Famous quotes containing the words history, technical and/or development:

    Every member of the family of the future will be a producer of some kind and in some degree. The only one who will have the right of exemption will be the mother ...
    Ruth C. D. Havens, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 13, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)

    I rather think the cinema will die. Look at the energy being exerted to revive it—yesterday it was color, today three dimensions. I don’t give it forty years more. Witness the decline of conversation. Only the Irish have remained incomparable conversationalists, maybe because technical progress has passed them by.
    Orson Welles (1915–1984)

    America is a country that seems forever to be toddler or teenager, at those two stages of human development characterized by conflict between autonomy and security.
    Anna Quindlen (b. 1952)