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“You Press The Button and We Do The Rest.”
So said high school dropout George Eastman in 1885 when he introduced the Kodak camera and created the era of amateur photography.
Eastman's dream was to make picture taking “an everyday affair, to make the camera as convenient as the pencil.” He succeeded far beyond his expectations, and for a century people around the world photographed their families, friends and vacations using cameras that descended from Eastman's Kodak and the photographic film that he perfected.
Prior to the Kodak, cameras were the size of shoeboxes or small suitcases. They recorded images on glass plates that the photographers themselves carefully coated with a light-sensitive emulsion inside a light-tight tent or enclosure.
Eastman's Kodak camera opened up photography to everyone with a dry, light-sensitive film that could provide up to 100 images.
In 1900 Eastman Kodak introduced the Brownie, a small black camera designed for children that sold for $1 (about $26 in today's dollars). The Brownie could take six photos using a film cartridge that could be loaded into the camera in daylight. It was an instant success, and 150,000 were sold the first year.
In 1975, Kodak engineer Steven Sasson made the first digital camera. Instead of developing a commercial digital camera, Kodak built a solid foundation of digital camera patents and worked hard behind the scenes to improve digital photography. But Kodak was reluctant to commercialize an invention that might ultimately take a major bite out of its immensely profitable film business.
That didn't slow the competition. While Kodak makes digital cameras today, the leading digital camera makers are Japanese companies like Canon and Nikon.
Digital photography has ushered in a revolution almost as significant as the Brownie, because now anyone with a color printer can make photographic prints.
Before acquiring my first digital camera in 1998, I spent countless hours in a darkroom developing film and making prints for my books and articles. Today I can make higher quality prints in a few minutes.
While Kodak is no longer the leading photography company, its legend as the pioneer in its field will live on long past the fading billboards that advertise Kodak film along the highways that lead to New Mexico's Carlsbad Caverns.
Recently the Kodak legacy came to mind while I photographed one of those old advertising signs with a modern digital camera that stores thousands of high-quality images on memory cards not much larger than a postage stamp.
You can learn much more about the legacy of George Eastman and his Kodak at www.kodak.com, where some of the history related here was found.
Mims lives on Geronimo Creek near Seguin. His science is featured online at www.forrestmims.org and www.sunandsky.org. Follow him at twitter.com/fmims. E-mail him at [email protected].
Filed under Articles by on Jun 27th, 2011. Comment. 
New Record-Breaking Gigapixel Panoramic Photo of London
Image by Jeffrey Martin, www.360cities.net
Prague, Czech Republic, November 16, 2010 – A newly published 360-degree photo of London takes the
crown as the largest spherical panoramic photo in the world. The image of London, at 360cities.net/london,
has a total resolution of 80 gigapixels, or 80 billion pixels. Shot by photographer Jeffrey Martin over a period
of three days from the top of the
Zooming in in apartment somewhere far away
Image by Jeffrey Martin, www.360cities.net
Centre Point building at the crossroads of Oxford Street and Tottenham
Court Road, the image reveals the highest-resolution view of any city that has ever been captured. From this
vantage point – 36 stories up in the air – an astonishing number of landmarks, houses, skyscrapers, shops,
offices, and streets are visible. Countless people at street level are observable, as well as thousands of
windows, many of which reveal glimpses of life inside.
and a terrace somewhere in the panorama
In short, it is a portrait of London, the likes of which
has never been made before.
Previous attempts at world record gigapixels include a 26-gigapixel image of Paris, a 70-gigapixel image of
Budapest, a 26-gigapixel image of Dresden, and Martin's previous record holder from 2009, an 18-gigapixel
spherical image of Prague. This new London gigapixel image, if printed at normal photographic resolution,
would be 35 meters long and 17 meters tall (115 feet x 56 feet).
Martin, a panoramic photographer and the Founder of 360Cities.net, created the London gigapixel image
from 7886 high-resolution individual photos taken from the Centre Point building. These thousands of photos
were then stitched together as one single image on a powerful Fujitsu CELSIUS workstation, provided for the
project by Fujitsu Technology Solutions. The computer comprises dual 6-core CPUs, 192GB of RAM, and a
4GB graphics card.
To encourage people to explore the 80-gigapixel image of London in its finest detail, 360 Cities will launch
three separate contests to find and describe items or places in the photo. In the first contest the winner will
receive a Fujitsu 27" LCD monitor provided by Fujitsu Technology Solutions, computer and camera bags
provided by Crumpler.com will be awarded in the second, and in the third contest, over $3000 worth of
holidays will be awarded, courtesy of Intrepid Travel (intrepidtravel.com) and their subsidiary, Urban
Adventures (urbanadventures.com).
Further information about the making of the image can be found at http://blog.360cities.net/london-gigapixel.
About 360 Cities
360 Cities is dedicated to promoting geo-located, high-resolution spherical imagery by providing the bestanywhere
platform for publishing panoramic photography on the web. 360Cities.net is the web's largest
collection of spherical, map-based panoramas, and through its partnership with Google Earth, this content is
introduced to an even wider audience worldwide. 360 Cities is a Netherlands limited company with a
subsidiary in Prague, Czech Republic.
Filed under 360 virtual tours, All about virtual tours, Collection of the best panoramas, News, Photos by on Nov 16th, 2010. Comment.
Understanding Close-up Photography: Creative Close Encounters with or without a Macro Lens
- ISBN13: 9780817427191
- Condition: New
- Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! BUY WITH CONFIDENCE, Over one million books sold! 98% Positive feedback. Compare our books, prices and service to the competition. 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed
Rating: 
(out of 31 reviews)
List Price: $ 25.95
Price: $ 15.99
Filed under Books by on Oct 17th, 2010. Comment.
On Photography
- ISBN13: 9780312420093
- Condition: New
- Notes: BUY WITH CONFIDENCE, Over one million books sold! 98% Positive feedback. Compare our books, prices and service to the competition. 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed
Winner of the National Book Critics' Circle Award for Criticism.
One of the most highly regarded books of its kind, On Photography first appeared in 1977 and is described by its author as “a progress of essays about the meaning and career of photographs.” It begins with the famous “In Plato’s Cave”essay, then offers five other prose meditations on this topic, and concludes with a fascinating and far-reaching “Brief Anthology of Quotations.”
Rating: 
(out of 32 reviews)
List Price: $ 15.00
Price: $ 8.41
Filed under Books by on Oct 4th, 2010. Comment.
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