History of Animation & Visual Effects

Module I - Class 6

Prepared by George John. H.O.D. Animation. SJCC

History of Photography
Photography is an amazing endeavour in which art and technology coexist. A
camera is a device for recording an image of an object on a light-sensitive
surface; it is essentially a light-tight box with an aperture to admit light focused
onto a sensitised film or plate. Photographic cameras played an important role in
the creation and development of early animation.

Many photography timelines start in 1827 with Joseph Niepce's first known
image. However, it has a considerably longer history than that. It dates back to a
time when there were no lenses, cameras, or even film.

The discovery of two key principles — the camera obscura and the discovery of
light-sensitive chemicals, or photochemicals — are the foundations of
photography.
Camera Obscura
Several scientists experimented with light passing through a small hole, but it wasn’t until the 11th century that a viewing screen was used to see
the inverted image. Ibn al-Haytham of Iraq is said to have actually invented the camera obscura, as well as the pinhole camera which is based on
the same idea. He carried out experiments with candles and described how the image is formed by rays of light travelling in straight lines. He
wrote the “Book of Optics” and is referred to as "the father of modern optics", he made significant contributions to the principles of optics and
visual perception in particular.

Ibn al-Haytham
Camera Obscura Dark chamber
Drawing paper
Camera Obscura, the Latin name means "dark chamber," is an ancestor of
the photographic camera. Since the word photography is literally defined Hole
as drawing with light, we can look back at the concept of the camera
obscura as a possible beginning for our timeline of photography.

For centuries, the technique was used for viewing eclipses of the sun
without endangering the eyes and, by the 16th century, as an aid to
drawing; the subject was posed outside and the image reflected on a piece
of drawing paper for the artist to trace. Portable versions were built,
followed by smaller and even pocket models; the interior of the box was
painted black and the image was reflected by an angled mirror so that it
could be viewed right-side-up.

This is explained by a simple law of physics. Light travels in a straight

line and when some of the rays reflected from a bright subject pass
through a small hole in thin material they do not scatter but cross and
reform as an upside down image on a flat surface held parallel to the hole. Angled mirror

Camera Obscura
Light Sensitive Chemicals
Silver halides are light-sensitive chemicals used in photographic
film to record a picture. The emulsion and the base are the two main
components of photographic films. The emulsion is the
image-recording part of a film that is light-sensitive. The base's
primary function is to keep the emulsion in place.

A Silver Halide is one of the chemical compounds that can

form between the element silver and one of the halogens. In
particular, nitrate, chlorine, iodine and fluorine may each
combine with silver to produce silver nitrate, silver chloride,
silver iodide, and three forms of silver fluoride, respectively.
The Story of Photography
J.H. Schulze’s silver nitrate solution
The first person to notice that a silver nitrate solution turned black when
exposed to light was J.H. Schulze in 1717. He demonstrated that the darkening
of silver salts is caused by light, not heat.

Jean Hellot’s sympathetic ink

The sympathetic inks developed by French scientist Jean Hellot in 1737 were
invisible when applied to paper but could be made visible later. He found that
when he used a silver nitrate solution to write on paper, the writing was not
visible until the paper was exposed to light, at which point it darkened and
became legible. However, it wasn't until 1802 that these discoveries were used
to create images.

Silver Nitrate Crystals

The Story of Photography
Thomas Wedgwood’s silhouette pictures
English photographer and inventor Thomas Wedgwood was the first to consider using silver chloride-coated paper to capture images and generate
long-lasting photographs. Wedgwood is credited with being the first to attempt to photograph the image created in a camera obscura by employing
light-sensitive chemicals to capture silhouette pictures on paper.
The Story of Photography
Sir Humphry Davy’s lens
Sir Humphry Davy continued Wedgwood's experiments, using silver chloride, and
succeeded in making photographs through a microscope by using sunlight. These
appear to be the first images captured by the lens on photographic paper. But all
these attempts by Humphry Davy failed because he was unable to make the
pictures permanent because the silver chloride-treated paper was still light-sensitive
after a portion of it had darkened, and if it was kept, it soon went dark all over and
the picture was lost.

Sir John Herschel’s - Hypo solution

Sir John Herschel was a pioneer in the field of photography who discovered hypo, a
substance that could dissolve the unaffected silver chloride and allow him to "fix"
the picture after it had been obtained. He created a photograph on glass in 1839,
which is still in existence.

Herschel's first glass-plate photograph,

1839
The Story of Photography
Joseph Niepce’s Heliograph
A French inventor named Joseph Niepce was the first to create
a permanent photographic image. Niepce invented
heliography, or "sun drawing," and used it to create the world's
oldest surviving photographic product: a print made from a
photo-etched printing plate.

Joseph Niepce found out that substances like asphalt become

insoluble when exposed to light, and he succeeded in
producing results by taking advantage of this property. He used
it to create the world's first permanent photographic image.
Metal plates had the benefit of being unbreakable and being
more suited to the subsequent etching process to produce a
printing plate, which was Niepce's final aim.

Retouched version of the earliest surviving camera photograph, 1826 or 1827,

known as View from the Window at Le Gras
The Story of Photography
Louis Daguerre’s Daguerreotype
Louis Daguerre, another Frenchman, entered into a partnership with Joseph
Niepce. In 1839, Daguerre published a paper on the method of photography,
which was named the Daguerreotype.

Louis Daguerre made the crucial discovery that an invisibly faint image created
by a much shorter exposure could be chemically developed into a visible image.
The resulting visible image was then fixed by removing the unaffected silver
iodide with concentrated and heated salt water. This was the first portrait process,
and it became very popular. The results were very beautiful, but these early
processes of photography required very long exposures.

Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre
The Story of Photography
William Henry Fox Talbot’s “Development process”

Fox Talbot in 1841 figured out a new photographic process to reduce the exposure
time. He found that if he prepared a sheet of paper with Silver Iodide and exposed it
in the camera he got only a very faint image, but if after exposure he washed over
the paper with a solution containing Silver Nitrate and Gallic Acid, a solution from
which metallic silver is very easily deposited, then this solution deposited the silver
where the light had acted and built up the faint image into a strong picture. This
building up of a faint image which is altogether invisible, into a picture is what is
now called "development".

William Henry Fox Talbot

The Kodak Camera
Finally, after decades of refinements and improvements, the mass use of
cameras began with Eastman's Kodak camera. It went on to the market in
1888 with the slogan "You push the button, we do the rest".

In 1901 the Kodak Brownie was introduced, becoming the first commercial
camera in the market available for middle class. The camera took black and
white shots only, but still was very popular due to its efficiency and ease of
use.
Motion Picture
Motion Picture
The motion picture camera is a type of photographic camera which
takes a rapid sequence of photographs on a film. In contrast to a
still camera, which captures a single image at a time, the movie
camera takes a series of images.

There would be no true motion pictures, until live action could be

photographed spontaneously and simultaneously. These two issues
had to be resolved before motion picture could become a reality.
This required a reduction in exposure time necessary for the early
photographic processes and the development of the technology of
series photography.
Motion Picture Camera - 1895
LUMIERE BROTHERS - The Cinematographe
The Lumiere brothers were the first to show projected moving pictures to a paying
audience in December 1895 in Paris, France. Louis Lumiere invented the
Cinematographe, a portable motion-picture camera, film processing machine, and
projector that combined three operations into one device. Lumiere's innovation, the
Cinematographe, made motion pictures extremely popular, therefore it is more
accurate to say that Lumiere's invention started the motion picture era.

However, numerous other inventors about the same time as Lumiere had created
comparable devices. In 1896, Edison showed his Vitascope projector and it was the
first commercially, successful, projector in the U.S..

The Cinématographe
Questions
Part A
1. What is a Camera Obscura?
2. How are images captured on film?
3. Who is William Henry Fox Talbot?
4. What are silver halides used for in photography?
5. What are the applications of the Camera Obscura?
6. Write a short note on Eastman's Kodak camera.
7. What is Daguerreotype?
8. Who was J.H. Schulze?
9. What is motion picture camera?
10. What is a Cinématographe?
11. Who are the Lumiere brothers?
12. Write a short note on Vitascope.
13. What did the Lumiere brothers invent?
14. Who invented the Vitascope and what did the device do?
15. What are the main differences of a photographic camera and a motion picture camera?
16. What was the role of photography in creating animation?
17. Who is Louis Lumiere?
18. Who invented the Cinématographe and what did it do?
Questions
Part B
1. What are the main components of a photographic film?
2. What is emulsion and the base in a photographic film?
3. Define Camera Obscura with a neat diagram.
4. Write a short note on early projected movies.
Part C
1. Write an essay on the invention of standard picture film and how it has revolutionized
animation.
2. Write an essay on the history of motion picture.