Popular Digital Photography Books

Hey check out some great books on this list with a good range of topics being covered on photography.

1. Understanding Exposure: How to Shoot Great Photographs with a Film or Digital Camera (Updated Edition)
2. The Complete Guide to Night & Lowlight Photography
3. The Digital Photography Book


4. The Photographer’s Eye: Composition and Design for Better Digital Photos
5. The Adobe Photoshop CS4 Book for Digital Photographers
6. The Photoshop Elements 7 Book for Digital Photographers
7. The Digital Photography Book, Volume 2
8. Understanding Shutter Speed: Creative Action and Low-Light Photography Beyond 1/125 Second
9. The Digital Photography Companion
10. Digital Wedding Photography: Capturing Beautiful Memories

For Beginners

Digital photography is a fun task for virtually everyone. You no longer have to be a professional photographer to get the best images available. Getting instant access to your photos is a whole lot better than waiting for them to be printed from film. Since there are so many digital cameras on the consumer market, choosing the best one for you may be confusing. With a little help, you'll learn how to choose the best camera for a beginner.

Some basic instructions you need to follow first :-

Step1
Decide your spending budget for a brand-new digital camera. This will help to guide you towards the perfect digital camera for your needs. Spending a large amount of money is not a necessity when purchasing a digital camera. There are plenty of budget cameras that are more than capable of taking care of your necessities. If you are not going to use your digital camera on a regular basis, then don't buy one that has an overwhelming amount of features. Sticking to the basics will keep the price lower.

Step2
Consider the size and weight of your digital camera. If you decide to snap images everywhere you travel, then choose a digital camera that is portable enough. You don't want to carry something that is oversized and bulky when traveling to multiple destinations. Having a digital camera with a longer battery life and high megapixels will also help you choose the best digital camera for your beginning stages. Despite these important features, look at the overall rating of the digital camera you are thinking of purchasing.

Step3
Calculate the camera accessories. Some digital cameras have a very low initial pricing, but it soon increases when it comes to upgrading the camera lens and other components. Before purchasing the first digital camera you come across, investigate everything. Compare pricing for the memory, batteries, charger, and the lens. This will help you to figure out if this is the best digital camera for you. Without doing your research first, you will be very disappointed with your new purchase.

Step4
Ask about the return policy. This should be the first question asked when thinking about buying a digital camera. No one wants to get stuck with a device you cannot use. If you purchase your digital camera at a discounted price, it can sometimes mean that this is a final priced item with no returns. Check all paperwork and store signs before making a final decision. Take a few test shots while you are at the store locations to find out about some of the digital camera's features.

Think Its Enough, Ummmmmm............ Not Yet, The Deal Is Not Over,

Check This Out

HOW TO CHOOSE THE BEST CAMERA FOR YOU?

How to Choose the Best Camera?

With so many camera models to choose from, at a bewildering range of prices, where do you start? Well, the way I choose any new toy these days is to start at the end. What do you want it to do? Err . . . take pictures. Yes but what kind of pictures and what are you going to do with them? The other burning question is how much are you prepared to learn? And, of course, how much are you prepared to pay?

As you are reading this and have actually made it to paragraph two, I think we can assume that you are prepared to learn at least a little. So what do you want to do? Do you want something that you can keep in your pocket at all times so you can snap the kids? Do you want a camera that will allow you to take pictures in any lighting conditions from any distance (with the right gadget screwed on the front of course)? Is this going to be a hobby or just some quick snaps?

So to avoid ur best choice turning worst later, click on the following :-

The Learning Curve

SLR or Compact?

Which brand?

How Many Pixels?

The Learning Curve

I haven't seen any cameras on sale in recent years that do not have a fully automatic 'point and shoot' mode, most will automatically switch on the flash for you when it is needed so you may wonder why we need all the other manual and semi automatic modes and an instruction book to make your head spin.

The answer is that, although the camera can produce good exposures most of the time, there are times when, to get the results we want, we have to apply a little know-how and select more appropriate settings than the camera would automatically choose.

Before choosing a camera with lots of knobs and dials it is a good idea to consider whether you are ever going to bother to learn what they are all for. I've been around cameras for many years now, and I'm still learning what all the settings on my latest camera actually do. I never bother to learn how to do something until I need to. So there are certain obscure settings that I have yet to find a use for. Of course it would be nice if we could choose just the buttons we need and have each camera custom made for us but in the real world all we can do is choose the level of control based on how much we think we might want to get involved. Generally speaking an SLR will have more knobs, dials and menus than a compact camera which will give you more control over your pictures but will have a much steeper learning curve.

SLR or Compact?

All the cameras on the market can be categorised into a few simple groups. The most important two groups are fixed lens and interchangeable lens. The fixed lens cameras, so called Compact Cameras, tend, with a few exceptions, to be smaller, lighter and more pocketable, therefore you are more likely to have it with you when you need it. Well that's the theory anyway but I think we can say that you are more likely to be bothered to take it with you on that outing to the beach or the zoo.
However even with today's zoom lenses, which are pretty wonderful, you will often find that you are too far away or too close to get the picture you want so you need to be able to change the lens for a longer telephoto or a wider angle. The other major advantage of these single lens reflex (SLR) cameras is that you are actually looking through the lens instead of a separate viewfinder so what you see is what you get, although this is less of an issue now that we can review our photos on the screen of the digital camera. The down side of these SLR cameras is that you very soon end up with quite a heavy bag of gadgets and are less likely to carry it everywhere with you. However much I yearn for a compact camera for it's handyness I know I would be frustrated by it's shortcomings so for me the choice is SLR every time.


Digital or Film?

Do they still make film cameras? Oh yes they do and I wouldn't mind betting that they continue to do so for many years and I wouldn't mind betting that at some time in the future there will be a retro backlash and a large number of 'serious' photographers will return to the darkroom. Some will probably claim that they have never used digital at all, ever.
You might think from the remarks above that I am a diehard supporter of film. Nothing could be further from the truth actually, I am now fully converted to digital and loving it. I am going to make the pros and cons a separate discussion that will be posted soon but, for now, I'll just say that I am completely sold on digital and do not feel that I have lost anything significant by changing.

Which brand?

This, of course, is the big question that you really want an answer to and you know that nobody is going to give you one. If you ask anyone who already has a camera most will support the brand of the camera they have unless they have had some trouble with it, even then people are very forgiving. I think the reason for this is that people think that, if they have made the wrong choice it is because they have somehow failed, and they are not going to admit their failure.

Back in the 1980s I had a camera shop in England and at the time a lot of people, who already owned an SLR, were buying compact cameras 'for the wife'. They would ask me which brand was the best and, if I didn't already know, I would discreetly try to find out which brand of SLR they owned, then I would recommend the same brand of compact camera.

Trying to sell them another brand was like telling them they had made a wrong choice when buying their old camera and was likely to lose me a sale. So I'd better have a really good reason for not recommending the Canon, Olympus, Nikon, Pentax or whatever and I didn't have one. All of the well known brands produce similar cameras at similar prices and, by and large, you get what you pay for.

I will stick my neck out a little bit here and say that in my humble opinion the manufacturers who make the best film cameras the Japanese Nikon, Canon, Olympus, Pentax, Minolta and the German Contax and Leica seem to make the best digital cameras.

I would not be too happy to put my trust in brands whose traditional expertise is in other fields when there are such good cameras available from the traditional sources. I will probably get a lot of hate mail from people who have bought Sony cameras or Hewlett Packard and are perfectly happy with them.

If I wanted a printer Hewlett Packard would be top of my list and I am a huge fan of Sony video and TV equipment but my first choice for a digital SLR would be one of the names mentioned above.

How Many Pixels?

Until recently the quality of digital cameras was measured by how many pixels they boasted. Now we have cameras that can produce tens of millions and it has ceased to be the only test of quality. In the real world the number of pixels you need depends on how big you want to print your pictures. If you mainly want postcard size or A5 then I would consider 6 million pixels to be perfectly adequate. Even at A4 size I would be hard pushed to tell the difference between my 6.5 million pixel camera and my 10 million pixel camera. Don't forget though that your cropping in the camera may not always be perfect so you may be enlarging only a portion of the image and so only using a portion of the available pixels.

Although an adequate number of pixels is important, the quality of your picture will be greatly affected by the quality of the lens. When Canon updated the EOS 350D (digital rebel) with 8 million pixels to the EOS 400D with 10 million pixels, the general consensus amongst reviewers seemed to be that the money you needed to spend on an upgrade would be better spent on a better quality lens. So the answer to the pixel question is that we seem to have now reached a point where enough is enough.

There is also a school of thought that we have reached the limit of the number of photo sensors that we can fit on a chip and that a greater number will cause the indivdual cells to be too small compared to the space in between them. Usually though, when someone says something like that, the following week the boffins announce a breakthrough which makes it all nonsense.
You may have seen adverts for cameras, costing many thousands, that have 16 or 20 million pixels. These have sensors that are twice the size of those in the consumer cameras, hence the price. To me, the resolution of a 8 or 10 million pixel camera with a decent lens seems good enough for most purposes and on a par with the quality I used to get from a 35mm film camera.
In the past I have spent a lot of time and money in the pursuit of ultimate quality, I have owned a 5x4inch plate camera, a Hassleblad and two Mamiya medium format cameras, every major brand of 35mm camera and in the end, I would be hard pushed to tell you which photo on the wall was taken with which camera. A fellow photographer once observed that photographers tend to smell pictures rather than look at them, by which he meant that they were more interested in the graininess and sharpness of the image than the actual content of the image itself.

New Enormous and Pretty fast Zoom of Sigma

Pre-PMA 2008: As part of Sigma's bumper lens launch, it has announced what might be the ultimate wildlife lens. Sigma claims the APO 200-500 f.2.8 is the world's first lens to offer an f/2.8 aperture at 500mm focal length. It comes with an "attachment" to give users a handy 400-1000mm f/5.6 option. The lens (which is cosmetically reminiscent of a piece of military hardware) weighs nearly 16kg and uses a dedicated Li-ion battery to provide power for focusing and zooming. It will be available in Sigma, Canon and Nikon mounts.

The Sigma Corporation is please to announce the new APO 200-500mm F2.8/400-1000mm F5.6 EX DG

Lens.

• The world’s first ultra telephoto zoom lens that offers a fast aperture of F2.8 at the 500mm focal length.
• The dedicated “Attachment” ensures autofocusing at the 1000mm focal length.
• SLD and three ELD glass elements provide high image quality from the maximum large aperture
• Supplied with ø72mm filter holder at the rear

This lens is the world’s first ultra telephoto zoom lens that offers a fast aperture of F2.8 at the 500mm focal length and F5.6 at the 1000mm. It covers widely used focal lengths from 200mm to 500mm and as a large aperture of F2.8 throughout the entire zoom range. This lens can be used to create amazing image expression with various types of photography such as astrophotography, portraits, wildlife, sports. SLD (Special Low Dispersion) glass and three ELD (Extraordinary Low Dispersion) glass elements provide excellent correction for all type of aberrations.

The super multi-layer lens coating reduces flare and ghosting and provides high image quality from the extremely large aperture. The lens hood, designed exclusively for this lens, blocks out extraneous light. A 72mm filter can be inserted at the rear of the lens, and a circular polarizing filter can be used in situ thanks to the ingenious internal rotation mechanism. The dedicated Li-ion battery BP-21 is used to power the zooming and AF operation. This battery is built in the lens barrel. For the convenience of the photographer, focusing distances and focal lengths can be viewed on the lens`s built-in LCD panel.

source: coolestgadgets

Polaroid Pogo - The Handy Printer

The Polaroid PoGo™ products let you share digital photos instantly whether you are on vacation or just hanging out with your friends. Print and share your memories in less than 60 seconds with 2x3-inch, peel-off, sticky-backed photos. Bring Polaroid magic to your cell phone or digital camera with the Instant Mobile Printer or snap and print with the Instant Digital Camera. Mobile and easy-to-use, Polaroid PoGo™ digital instant products provide a new, innovative way to share digital photos instantly.

With Camera Phone

The Polaroid PoGo™ Digital Instant Mobile Photo Printer is the easiest way to print photos from a camera phone. Wirelessly transfer images from a Bluetooth-enabled camera phone to the Mobile Printer and print instantly. Using the built-in OBEX (object exchange profile) Bluetooth in the phone and the printer, connecting and printing becomes instant.




With Digital Camera

Instantly printing images from a digital camera is as easy as connecting the USB cable to the PictBridge-enabled camera and printer. Once connected, follow the PictBridge screen on the camera display. Simply select what image to send to the printer and within 60 seconds, the print is ready to be shared.

Source
http://progadgetgeek.blogspot.com/

Photographs

List of most expensive photographs

1. Andreas Gursky, 99 Cent II Diptychon (2001), $3,346,456, February, 2007, Sotheby's London auction.

2. Edward Steichen, The Pond-Moonlight (1904), $2,928,000, February 2006, Sotheby's New York auction.

3. Richard Prince, Untitled (Cowboy) (1989), $1,248,000, November 2005, Christie's New York auction.

4. Joseph-Philibert Girault de Prangey, 113.Athènes, T[emple] de J[upiter] olympien pris de l'est (1842) $922,488, 2003, auction.

5. Gustave Le Gray, The Great Wave, Sete (1857) $838,000, 1999.

6. Robert Mapplethorpe, Andy Warhol (1987) $643,200, 2006.

7. Ansel Adams, Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico (1948) $609,600, Sotheby's New York auction, 2006.

8. Andreas Gursky, Untitled 5 (1997) $559,724, 6 February 2002.

9. Gustave Le Gray, Tree (1855), $513,150, 1999.

10. Diane Arbus, Identical Twins, Roselle, New Jersey, 1967 (1967) $478,400, 27 April 2004

Photography

Photography is the process of recording pictures by means of capturing light on a light-sensitive medium, such as a film or electronic sensor. Lightsilver halide based chemical or electronic medium during a timed exposure, usually through a photographic lens in a device known as a camera that also stores the resulting information chemically or electronically. Photography has many uses for both business and pleasure. It is often the basis of advertising and in fashion print. Photography can also be viewed as a commercial and artistic endeavor.







The word "photography" comes from the French photographie which is based on the Greek wordsphos ("light"), and γραφίς graphis ("stylus", "paintbrush") or γραφή graphê ("representation by means of lines" or "drawing"), together meaning "drawing with light." Traditionally, the product of photography has been called a photograph, commonly shortened to photo.

Photographic cameras

The camera or camera obscura is the image-forming device, and photographic film or a siliconimage sensor is the sensing medium. The respective recording medium can be the film itself, or a digital electronic or magnetic memory. electronic

Photographers control the camera and lens to "expose" the light recording material (such as film) to the required amount of light to form a "latent image" (on film) or "raw file" (in digital cameras) which, after appropriate processing, is converted to a usable image. Modern digital cameras replace film with an electronic image sensor based on light-sensitive electronics such as charge-coupled device (CCD) or complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) technology. The resulting digital image is stored electronically, but can be reproduced on paper or film.

The controls usually include but are not limited to the following:

* Focus of the lens
* Aperture of the lens – adjustment of the iris, measured as f-number, which controls the amount of light entering the lens. Aperture also has an effect on focus and depth of field, namely, the smaller the opening [aperture], the less light but the greater the depth of field--that is, the greater the range within which objects appear to be sharply focused.
* Shutter speed – adjustment of the speed (often expressed either as fractions of seconds or as an angle, with mechanical shutters) of the shutter to control the amount of time during which the imaging medium is exposed to light for each exposure. Shutter speed may be used to control the amount of light striking the image plane; 'faster' shutter speeds (that is, those of shorter duration) decrease both the amount of light and the amount of image blurring from subject motion or camera motion.
* White balance – on digital cameras, electronic compensation for the color temperaturefilm stock. In addition to using white balance to register natural coloration of the image, photographers may employ white balance to aesthetic end, for example white balancing to a blue object in order to obtain a warm color temperature. associated with a given set of lighting conditions, ensuring that white light is registered as such on the imaging chip and therefore that the colors in the frame will appear natural. On mechanical, film-based cameras, this function is served by the operator's choice of
* Metering – measurement of exposure at a midtone so that highlights and shadows are exposed according to the photographer's wishes. Many modern cameras feature this ability, though it is traditionally accomplished with the use of a separate light metering device.
* ISO speed – traditionally used to set the film speed of the selected film on film cameras, ISO speeds are employed on modern digital cameras as an indication of the system's gain from light to numerical output and to control the automatic exposure system. A correct combination of ISO speed, aperture, and shutter speed leads to an image that is neither too dark nor too light.
* Auto-focus point – on some cameras, the selection of a point in the imaging frame upon which the auto-focus system will attempt to focus. Many Single-lens reflex cameras (SLR) feature multiple auto-focus points in the viewfinder.

Many other elements of the imaging device itself may have a pronounced effect on the quality and/or aesthetic effect of a given photograph; among them are:

* Focal length and type of lens (telephoto, macro, wide angle, fisheye, or zoom)
* Filters or scrims placed between the subject and the light recording material, either in front of or behind the lens
* Inherent sensitivity of the medium to light intensity and color/wavelengths.
* The nature of the light recording material, for example its resolution as measured in pixels or grains of silver halide.

Controlling the photographic exposure and rendering

Camera controls are inter-related, the total amount of light reaching the film plane (the "exposure") changes with the duration of exposure, aperture of the lens, and focal length of the lens (which changes as the lens is zoomed). Changing any of these controls alters the exposure. Many cameras may be set to adjust most or all of these controls automatically. This automatic functionality is useful in many situations, and in most situations to occasional photographers.

The duration of an exposure is referred to as shutter speed, often even in cameras that don't have a physical shutter, and is typically measured in fractions of a second. Aperture is expressed by an f-number or f-stop (derived from focal ratio), which is proportional to the ratio of the focal length to the diameter of the aperture. If the f-number is decreased by a factor of \sqrt 2, the aperture diameter is increased by the same factor, and its area is increased by a factor of 2. The f-stops that might be found on a typical lens include 2.8, 4, 5.6, 8, 11, 16, 22, 32, where going up "one stop" (using lower f-stop numbers) doubles the amount of light reaching the film, and stopping down one stop halves the amount of light.

Exposures can be achieved through various combinations of shutter speed and aperture. For example, f/8 at 8 ms (=1/125th of a second) and f/5.6 at 4 ms (=1/250th of a second) yield the same amount of light. The chosen combination has an impact on the final result. In addition to the subject or camera movement that might vary depending on the shutter speed, the aperture (and focal length of the lens) determine the depth of field, which refers to the range of distances from the lens that will be in focus. For example, using a long lens and a large aperture (f/2.8, for example), a subject's eyes might be in sharp focus, but not the tip of the nose. With a smaller aperture (f/22), or a shorter lens, both the subject's eyes and nose can be in focus. With very small apertures, such as pinholes, a wide range of distance can be brought into focus.

Image capture is only part of the image forming process. Regardless of material, some process must be employed to render the latent image captured by the camera into the final photographic work. This process consists of two steps, development, and printing.

During the printing process, modifications can be made to the print by several controls. Many of these controls are similar to controls during image capture, while some are exclusive to the printing process. Most controls have equivalent digital concepts, but some create different effects. For example, dodging and burning controls are different between digital and film processes. Other printing modifications include:

* Chemicals and process used during film development
* Duration of exposure — equivalent to shutter speed
* Printing aperture — equivalent to aperture, but has no effect on depth of field
* Contrast
* Dodging — reduces exposure of certain print areas, resulting in lighter areas
* Burning — increases exposure of certain areas, resulting in darker areas
* Paper quality — glossy, matte, etc
* Paper size

Uses of photography

Photography gained the interest of many scientists and artists from its inception. Scientists have used photography to record and study movements, such as Eadweard Muybridge's study of human and animal locomotion in 1887. Artists are equally interested by these aspects but also try to explore avenues other than the photo-mechanical representation of reality, such as the pictorialist movement. Military, police, and security forces use photography for surveillance, recognition and data storage. Photography is used to preserve memories of favorite times, to capture special moments, to tell stories, to send messages, and as a source of entertainment.

Commercial advertising relies heavily on photography and has contributed greatly to its development.


Photography, like other graphic testimonies, can be used for a variety of purposes. The following are some of the most common uses.

The photograph by VIVERO, C. 212, D. 4. shows how these small picture frames were used like the old cameos, carried regularly in a bag or on the clothes.

History of photography

Photography is the result of combining several technical discoveries. Long before the first photographs were made, Ibn al-Haytham (Alhazen) (965–1040) invented the camera obscurapinhole camera, Albertus Magnus (1193–1280) discovered silver nitrate, and Georges Fabricius (1516–1571) discovered silver chloride. Daniel Barbaro described a diaphragm in 1568. Wilhelm Homberg described how light darkened some chemicals (photochemical effect) in 1694. The fiction book Giphantie (by the French Thiphaigne de La Roche, 1729-1774) described what can be interpreted as photography.



Photography as a usable process goes back to the 1820s with the development of chemical photography. The first permanent photograph was an image produced in 1826 by the FrenchNicéphore Niépce. However, the picture took eight hours to expose, so he went about trying to find a new process. Working in conjunction with Louis Daguerre, they experimented with silver compounds based on a Johann Heinrich Schultz discovery in 1724 that a silver and chalk mixture darkens when exposed to light. Niépce died in 1833, but Daguerre continued the work, eventually culminating with the development of the daguerreotype in 1839. inventor

Meanwhile, Hercules Florence had already created a very similar process in 1832, naming it Photographie, and William Fox Talbot had earlier discovered another means to fix a silver process image but had kept it secret. After reading about Daguerre's invention, Talbot refined his process so that it might be fast enough to take photographs of people. By 1840, Talbot had invented the calotype process, which creates negative images. John Herschel made many contributions to the new methods. He invented the cyanotype process, now familiar as the "blueprint". He was the first to use the terms "photography", "negative" and "positive". He discovered sodium thiosulphate solution to be a solvent of silver halides in 1819, and informed Talbot and Daguerre of his discovery in 1839 that it could be used to "fix" pictures and make them permanent. He made the first glass negative in late 1839.


In March of 1851, Frederick Scott Archer published his findings in "The Chemist" on the wet plate collodion process. This became the most widely used process between 1852 and the late 1880s when the dry plate was introduced. There are three subsets to the Collodion process; the Ambrotype (positive image on glass), the Ferrotype or Tintype (positive image on metal) and the negative which was printed on Albumen or Salt paper.


Many advances in photographic glass plates and printing were made in through the nineteenth century. In 1884, George Eastman developed the technology of film to replace photographic plates, leading to the technology used by film cameras today.

Nicéphore Niépce's earliest surviving photograph, c. 1826. This image required an eight-hour exposure, which resulted in sunlight being visible on both sides of the buildings.

Timeline

• ancient times: Camera obscuras used to form images on walls in darkened rooms; image formation via a pinhole
• 16th century: Brightness and clarity of camera obscuras improved by enlarging the hole inserting a telescope lens
• 17th century: Camera obscuras in frequent use by artists and made portable in the form of sedan chairs
• 1727: Professor J. Schulze mixes chalk, nitric acid, and silver in a flask; notices darkening on side of flask exposed to sunlight. Accidental creation of the first photo-sensitive compound.
• 1800: Thomas Wedgwood makes "sun pictures" by placing opaque objects on leather treated with silver nitrate; resulting images deteriorated rapidly, however, if displayed under light stronger than from candles.
• 1816: Nicéphore Niépce combines the camera obscura with photosensitive paper
• 1826: Niépce creates a permanent image
• 1834: Henry Fox Talbot creates permanent (negative) images using paper soaked in silver chloride and fixed with a salt solution. Talbot created positive images by contact printing onto another sheet of paper.
• 1837: Louis Daguerre creates images on silver-plated copper, coated with silver iodide and "developed" with warmed mercury; Daguerre is awarded a state pension by the French government in exchange for publication of methods and the rights by other French citizens to use the Daguerreotype process.
• 1841: Talbot patents his process under the name "calotype".
• 1851: Frederick Scott Archer, a sculptor in London, improves photographic resolution by spreading a mixture of collodion (nitrated cotton dissolved in ether and alcoohol) and chemicals on sheets of glass. Wet plate collodion photography was much cheaper than daguerreotypes, the negative/positive process permitted unlimited reproductions, and the process was published but not patented.
• 1853: Nadar (Felix Toumachon) opens his portrait studio in Paris
• 1854: Adolphe Disderi develops carte-de-visite photography in Paris, leading to worldwide boom in portrait studios for the next decade.
• 1855: Beginning of stereoscopic era
• 1855-57: Direct positive images on glass (ambrotypes) and metal (tintypes or ferrotypes) popular in the US.
• 1861: Scottish physicist James Clerk-Maxwell demonstrates a color photography system involving three black and white photographs, each taken through a red, green, or blue filter. The photos were turned into lantern slides and projected in registration with the same color filters. This is the "color separation" method.
• 1861-65: Mathew Brady and staff (mostly staff) covers the American Civil War, exposing 7000 negatives
• 1868: Ducas de Hauron publishes a book proposing a variety of methods for color photography.
• 1870: Center of period in which the US Congress sent photographers out to the West. The most famous images were taken by William Jackson and Tim O'Sullivan.
• 1871: Richard Leach Maddox, an English doctor, proposes the use of an emulsion of gelatin and silver bromide on a glass plate, the "dry plate" process.
• 1877: Eadweard Muybridge, born in England as Edward Muggridge, settles "do a horse's four hooves ever leave the ground at once" bet among rich San Franciscans by time-sequenced photography of Leland Stanford's horse.
• 1878: Dry plates being manufactured commercially.
• 1880: George Eastman, age 24, sets up Eastman Dry Plate Company in Rochester, New York. First half-tone photograph appears in a daily newspaper, the New York Graphic.
• 1888: First Kodak camera, containing a 20-foot roll of paper, enough for 100 2.5-inch diameter circular pictures.
• 1889: Improved Kodak camera with roll of film instead of paper
• 1890: Jacob Riis publishes How the Other Half Lives, images of tenament life in New york City
• 1900: Kodak Brownie box roll-film camera introduced.
• 1902: Alfred Stieglitz organizes "Photo Secessionist" show in New York City
• 1906: Availability of panchromatic black and white film and therefore high quality color separation color photography. J.P. Morgan finances Edward Curtis to document the traditional culture of the North American Indian.
• 1907: First commercial color film, the Autochrome plates, manufactured by Lumiere brothers in France
• 1909: Lewis Hine hired by US National Child Labor Committee to photograph children working mills.
• 1914: Oscar Barnack, employed by German microscope manufacturer Leitz, develops camera using the modern 24x36mm frame and sprocketed 35mm movie film.
• 1917: Nippon Kogaku K.K., which will eventually become Nikon, established in Tokyo.
• 1921: Man Ray begins making photograms ("rayographs") by placing objects on photographic paper and exposing the shadow cast by a distant light bulb; Eugegrave;ne Atget, aged 64, assigned to photograph the brothels of Paris
• 1924: Leitz markets a derivative of Barnack's camera commercially as the "Leica", the first high quality 35mm camera.
• 1925: André Kertész moves from his native Hungary to Paris, where he begins an 11-year project photographing street life
• 1928: Albert Renger-Patzsch publishes The World is Beautiful, close-ups emphasizing the form of natural and man-made objects; Rollei introduces the Rolleiflex twin-lens reflex producing a 6x6 cm image on rollfilm.; Karl Blossfeldt publishes Art Forms in Nature
• 1931: Development of strobe photography by Harold ("Doc") Edgerton at MIT
• 1932: Inception of Technicolor for movies, where three black and white negatives were made in the same camera under different filters; Ansel Adams, Imogen Cunningham, Willard Van Dyke, Edward Weston, et al, form Group f/64 dedicated to "straight photographic thought and production".; Henri Cartier-Bresson buys a Leica and begins a 60-year career photographing people; On March 14, George Eastman, aged 77, writes suicide note--"My work is done. Why wait?"--and shoots himself.
• 1933: Brassaï publishes Paris de nuit
• 1934: Fuji Photo Film founded. By 1938, Fuji is making cameras and lenses in addition to film.
• 1935: Farm Security Administration hires Roy Stryker to run a historical section. Stryker would hire Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, Arthur Rothstein, et al. to photograph rural hardships over the next six years. Roman Vishniac begins his project of the soon-to-be-killed-by-their-neighbors Jews of Central and Eastern Europe.
• 1936: Development of Kodachrome, the first color multi-layered color film; development of Exakta, pioneering 35mm single-lens reflex (SLR) camera
• World War II:

1. Development of multi-layer color negative films
2. Margaret Bourke-White, Robert Capa, Carl Mydans, and W. Eugene Smith cover the war for LIFE magazine.

• 1947: Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Capa, and David Seymour start the photographer-owned Magnum picture agency
• 1948: Hasselblad in Sweden offers its first medium-format SLR for commercial sale; Pentax in Japan introduces the automatic diaphragm; Polaroid sells instant black and white film
• 1949: East German Zeiss develops the Contax S, first SLR with an unreversed image in a pentaprism viewfinder
• 1955: Edward Steichen curates Family of Man exhibit at New York's Museum of Modern Art
• 1959: Nikon F introduced.
• 1960: Garry Winogrand begins photographing women on the streets of New York City.
• 1963: First color instant film developed by Polaroid; Instamatic released by Kodak; first purpose-built underwater introduced, the Nikonos
• 1970: William Wegman begins photographing his Weimaraner, Man Ray.
• 1972: 110-format cameras introduced by Kodak with a 13x17mm frame
• 1973: C-41 color negative process introduced, replacing C-22
• 1975: Nicholas Nixon takes his first annual photograph of his wife and her sisters: "The Brown Sisters"; Steve Sasson at Kodak builds the first working CCD-based digital still camera
• 1976: First solo show of color photographs at the Museum of Modern Art, William Eggleston's Guide
• 1977: Cindy Sherman begins work on Untitled Film Stills, completed in 1980; Jan Groover begins exploring kitchen utensils
• 1978: Hiroshi Sugimoto begins work on seascapes.
• 1980: Elsa Dorfman begins making portraits with the 20x24" Polaroid.
• 1982: Sony demonstrates Mavica "still video" camera
• 1983: Kodak introduces disk camera, using an 8x11mm frame (the same as in the Minox spy camera)
• 1985: Minolta markets the world's first autofocus SLR system (called "Maxxum" in the US); In the American West by Richard Avedon
• 1988: Sally Mann begins publishing nude photos of her children
• 1987: The popular Canon EOS system introduced, with new all-electronic lens mount
• 1990: Adobe Photoshop released.
• 1991: Kodak DCS-100, first digital SLR, a modified Nikon F3
• 1992: Kodak introduces PhotoCD
• 1993: Founding of photo.net (this Web site), an early Internet online community; Sebastiao Salgado publishes Workers; Mary Ellen Mark publishes book documenting life in an Indian circus.
• 1995: Material World, by Peter Menzel published.
• 1997: Rob Silvers publishes Photomosaics
• 1999: Nikon D1 SLR, 2.74 megapixel for $6000, first ground-up DSLR design by a leading manufacturer.
• 2000: Camera phone introduced in Japan by Sharp/J-Phone
• 2001: Polaroid goes bankrupt
• 2003: Four-Thirds standard for compact digital SLRs introduced with the Olympus E-1; Canon Digital Rebel introduced for less than $1000
• 2004: Kodak ceases production of film cameras
• 2005: Canon EOS 5D, first consumer-priced full-frame digital SLR, with a 24x36mm CMOS sensor for $3000; Portraits by Rineke Dijkstra.

Photography Types:-

There's a wide world of different kinds of photography to be found on the Web. Photographic work can be divided into dozens of categories, many with lots of sub-categories. The following list describes some common types of photography.

Aerial		From a plane, helicopter, balloon or other airborne device.
Adventure, Action		Adventure sports, daring feats, etc.
Amateur		Any type of photography practiced by non-professionals.
Animal, Pet		Pets and their relationships with humans. Note that the human content is often as important as the animal.
Architecture, Real Estate		The art of making property appear attractive. Often involves panoramic photography.
Artistic		Photography in which creative composition is the goal.
Astrophotography		Space photography, through a telescope.
Aura		A controversial type of photography which some claim can photograph a person's aura.
Black & White		Not simply photography without colour, black and white photography explores shapes, tones and textures. Shadows and highlights become much more important.
Camera Phone		"Convenience" photography using a mobile phone's built-in camera. While not the best quality, camera phones have opened a new world of spontaneous, on-the-spot photo opportunities.
Commercial		Product shots, advertising, etc.
Digiscoping		Photography through a telescope or binoculars.
Documentary		Journalism, Events, Historical, Political, etc.
Event		Concerts, Parties, Festivals, etc.
Forensic		Police and legal photography.
Infrared		Photography in which the recording medium is sensitive to infrared light rather than the normal visible light spectrum.
Large Format		For use on posters, billboards, etc.
Kirlian		A type of contact print photography in which an object touching a photographic plate is connected to a high voltage source, creating an aura-like image. Often confused with aura photography.
Macro		The art of photographing very small and/or close-up objects.
Medical		Specialized photography for clinical purposes, i.e. to help reveal and diagnose illness.
Microscopic		Any technique for photographing objects too small to be visible to humans.
Modeling		Photographing objects to be converted into 3D models.
Nature		Landscapes, animals, plants, sea, etc.
Night		Any technique used to capture images at night. Often includes infrared photography.
Panoramic		Views of wide areas, up to complete 360° panoramas.
Paranormal		Ghosts, unexplained phenomena, etc.
People		Candid, Family, Fashion, Glamour, Passports & Visas, Portrait, Pregnancy, School, Sports, Wedding
Pinhole		Uses the most basic type of camera possible — a box with a tiny hole to let light in.
Scenic		Landscape, Cityscape
Satellite		Views of Earth from orbit.
Scientific		Any specialized photography used for scientific endeavour, e.g. electron microscopy photographs, medical photography, astrophotography, etc.
Sports		The specialized art of shooting people engaged in sports, games and adventure activities.
Stereoscopic (3-D)		Involves taking two photos simultaneously to simulate 3-D vision.
Stock		Photographs taken for distribution to other people, for use in their projects. These photos tend to be quite generic, e.g. people working, landscapes, places, etc.
Travel		Photography to showcase locations, illustrate travel literature, etc.
Ultraviolet		Photography in which the recording medium is sensitive to ultraviolet light rather than the normal visible light spectrum.
Underwater		Any type of photography taken under water with a water-tight camera housing.
Urban, Industrial		Emphasizing urban environments.
Time-lapse		Photographs with a very long exposure, used to illustrate something happening over time. A popular example is a street at night with car lights blurred into long lines.

Fine art photography

Fine art photography refers to photographs that are created to fulfill the creative vision of the artist. Fine art photography stands in contrast to photojournalism and commercial photography. Photojournalism is to promote an editorial point of view. Commecial photography's main focus being to sell a product or service.

'The final creative reason for a fine art photograph is the photograph itself. It is not a means to another end except perhaps to please those besides the photographer who beholds it.'

Fine art photography can be used to promote something. They are created most importantly to be true to the artist’s vision of beauty. We can see this by looking at Ansel Adams' work of Yosemite and Yellowstone. He is one of the least disputed fine art photographers of the 20th century. These images were done while he was trying to raise public awareness of these two locations and to have them protected. They were not created in order to raise awareness of anything. They were done simply to be true to the vision of the artist.