Camera: A History of Photography, Coffee Table Book A Must Have

I’ve always been a fan of big coffee table books, but I can’t recall ever reading one from cover to cover…until now.  “Camera” from Todd Gustavson made the effort easy to accomplish.  Gustavson is the Curator of Technology at the Eastman House in Rochester, N.T., and he has put together a history of machines that have captured moments in time.  With over 350 color images and illustrations the book starts with a camera obscura from 1820 and completes with the digital Leica M8. 

I knew I was in for a treat when the first full page photo was of a Kodak No. 1 Brownie box camera owned by Ansel Adams.  The camera collector in me was thrilled.   I’ve got a No. 2 Brownie that still works.  It blows my mind that I can still take decent shots on 120 roll film with this little box camera that is over 100 years old.  Amazing.  While I love my Canon EOS 7D, I doubt it will be capturing 18MP images after a century. 

Some of the first images in the book are from Niepce, Daguerre and Talbot; names synonymous with the birth of modern photography.  The quality and clarity of the Daguerreotype images displayed in the book are a testament to this capture process.   Some of the most interesting sections cover the oddities in camera development such as the Photo-Revolver de Poche.  In 1882 the interesting idea was conceived to create a camera that looked like a handgun.  It operated like a pistol too with ten 20x20mm dry plates loaded into the cartridge and a 70mm f10 lens in the nickel-plated brass barrel.  There was no viewfinder, but as expected it did have a front sight on top of the barrel to assist with drawing a bead on your target.

This book is a must have for any camera collector or enthusiast with hundreds of cameras spanning almost two hundred years, plus historic photos, drawings, ads and plenty of informative captions and text.  Best of all it won’t damage the wallet.  

Camera: A History of Photography from Daguerreotype to Digital