100 Fun Facts About Cameras

The word 'camera' comes from the Latin phrase camera obscura, meaning what?

Light through a small hole projects an upside-down, reversed image of the outside world.

Which 11th-century physicist, known in the West as Alhazen, extensively studied the camera obscura?

His work is thought to have inspired Roger Bacon, Leonardo da Vinci and Kepler.

Which astronomer's 1604 book contains the earliest known use of the term 'camera obscura'?

One of the earliest written records of a pinhole image is in the Chinese text Mozi, from the 4th century BC.

Who made the first permanent photograph from a camera image, in 1826?

He used a sliding wooden box camera made by Charles and Vincent Chevalier in Paris.

A daguerreotype image was made on a polished sheet of what?

The latent image was brought out by fuming the plate with mercury vapour.

What did the French government do with the daguerreotype process on 19 August 1839?

The exception was England and Wales, where Daguerre had taken out a patent.

George Eastman's first camera, the Kodak of 1888, came pre-loaded with film for how many exposures?

The whole camera went back to the factory for developing and reloading: 'You press the button, we do the rest.'

How did George Eastman come up with the name Kodak?

He loved the letter K, calling it 'a strong, incisive sort of letter'.

Kodak's Brownie box camera of 1900 was named after characters created by which writer?

It cost $1 and more than 150,000 shipped in the first year.

What was the launch price of the original Kodak Brownie in the United States?

The cardboard box camera introduced the idea of the snapshot.

Kodak's Instamatic cameras, launched in 1963, made loading easy by using what?

More than 50 million were made by 1970; the 126 and later 110 formats were named for the cameras.

Oskar Barnack built the Ur-Leica prototype around which format, borrowed from the movies?

The Leica I went on sale in 1925 and made 35 mm the standard for quality compact cameras.

The name Leica is a blend of which two words?

Ernst Leitz took over Carl Kellner's optical institute in Wetzlar in 1869.

How much did a Leica 0-Series camera fetch, including premium, at a June 2025 auction?

The pre-production series is the precursor to the Leica I of 1925.

Which 1954 model from Wetzlar introduced the bayonet M mount and a combined viewfinder?

The M series is still made in Wetzlar today.

Which German company's twin-lens reflex, launched in 1929, was the first practical reflex camera?

On a TLR the waist-level finder shows the image reversed left to right.

Which optical component lets an SLR show an upright, laterally correct image in its eye-level viewfinder?

The Contax S of 1949 was the first camera to use one.

What was the first integrated 35 mm SLR to reach the market, in 1936?

A Soviet camera called Sport was prototyped in 1934 and sold from 1937 with its own cartridge.

The Nikon F of 1959 was widely adopted by photojournalists covering which war?

NASA astronauts used it too; it was replaced by the F2 in 1973.

Hasselblad's medium format cameras are most famous for their use on which programme?

NASA began using the Swedish company's cameras on space flights in 1962.

In which country is Hasselblad based?

Victor Hasselblad's company grew from a German aerial camera captured by the Swedish military in World War II; DJI took a controlling stake in 2017.

The name Canon derives from what?

The company's 1934 prototype was called the Kwanon and was Japan's first 35 mm focal-plane-shutter camera.

Which 1976 Canon was the world's first camera with an embedded microcomputer?

The EOS system, named for the goddess of dawn, followed in 1987 with autofocus.

The Argus C3, America's best-selling 35 mm camera from 1939 to 1966, was nicknamed what?

Over 2.2 million were made in Ann Arbor, Michigan; Colin Creevey carries one in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.

Which 1916 model was the first camera marketed with a coupled distance-measuring focus aid?

The Leica II and Contax I of 1932 made the format a success.

What prompted Edwin Land to invent the instant camera in the 1940s?

He said he had the idea within an hour of three-year-old Jennifer's question in Santa Fe.

Polaroid's Model 95 Land Camera, the first commercial instant camera, went on sale in which year?

It debuted at the Jordan Marsh department store in Boston.

What was Polaroid's original product line before cameras?

The company grew from Land's research into light polarisation.

Which 1972 Polaroid was the first to eject the print automatically, with no tab to pull?

Its folding design became a design classic.

How much was Kodak ordered to pay Polaroid after losing their instant-camera patent battle?

Polaroid had asked for $12 billion; Kodak was forced to quit instant photography.

How many patents did Edwin Land hold at his 1982 retirement, then third behind Edison?

He had dropped out of Harvard after his freshman year.

Which company developed the familiar disposable camera in 1986?

Its QuickSnap was called Utsurun-Desu ('It takes pictures') in Japan; Kodak's Fling followed in 1987.

Who built the first self-contained digital camera at Kodak in 1975?

President Obama later gave him the National Medal of Technology and Innovation.

How long did Kodak's 1975 digital prototype take to record one 0.01-megapixel image to tape?

The camera weighed 8 pounds and used a Fairchild CCD of 100 by 100 pixels.

Boyle and Smith won the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physics for inventing which sensor at Bell Labs?

They were researching MOS technology for bubble memory at the time.

Which 1988 model is regarded as the first fully digital camera to record images to a memory card?

Its 2 MB SRAM card needed a battery to keep the data alive.

Sony's 1981 Mavica, the first filmless SLR, recorded analogue video stills on what?

The disk was dubbed the Mavipak.

What was the first commercially marketed mirrorless camera, released in Japan in October 2008?

It launched the Micro Four Thirds system.

Which company released the first colour camera phone, the Visual Phone VP-210, in 1999?

Sharp's J-SH04, sold from 2001, was the first camera phone with a picture-messaging infrastructure.

On 11 June 1997, Philippe Kahn shared the first photos sent from a phone. What was the occasion?

He rigged a camera to his phone in the maternity ward.

GoPro founder Nick Woodman got the idea for his cameras on a 2002 trip doing what?

His first product, sold in 2004, was a wrist-strapped 35 mm film camera.

What was the thinking behind the name of GoPro's Hero camera range?

The first Hero used 35 mm film and cost a fraction of professional gear.

What did Kodak file for in January 2012?

The company that invented the digital camera prototype struggled with the transition to digital.

Kodachrome film was discontinued in 2009 after how many years of production?

The first Kodachrome, a two-colour film, went on sale in 1915.

A pinhole camera has no lens, which gives it what optical property?

Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day falls on the last Sunday of April.

What are the two types of mechanical shutter used in cameras?

The shutter controls how long light reaches the sensor or film.

On a twin-lens reflex camera, one lens forms the image. What does the other do?

The two nearly identical lenses sit one above the other.

Which camera type, with separate viewing and imaging systems, was historically the choice of photojournalists?

Leica's M series is the classic example.

Which camera, in serial production from 1948, was the first SLR with an instant-return mirror?

It also pioneered the eye-level viewfinder a year before the Contax S added the pentaprism.

Which 1957 camera paired a fixed pentaprism with a thumb wind lever, setting the SLR template?

Asahi had made Japan's first SLR, the Asahiflex, in 1952.

What is a daguerreotype's typical exposure time for a brightly sunlit subject?

The process was almost completely superseded by 1856 by cheaper methods like the ambrotype.

Which Eastman company tagline entered the language to describe a personal event worth photographing?

'You press the button, we do the rest' was the company's earlier catchphrase.

Which stock symbol did GoPro use when it floated on the Nasdaq in June 2014?

It sold 17.8 million shares at $24 apiece.

Who invented the gelatin dry plate in 1871, finally rivalling the wet-plate process?

An 1878 discovery that heat-ripening the emulsion boosted sensitivity made hand-held 'instantaneous' snapshots practical.

Which physicist co-designed one of the first automatic-exposure cameras, using an electric eye, in 1936?

He worked with Gustav Peter Bucky; the first production auto-exposure camera was the Super Kodak Six-20 of 1938.

Which 1962 camera was the first SLR with through-the-lens metering?

The German Mec 16 SB subminiature had put a meter behind the lens two years earlier.

What was the launch price of the Kodak DCS, the first commercially available digital SLR, in 1991?

It packed a 1.3-megapixel sensor into a film body with a bulky external storage unit.

Which 1995 Casio model was the first consumer camera with an LCD screen on the back?

The Kodak DC-25 of 1996 was the first to use CompactFlash, and the Ricoh RDC-1 may have been the first to record video clips.

The Nikon D1 of 1999, the first DSLR built from scratch by a major maker, had what resolution?

Priced under $6,000, it accepted the same F-mount lenses film photographers already owned.

The tiny 8×11 mm Minox, famous as a spy camera, was the company's only product between which years?

Later cheap subminiatures used rewound 16 mm cine film, but image quality was limited.

The world's first webcam, set up at Cambridge in 1991, watched what?

Researchers wanted to know whether the pot was full before walking to it; the camera stayed online until 2001 and the last pot sold on eBay for £3,350.

What resolution was the rear camera on the original 2007 iPhone?

The first iPhone could not shoot video at all, though it did geotag its stills.

The 2012 Nokia 808 PureView phone packed a sensor of how many megapixels?

It paired the oversized sensor with Carl Zeiss optics, years before 40-megapixel-plus phones became common.

Which computer company launched the QuickTake consumer digital camera in 1994?

Time magazine later ranked it among the 100 most influential gadgets; the first models were actually designed by Kodak and built by Chinon.

Ring's video doorbell was launched in 2013 as a crowdfunded startup under what name?

Amazon bought the company in 2018 for approximately $1.15 billion.

How many Hasselblad cameras have Apollo crews left behind on the Moon?

Apollo 17's Cernan and Schmitt left the last two; only the film magazines came home.

Pentax's K1000, the classic student SLR, stayed in production from 1976 until which year?

More than three million were sold; production ended when the analogue meter galvanometers became too hard to source.

Kodak's Super 8 home-movie format was released in which year?

Fujifilm answered the same year with Single-8, which used the same frame but an incompatible cartridge.

RED Digital Cinema founder Jim Jannard had earlier founded which company?

A self-described camera fanatic owning more than 1,000 models, he set out to build an affordable 4K cinema camera.

How did Henri Cartier-Bresson make his Leica less conspicuous on the street?

He favoured a normal 50 mm lens and almost never used anything else.

Fujifilm's Instax instant-film system went on sale in which year?

The first camera was the Instax Mini 10; after Polaroid quit film in 2008, Instax was briefly the only integral instant film still made.

Sony's α7, the first full-frame mirrorless camera, was announced in which year?

It shared the E-mount with Sony's smaller-sensor NEX range.

Fox Talbot's 1841 calotype process recorded its negative on what material?

Unlike Daguerre, Talbot patented his process, which slowed its adoption in England until the restriction was lifted in 1853.

Which 2008 model was the first DSLR able to record video?

It managed 720p with mono sound at 24 frames per second; Canon's 5D Mark II followed soon after with full HD.

Which 1985 camera was the first SLR with built-in autofocus and motorised film advance?

Sold as the α-7000 in Japan, it forced every rival to rethink its lens system; Canon answered with the all-electronic EOS mount in 1987.

Lomography takes its name from an optical works in which Soviet city?

The LOMO LC-A compact inspired a group of Viennese students to found the Lomographic Society in 1992.

The lo-fi Holga medium-format camera first appeared in 1982 where?

Designer Lee Ting-mo's plastic camera became a cult object for its light leaks and vignetting.

How many exposures did a 1982 Kodak disc-film cartridge hold?

The tiny 10 × 8 mm negatives gave grainy prints; Kodak stopped making the cameras in 1988 and the film on the last day of 1999.

Kodak sold the 1996 Advanced Photo System film under which brand?

Fujifilm, Agfa and Konica used the other three names; the last APS film was made in 2011.

A Micro Four Thirds sensor has what crop factor compared with full frame?

A 25 mm lens on the system frames like a 50 mm on 35 mm film; Olympus and Panasonic launched the standard in 2008.

Which company's complaint forced Olympus to rename its 1972 M-1 SLR the OM-1?

Leica's rangefinders were already the M series; the compact OM-1 kicked off a race to shrink the SLR.

Which company bought Flip Video maker Pure Digital in 2009, then killed it in 2011?

It paid $590 million in stock, and the cameras were still selling well when the plug was pulled.

The Gatso speed camera grew from a device built by Maurice Gatsonides, a champion of what?

Britain's first successful Gatso deployment was on Twickenham Bridge in 1992.

The Lumières' 1895 Cinématographe combined a camera, a projector and what?

Louis Lumière first showed Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory to a few dozen invited guests in March 1895.

Which November 1977 compact was the first mass-produced autofocus camera?

It used an electronic version of a split-image rangefinder to find focus.

The 1959 Olympus Pen was Japan's first camera of which kind?

Designer Yoshihisa Maitani's format doubled the shots per roll; the Rollei 35 of 1966 began its decline.

Nikon was founded in 1917 under a name meaning what in English?

Nippon Kōgaku Kōgyō only renamed itself after its cameras in 1988.

Bryce Bayer devised the colour-filter mosaic in most digital sensors while at which firm?

His 1976 patent called the green cells luminance-sensitive and the red and blue ones chrominance-sensitive.

The CMOS active-pixel sensor was developed in 1993 at which NASA centre?

Mitsubishi Electric had built one a year earlier; CMOS went on to displace the CCD in nearly every camera.

Lytro's 2012 camera let users refocus shots after the fact using what technology?

Founder Ren Ng got the idea at Stanford while struggling to focus on a friend's daughter's fleeting smile.

The original Minox subminiature camera was manufactured from 1937 in which country?

The VEF electrical works in Riga built it until 1943; production resumed in West Germany in 1948.

New York crime photographer Weegee was famous for using which press camera?

Graflex of Rochester built Graphic models from 1912 to 1973.

Which Kodak slide film returned in 2018, five years after being discontinued?

Kodak had killed the last Ektachrome products in 2013; Super 8 and 16 mm versions followed the 35 mm relaunch.

Olympus sold its camera division in 2020; under what name does it now trade?

Japan Industrial Partners took 95% of the new company on 1 January 2021.

Which 2002 camera was the first DSLR with a full-frame 35 mm-size sensor?

Announced in 2000 and delayed repeatedly, it beat Canon's EOS-1Ds to market by a few months.

The Soviet FED rangefinder, a Leica copy, took its initials from which person?

It was mass-produced from 1934 by a children's labour commune in Kharkiv named after the secret-police chief.

Who filed a patent for nitrocellulose roll film in 1887, two years before Eastman's?

The patent office initially denied his claim and only reversed itself in 1898.

How much was Anatol Josepho paid in 1927 for his Photomaton photo-booth invention?

The first booth opened on Broadway in 1925, and he was also guaranteed future royalties.

Which Slovak mathematician designed the fast f/3.6 portrait lens of 1840?

Voigtländer built the lens in Vienna; its wide aperture cut daguerreotype portrait exposures dramatically.

Zenit SLRs have been built since 1952 by KMZ in which town near Moscow?

The Zenit-5 was the world's first SLR with a built-in electric motor drive.