100 free Cameras trivia questions with answers — technology quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This cameras trivia quiz follows the machine itself from the dark chamber described by Ibn al-Haytham and named by Kepler, through Niépce's first permanent photograph and the silver-plated daguerreotype, to the box that George Eastman named with an Anagrams set and the $1 Brownie that invented the snapshot. It covers the great designs of the 20th century: Barnack's 35 mm Leica, the Rolleiflex, the pentaprism SLR, the Nikon F in Vietnam, Hasselblads on the Moon, the Argus 'Brick', the Instamatic cartridge and Edwin Land's instant Polaroid. The second half is the digital era: the CCD that won a Nobel Prize, the 8-pound Kodak prototype that took 23 seconds per picture, Sony's floppy-disk Mavica, the first camera phones in Japan, mirrorless cameras, GoPro's surf-trip origins and Kodak's bankruptcy. Around a third of the questions are easy; the rest are for camera-club members and gear obsessives. Our photography quiz covers the photographers and their pictures. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the history of the camera and the companies and models named, and each explanation adds one more detail.
30 of 100 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The word 'camera' comes from the Latin phrase camera obscura, meaning what?
Dark chamber
Light through a small hole projects an upside-down, reversed image of the outside world.
Q 02Which 11th-century physicist, known in the West as Alhazen, extensively studied the camera obscura?
Ibn al-Haytham
His work is thought to have inspired Roger Bacon, Leonardo da Vinci and Kepler.
Q 03Which astronomer's 1604 book contains the earliest known use of the term 'camera obscura'?
Johannes Kepler
One of the earliest written records of a pinhole image is in the Chinese text Mozi, from the 4th century BC.
Q 04Who made the first permanent photograph from a camera image, in 1826?
Nicéphore Niépce
He used a sliding wooden box camera made by Charles and Vincent Chevalier in Paris.
Q 05A daguerreotype image was made on a polished sheet of what?
Silver-plated copper
The latent image was brought out by fuming the plate with mercury vapour.
Q 06What did the French government do with the daguerreotype process on 19 August 1839?
Gave it 'free to the world'
The exception was England and Wales, where Daguerre had taken out a patent.
Q 07George Eastman's first camera, the Kodak of 1888, came pre-loaded with film for how many exposures?
100
The whole camera went back to the factory for developing and reloading: 'You press the button, we do the rest.'
Q 08How did George Eastman come up with the name Kodak?
With his mother, using an Anagrams set
He loved the letter K, calling it 'a strong, incisive sort of letter'.
Q 09Kodak's Brownie box camera of 1900 was named after characters created by which writer?
Palmer Cox
It cost $1 and more than 150,000 shipped in the first year.
Q 10What was the launch price of the original Kodak Brownie in the United States?
$1
The cardboard box camera introduced the idea of the snapshot.
Q 11Kodak's Instamatic cameras, launched in 1963, made loading easy by using what?
Film cartridges
More than 50 million were made by 1970; the 126 and later 110 formats were named for the cameras.
Q 12Oskar Barnack built the Ur-Leica prototype around which format, borrowed from the movies?
35 mm cine stock
The Leica I went on sale in 1925 and made 35 mm the standard for quality compact cameras.
Q 13The name Leica is a blend of which two words?
Leitz and camera
Ernst Leitz took over Carl Kellner's optical institute in Wetzlar in 1869.
Q 21In which country is Hasselblad based?
Sweden
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.
Q 22The name Canon derives from what?
The bodhisattva Kannon
The company's 1934 prototype was called the Kwanon and was Japan's first 35 mm focal-plane-shutter camera.
Q 23Which 1976 Canon was the world's first camera with an embedded microcomputer?
The AE-1
The EOS system, named for the goddess of dawn, followed in 1987 with autofocus.
Q 14How much did a Leica 0-Series camera fetch, including premium, at a June 2025 auction?
About €7.2 million
The pre-production series is the precursor to the Leica I of 1925.
Q 15Which 1954 model from Wetzlar introduced the bayonet M mount and a combined viewfinder?
The M3
The M series is still made in Wetzlar today.
Q 16Which German company's twin-lens reflex, launched in 1929, was the first practical reflex camera?
Franke & Heidecke's Rolleiflex
On a TLR the waist-level finder shows the image reversed left to right.
Q 17Which optical component lets an SLR show an upright, laterally correct image in its eye-level viewfinder?
A roof pentaprism
The Contax S of 1949 was the first camera to use one.
Q 18What was the first integrated 35 mm SLR to reach the market, in 1936?
The Kine Exakta
A Soviet camera called Sport was prototyped in 1934 and sold from 1937 with its own cartridge.
Q 19The Nikon F of 1959 was widely adopted by photojournalists covering which war?
Vietnam
NASA astronauts used it too; it was replaced by the F2 in 1973.
Q 20Hasselblad's medium format cameras are most famous for their use on which programme?
The Apollo Moon landings
NASA began using the Swedish company's cameras on space flights in 1962.
Q 24The Argus C3, America's best-selling 35 mm camera from 1939 to 1966, was nicknamed what?
The Brick
Over 2.2 million were made in Ann Arbor, Michigan; Colin Creevey carries one in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.
Q 25Which 1916 model was the first camera marketed with a coupled distance-measuring focus aid?
The 3A Kodak Autographic Special
The Leica II and Contax I of 1932 made the format a success.
Q 26What prompted Edwin Land to invent the instant camera in the 1940s?
His daughter asked why she couldn't see a photo at once
He said he had the idea within an hour of three-year-old Jennifer's question in Santa Fe.
Q 27Polaroid's Model 95 Land Camera, the first commercial instant camera, went on sale in which year?
1948
It debuted at the Jordan Marsh department store in Boston.
Q 28What was Polaroid's original product line before cameras?
Polarised sunglasses
The company grew from Land's research into light polarisation.
Q 29Which 1972 Polaroid was the first to eject the print automatically, with no tab to pull?
The SX-70
Its folding design became a design classic.
Q 30How much was Kodak ordered to pay Polaroid after losing their instant-camera patent battle?
$909.5 million
Polaroid had asked for $12 billion; Kodak was forced to quit instant photography.