Chapter 4 - Living in Digital Age

Evolution of a Camera Phone

Ever since 19^th century when cameras were invented photojournalism has come a long way. Cameras went from being as big as a wagon to now being so small that they can fit into a cell phone. Digital photography has been introduced in 1990’s and ever since then photojournalism evolved the most. First of all, digital cameras are able to take a picture and display it on a screen on the back of it, so the user can correct the settings if necessary. These DSLR’s that were used by most photojournalists were still pretty large and heavy to carry around. In order to send a picture to their editor they had to use a wireless transmitter to send them. When cell phones came out, a guy named Philippe Kahn decided to implement a camera into a phone. These camera phones were such a success that in today’s world almost every phone has a camera. Many photojournalists shoot some quick photos with their cell phones. 

 

 

Image by: Unknown

Image Source: http://www.dailyworldfacts.com/cell-phone-facts/

 

 

In 1997, Philippe Kahn had an idea of taking a regular digital camera and integrating it into the phone. By June of that year when his wife was ready to deliver his daughter he finished integrating a miniature camera device into his Motorola cell phone. After his daughter Sophie was born he used the phone to broadcast the picture of his baby girl to people all around the world (GSM). Seeing that it was a successful invention and people loved it, company named LightSurf Technologies became interested in his design. They soon started to build phones with cameras built into them. The first camera phone was then released in Japan in 2000. The phone was made by Sharp and had a name of J-SH04. The first phone was equipped with a CMOS sensor and the camera was 110,000 pixels. The quality of the images was not the best but that was a good start (GSM).

 

 

 

Image by: Philippe Kahn

Image Source: http://app.cheezburger.com/aq_girl/collection/3002238/aw/1?showFullSizeFavs=True

 

 

As years passed more and more work was done on research and development of more compact and better quality cameras that could be used in cell phone industry. In 2008 Nokia came out with a camera phone that was able to take pictures of 8 megapixels big. At that time even some of the DSLR cameras could not produce images of that quality. Today with most of the recent phones like Samsung Galaxy SIV and iPhone 5 the camera technology is so far advanced that camera in a phone can be used to make videos, make video phone-calls. These and many other of the new phones have the ability to create photos with low aperture and create quality photos even in the dark room. There has been a few privacy issues involving the cameras on phones, but overall the invention of a camera phone was a successful project that helps photojournalists even up to this day when they have to take some fast shots on the spot and they don’t have their gear with them, or they have to go somewhere where it would be hard to carry a large camera around.

 

(GSM) http://gsmserver.com/articles/cameraphone.php