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The digital imaging revolution happened primarily in
the early 2000s, following rapid development in technology and amid
fears by keen photographers that all their hard-won skills would be
wasted and image manipulation become child’s play. But as with most
technological developments, the beginnings go much further back.
Experiments to store images on disks were already being made in the
early 1960s. Then at Bell Laboratories in 1969, Dr. Willard Boyle and
Dr. George Smith created the image sensor, the digital camera’s key
element. Further advances were made in the 1970s with
Kodak, Texas
Instruments and Fairchild Imaging leading the way. In 1975, Kodak used a
Fairchild sensor, with just 0.1 megapixels in its first digital camera
prototype. It was a huge camera, around the size of a two large
dictionaries and weighing some 4 kg. Image sensors underwent further
development throughout the 1970s. By the 1980s, the developments in
technology were being closely followed by the media, particularly by the
photo press, which by the early 1990s could sense the advantages of
faster distribution of images. Digital technology was by now threatening
to replace film. However, digital photography was still a long way away
from becoming a mass market but was gaining ground in studio
photography.
In the 2000s, the advances in this new medium were very
rapid and photographers who once condemned the new trend realized that
image-making, however achieved, still required considerable creativity
and opened up new avenues to even the most dedicated conventional
photographer. Digital photography was by now a mass market and had
reached the stage when the talk was all about pixels.
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