FILM STARS A lifetime of landmarks

Cameras that hit the headlines between then and now. John Wade is your guide

- John Wade

From glass plates to flexible film, from simple snapshot to complicated professional cameras, from single lens reflexes (SLRs) to twin lens reflexes (TLRs), from analogue to digital… AP’s 140 years have seen it all. Here are some of the landmarks encountered along the way.

The beginnings To kick off in 1884, what better than the only camera reviewed (and, in fact, the only illustration) in that first issue of AP? Marion’s Miniature Camera was an all-metal, nickelplated brass design that shot 2x2in plates using a rapid rectilinear lens that focused on a ground-glass screen at the rear, with a fixed aperture and simple shutter. The Marion was quite a revolution for its time, but the major landmark came four years later when inventor and entrepreneur George Eastman aimed the first roll film camera at amateurs and called it The Kodak. Professional photographers, meanwhile, clung onto their plate cameras and, in 1895, cabinet maker Frederick Sanderson produced a new kind of model to help with his interest in architectural photography. The Sanderson Universal Swing Front Camera used a lens panel supported in four slotted arms, two on each side and locked by small knurled nuts. Using these, the lens panel could be made to rise and fall like other cameras, but also to swing from side to side or tilt up and down. The versatility of movement gave a new degree of composition and perspective control.

The Kodak Brownie was born in 1900 and became one of the most iconic camera names of all time. In 1912 Kodak launched the Vest Pocket Kodak, the first camera to use 127 size film. The VPK, as it became known, was a folding design with the lens panel pulled out from the body on scissor-like struts. Early VPKs used a simple meniscus lens, soon replaced by a Kodak Anastigmat f/8. Varying apertures and shutter speeds, with exposure instructions printed minutely on a plate around the lens, made the camera more versatile for the serious amateur photographer.