Pre-Digital Photographic Technology *Cameras with motor drives*

Photo of: Elijah and Aaliyah Ramos
Phot by: Melissa Gorneault
Photo source: iPhone 4s

Only being 23 years old I have kind of been spoiled with the newer technology. Growing up I enjoyed looking through photo albums that both my mom and grandma have put together. Prior to taking this class the only things I noticed that were different were the color of the photos and the outdated clothes they wore.

It is obvious that photography, like many others things, have tremendously advanced over the past 100 plus years. Photography has change greatly, starting with how a photo was taken to how it was developed. Over the years photography continued to improve in how fast it could be developed to the quality of the picture. Specifically, cameras have now been equipped with motor drives.

Traditionally, all camera options including film loading, advancing, and rewinding were all done by hand. According to Wikipedia “The desires of professional photographers for more efficient shooting, particularly in sports and wildlife photography, and the desires of amateur and novice photographers for easier to use cameras both drove the development of automatic film transport.” As mentioned in the video by Professor Nordell “Before There Were Pixels – Part 1” it could take “five to eight minutes” to take a picture with a wet plate, which relied on the person in the photo to stay very still which limited action in a photo.



Photo of: Elijah and Aaliyah Ramos

Photo by: Melissa Gorneault

Photo source: iPhone 4s

I am very thankful for the more recent technology because I am a Mom who is crazy about taking pictures of everything my kids do. From crawling to walking, running, riding bikes, baseball, gymnastics, just about everything and anything! Without the new advances in cameras and the motor drive it would be great trouble trying to capture all these memories and I would look back on many of these as a blur – literally.

Motor drives allow the photographer to take several pictures at a time of things that are moving. It is then easy to look at these pictures and choose the one that is the best image(s) they wanted to capture. This can be done by the simple touch of a button which can capture anywhere from two to ten frames per second.

According to Wikipedia “At first, motor drives were external units that attached to the basic camera body, normally beneath it, with an interface consisting of a physical drive socket and some electrical contacts to signal the drive when to actuate.” As technology has advanced cameras now have the motor drive integrated in the cameras themselves.

 

Photo by: Wikimedia Commons

Photo source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Nikon_F2_High-Speed.jpg

 

Along with all of the other advances in technology and before motor drives were invented photojournalist were limited to what kind of photos they could take. Now with thousands of dollars they can choose to spend on equipment, they can take a limited amount of pictures to capture stories that will one day be a part of history.

And for me, I'm no photojournalists but I will say I appreciate the new technology which allows me access to take a photo with the push of a button and then upload it on to my computer within minutes to then upload on to my first blog ever!