Taking a photo seems all too easy these days, thanks to the
array of small, compact and easy to use devices that we have at our
disposal, such as mobile phones, digital cameras, action cameras
and even drones. However, photography as we know it hasn't
always been this convenient, as we see in our brief outline of the
history of film.
The camera obscura (often referred to as a pin hole image)
allows an image to project through a small pin sized hole onto a
screen, and has been documented as early as 400 BC in China, but it
had not been possible to capture such images on a permanent medium
until Joseph Niépce and Louis Daguerre developed the first
photographic plates in the 1820s. The daguerreotype photographic
plates consisted of a sheet of silver-plated copper that was
polished to a mirror surface. The plate would then be treated with
iodine vapour to make it light sensitive and, after exposure in the
camera, would be exposed to mercury vapour and fixed with
