Or were some form of digital scanners always in use?
In: 4
Through the 70’s onwards, there were two main types of film used in photography.
Positive or slide film used a process that created an image on the film of the correct colours – this meant by shining a light through the slide directly you could project a large copy of the image onto a screen.
Negative or print film used a process that created an image on the film with the colours reversed – either a traditional black and white film, or a colour version. The traditional way of printing these uses an enlarger to project the image onto a piece of light sensitive paper, which also used a process that created a negative copy of your image. With photography if you make a negative copy of an image that is already a negative, you end up with a positive final image.
It is also worth mentioning that digital printing technology had been available since long before digital cameras were a household item – larger lab grade optical scanners were used to scan film onto a computer, which could then be printed onto photo paper using and automated printer – this works using a similar process to traditional photo printing, but instead of projecting the image directly from the film, a laser is used to draw the image on a light sensitive paper which was then processed in the appropriate chemicals to create the final photo – this printing system is why photos have always had such a distinctive look and feel to them, very different to the output from a typical computer printer.
Latest Answers