50 Landmark Cameras

The Daguerreotype Camera of 1839 is a photographic landmark. It was the camera that introduced the first practical method of taking a photograph. Except that what is generally acknowledged as the first photograph was actually taken thirteen years before with a different type of camera. So which camera was the landmark? Taking another example, the Leica was the first camera to make the 35mm format popular, but it was by no means the first camera to take 35mm film. Likewise, Polaroid wasn’t the first to produce an instant picture camera but was, surprisingly, the first company to introduce an autofocus single lens reflex. The history of the camera is littered with similar anomalies. This lavishly illustrated book looks at the cameras that became landmarks, then analyses how and why they influenced future design – sometimes in a big, important manner, other times in a lesser but still significant way.

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