The first camera that was small and portable enough to be practical for photography was built by Johann Zahn in 1685, though it would be almost 150 years before technology caught up to the point where this was possible. The earliest form of this device was a darkened room with a tiny hole in one wall. Light entered the room through this hole and projected an upside-down image of the subject onto the opposite wall. Early photographic cameras were essentially similar to Zahn’s model, though usually with the addition of sliding boxes for focusing. Before each exposure a sensitized plate would be inserted in front of the viewing screen to record the image. Over the course of three centuries the camera obscura evolved into a handheld box with a lens replacing the pinhole and an angled mirror at the back. The mirror reflected an image onto a ground-glass viewing screen on the top of the box. The inventors of photography in the early 19th century adapted the camera obscura by adding a device for holding sensitized plates in the back of the box. The first permanent photograph was made in 1826 by Joseph Nicéphore Niépce using a sliding wooden box camera made by Charles and Vincent Chevalier in Paris.
Jacques Daguerre‘s popular daguerreotype process utilized copper plates, while the process invented by William Fox Talbot recorded images on paper This kind of camera, with some improvements, was used throughout the 19th century. One notable enhancement for the box, pleated leather sides called bellows, allowed the photographer to easily adjust the distance between the lens and the plane of focus. Professional photographers still use a similar camera today, a large-format camera known as the view camera In the 1880s the invention of more sensitive emulsions and better lenses led to the development of lens shutters, devices that could limit the time of exposure to a fraction of a second. At first the shutter was simply a blind dropped in front of the lens by the force of gravity, or by a spring. Later designs featured a set of blades just behind the optical lens.
In 1888 George Eastman introduced the first Kodak camera, which used a cylindrical shutter that the photographer turned by pulling a string on the front of the camera. It made photography available to amateurs for the first time and created a snapshot craze at the turn of the 20th century.. In 1884 Eastman patented the first film in roll form to prove practicable; in 1888 he perfected the Kodak camera, the first camera designed specifically for roll film. The Kodak was one of the earliest handheld cameras.