The digital photography history is a short one, with the first digital camera hitting the market in 1981. The Magnetic Video Camera, called Mavica by Sony who put it on the market, was actually a digital video camera that was capable of taking still pictures. Attempting to develop a semi-conductor memory for computers while looking for a solid-state camera they could use in phones, two engineers from Bell Labs designed a charged-couple device, which rapidly led to digital photography.

With development of CCD technology, its use in television cameras became a major part of digital photography history and in 1975, the first CCD camera was demonstrated that offered a broadcast-quality picture. The Mavica, using similar technology was able to pull single frames from the moving image and store them on a floppy disk. While this camera was larger and bulkier than traditional cameras, it set the stage for the rapid development of digital cameras.

It was not until 1986 that digital photography history took another turn for the better, when Kodak introduced the first digital sensor capable of recording 1.4 mega-pixels, which could give the user a 5 X 7 color picture of a quality comparable to that of a film camera. The following year Kodak released several more products, which expanded on digital photography’s use and in 1990, released the first photo CD and began pushing for global standardization for digital color photography.

Professional Units Begin To Emerge

The Nikon F-3 was the first digital camera, released by Kodak to meet the requirements of professional photographers. However, its 1.3 mega-pixel sensor would soon be out of date as image capturing quickly escalated to meet the demands for better picture quality from professionals. Today, part of digital photography history shows cameras with 12 mega-pixels or more as par for professional use.

Logitech introduced the first true digital camera in 1990, a black and white unit capable of storing 32 images on a one-megabyte internal memory chip. The DyCam Model 1 had a built-in flash and an eight-millimeter fixed-focus lens. Despite its simplicity, it made a huge mark on digital photography history.

As digital photography technology progressed, computer processors were built into them as well as removable memory cards. While this part of digital photography history is often glossed over, several cameras developed in the mid to late 1990’s did not resemble the traditional cameras people were used to seeing. Most were square or rectangle and it was not until the early 21st century that digital cameras began to take on the appearance of traditional cameras.