A few facts about digital photography

Peter Hsieh of Northwestern Polytechnic University is a photography enthusiast. He believes that the emergence of digital photography changed the photography landscape forever. It allowed even the most novice of photographers a chance at creating more striking shots.

Below, Peter Hsieh shares a few amusing facts that you may not know about digital photography.

1. As far as digital cameras go, the prototype was created in 1969 by Steven Sasson, an Eastman Kodak engineer. It took 23 seconds to record and process a single exposure. The image was faint but recognizable by Sasson's colleagues because of the way it distorted perspective.

The prototype had no memory or display capabilities. As a result, users could not see the photo they had taken. Instead, it was essentially a filmless camera that saved images onto itself with light-sensitive microchips.

2. The first known commercial digital camera was the Sony Mavica, introduced in 1981 and featured an "electro-luminescent panel" viewfinder display. The first cameras using charge-coupled device (CCD) image sensors were the Fairchild Channel F, Sony Mavica, and Fuji DS-X of 1988. These cameras were originally point-and-shoot models, but digital single-lens reflex (DSLR) models began to be introduced in the mid-1990s.

3. The Nikon D1 was announced on Sep. 15, 1999. The D1 recorded color Digital SLR photography with an effective resolution of 2,048 × 1,536 pixels. That was 6.1 megapixels of information in an area the size of a 35mm film frame, at a price of about $5,000 per unit.

What about you? Do you have some fun facts to share about digital photography? Feel free to comment below.