How Digital Photography Works, Second Edition

Chapter 1. The Workings of a Digital Camera

You push the button, we do the rest.

George Eastman, 1888, pitching the first Kodak camera

And there was, indeed, a time when it was just that simple. I recall my father’s Kodak. I don’t know what happened to it after he died, and so it took some research on eBay to find out that it was most likely a Pocket Kodak 1 or 1A, which Eastman Kodak began selling about the turn of the century—the last century, like 1900.

It was not a fancy camera. The upscale Kodaks had red leather billows, polished wood rails for the lens assembly to travel as you focused, brass fittings, and lenses from Zeiss. Daddy’s Kodak was ...