The camera, as we know it, has been around from the late 19th century, but the oldest surviving photograph dates back to 1826! The credit for that goes to Nicephore Niepce.

2. The camera, as we know it, has been around from the late 19th century,
but the oldest surviving photograph dates back to 1826! The credit for
that goes to Nicephore Niepce. However, while Niepce is considered the
inventor of photography, there were other innovators before him who
made important contributions to the field. Niepce only built on
experiments by other pioneers in imaging.
The Very First Expression of Imaging – Camera Obscura
The history of photography goes back to antiquity, to the camera obscura,
a principle by which you have a dark room with one of the walls being a
screen and the opposite wall having a hole through which a figure or
object on the other side is projected to the screen wall in an inverted
position. Light makes this possible. But, though this was a pioneering
discovery back then, we now know that this is just a means of imaging
and not actually photography.
The origins of the discovery of the camera obscura phenomenon date
back to prehistory, primarily as light coming through holes in caves that
projected figures outside onto the cave walls inside. This was thought to
be the inspiration behind cave paintings of the Palaeolithic age. But it
wasn’t until 500 BC that the principle behind the concept was understood
and documented, attributed to the Chinese Mozi writings.
Portability Enters the Scene
By the 17th century AD, portable camera obscura devices were available.
These devices were box shaped, and when photography later developed
in the 19th century, the cameras then were designed based on this shape.
Following that oldest preserved photograph in 1826, the first cameras
that made their way to the market were daguerreotypes, based on a
process developed by Louis Daguerre, an associate of Niepce.

3. The Oldest Photograph
That first photograph was quite crude. Made on a polished pewter sheet,
Niepce used a thin bitumen coating. The bitumen required several days of
exposure to harden sufficiently in accordance with the exposure to light it
received.
Taking Photos Becomes a Lot More Practical
Daguerre made the process much faster and simpler, and is therefore
considered the inventor of practical photography. The daguerreotype only
needed a few minutes of camera exposure to produce results with fine
details. These photos resembled black-and-white photos we’d have seen
of the past. The daguerreotype was formally introduced in 1839 and was
still metal-based. Soon, paper-based innovations made their way,
particularly by William Henry Fox Talbot. The new materials used
significantly reduced the exposure time. It eventually reduced to seconds
and then milliseconds. Roll films later made amateur photography
possible.
While the innovations made the photography process more practical and
cost-effective, the skill to spot a great photo opportunity remains firmly
the faculty of the human being who wields the camera like a magician
wields his wand. The result is a photo that is more than just an image,
but a sensory experience that can evoke a ton of emotions.
About Peter
Peter Theodorou fell in love with photography when he was quite young.
The desire to capture timeless moments in nature led him to become one
of the foremost nature photographers of our times He has also branched
into other fields of photography including astronomic, sports and animal
photography.