Enumerating Photography from Spot Meter to CCD

Abstract

The transition form analogue to digital photography was not accomplished in a single step. It required a number of feeder technologies which enabled and structured the nature of digital photography. Among those traced in this article, the most important is the genesis of the raster grid, which is now hard-wired into the design of the most widely employed photographic chip, the charge-couple device (CCD). In tracing this history from origins in half-tone printing, the authors argue that qualities available to analogue photographers are no longer available to digital, and that these changes correspond to historical developments in the wider political and economic world. They conclude, however, that these losses may yet be turned into gains.

Google’s lens: computational photography and platform capitalism

“…Likewise, the automation of photographic image production associated with computational photography is not strictly speaking new; the history of photographic technology has seen the gradual automation of a medium which began with manual-only controls for aperture, shutter speed, film speed/iso, focus, light metering (Cubitt et al, 2015). Computational photography extends this process to automate compositing, depth-mapping, synthetic fill-flash and facial retouching, with Top Shot even providing automated assistance to select alternative frames within the image stream which provide normatively ‘superior’ photographs.…”