The camera tattoo is a great little piece that can represent different meanings depending on the person with the tattoo. Photography has been a hobby enjoyed by many people since the first photographic camera was used in 1777 by Carl Wilhelm Scheele. However, we’ll get more into that when we’re explaining the origins of the camera and what the camera tattoo means to the people that get it.

As said in the previous paragraph, in 1777, Carl Wilhelm Scheel showed that silver chloride was really vulnerable to being darkened by sun exposure. Once it’s darkened, it becomes insoluble in a solution of ammonia. Thomas Wedgwood was the first man to create an image using this method.

The first permanent photo from a camera image was made by Joseph Niépce in 1826. He used a sliding wooden box camera that was created by Vincent and Charles Chevalier. Since 1816, he had been trying to fix the images of the camera obscura. He was able to do so by 1837 and called the process Daguerreotype. He tried to go commercial with the process, but it didn’t take right away.

The use of photographic film was created by George Eastman who began the process in 1885 with manufacturing paper film and then switched to celluloid in 1889. His first camera was called the “Kodak”. You may have heard of this before and in 1888, it went on sale to the public. It was a very simple camera with a single shutter speed and a fixed focus lens. It’s low price point was also a positive. By the 19th century, the lineup by Eastman had been grown into many models which included folding cameras and box cameras.

The first digital camera was crated in 1975 by Steven Sasson. He was a Kodak engineer at the time. It’s funny to think about the first digital camera starting at 0.01 megapixels. By todays standards, this would hardly work for anyone but back then it was an amazing feat.