196 Years Since the World's First Photograph

Over the past two hundred years, photography has changed significantly, becoming more and more advanced but also skilfully mastered by many. It is also amazing to see the speed with which the camera itself has developed in a relatively short space of time - going from a simple box to highly intricate tiny computers that can store hundreds of gigabytes of memories. 

During the 1800s, the first documented experiments to capture images began happening. In France, a man named Nicéphore Niépce managed to ‘fix’ (make an image permanent) an image in 1826 - creating the first photograph. One of his colleagues, Louis Daguerre, worked with him to develop a process known as the daguerreotype.

This process was introduced to the world in 1839 and as this was the first commercially available photographic process, many people call 1839 the ‘birth’ of photography. In the 1880s, photography became widely available to the public when a man named George Eastman founded Kodak. He developed roll film, and portable cameras which made photography so much easier as it required much simpler equipment now. As more and more people began to pick up this hobby, much of daily life could be captured by everyone who had access to the cameras and film. With the rapid development of technology, people were eventually able to very quickly get their film developed and turned into physical photographs that they could display at home. 

One of our customers lived in Hong Kong for more than four decades, capturing different shots of life. With permission, here are some of his best nostalgic photos which really give us a window into what Hong Kong was like back then: 

Nowadays, you have so many options to choose from when it comes to photography. Crave nostalgia? You can very easily pick up a film camera and start snapping away. Want to up your photography game? A huge range of SLR cameras are available to pick from. The sky’s the limit! 

But no matter what medium you select to test your new skills, when it comes to your original photos and photo albums, Capture.HK is here to help you preserve and digitise your memories forever. Our service magically extracts photos whether loose or from your album, without the need to physically remove the vintage photos, ensuring that we’ll never damage your valuable memories. With machine learning and some artificial intelligence automation, we gently enhance and bring to life the treasured scenes to complete your life’s memories and ensure that they are available to you at any time.