The first ever photo of a person in 1838?

So recent? Seems like a long time ago that we first had photography.


This photograph of Boulevard du Temple in Paris was made in 1838 by Louis Daguerre, the brilliant guy that invented the daguerreotype process of photography. Aside from its distinction of being a super early photograph, it is also the first photograph to ever include a human being. Because the image required an exposure time of over ten minutes, all the people, carriages, and other movingthings disappear from the scene. However, in the bottom left hand corner is a man who just so happened to stay somewhat still during the shot ” he was having his shoes shined.

It is interesting how sheer luck earned the guy a place in the history of photography. Too bad we all probably will never know his identity.

By the way, how many mega pixels do you need to achieve a quality image?

According to Wiki.answers.com:

Pixels are tiny building blocks of color in your images; the more you pixels you have, the clearer and more rich your image will be. A mega-pixel is a set of one million pixels. Digital cameras have a range of 3.2 pixels up to 16 mega-pixels.

How many mega-pixels you need depends on how large you will print your pictures. The larger you print your pictures more mega-pixels your camera should have. For example, if you use a 3.2 mega-pixel camera to take a picture you will enlarge to poster size, the image will fall apart or appear grainy and less sharp. A poster-size picture taken with a 16 mega-pixel digital SLR will appear sharp and clear in comparison.

However, you don't need a 16 mega-pixel digital SLR if you only plan to use your camera for typical 4x6 vacation and family snapshots. Your resolution will appear just as good as the professional grade digital SLR (although, the digital SLR's picture be better due to other features and settings, not just resolution).


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