Obsolete Technology 2: Film Cameras Traditional Cache

Camera. A camera is an optical instrument that records images that can be stored directly, transmitted to another location, or both.

Film. Photographic film is a strip or sheet of transparent plastic film base coated on one side with a gelatin emulsion containing microscopically small light-sensitive silver halide crystals. Film may take pictures in black and white or color.

The first partially successful photograph of a camera image was made in approximately 1816 by Nicéphore Niépce, but the photograph was not permanent. Later, in 1826, he used a sliding wooden box camera to take a photograph which still survives today.

The first flexible photographic roll film was marketed by George Eastman in 1885, but this original "film" was actually a coating on a paper base. As part of the processing, the image-bearing layer was stripped from the paper and transferred to a hardened gelatin support. The first transparent plastic roll film followed in 1889. It was made from highly flammable nitrocellulose ("celluloid"), now usually called "nitrate film".

The first 35 mm camera was built around 1913 by Oskar Barnack. By the 1930s, American (Kodak) and Japanese (Canon) 35 mm cameras dominated the camera market.

The first practical reflex camera was built in 1928, and the world's first viable instant-picture camera appeared on the market in 1948.

By the late 1980s, the technology required to produce truly commercial digital cameras existed. Digital cameras do not use film, but capture and save photographs on digital memory cards or internal storage instead. Their low operating costs have relegated chemical cameras to niche markets.

Questions for geocachers:
Do you still own a film camera? Do you still have negatives stored in boxes somewhere? (I have both, but I do not know if the camera still works).