Scientific Photography and Applied Imaging

1 Introduction

1.1 Historical development

The scientific applications of photography and imaging date from the earliest days of the introduction of photographic processes such as the Daguerreotype and Calotype (1839), and the wet plate (1851), although it was realized that the spectral sensitivity was limited to UV and blue only. The work of Vogel in 1873 (Vogel, 1875) gave green (orthochromatic) sensitivity and later extended to red (early 1900s) and IR (1930s). General technical accounts of photographic technology are given by Eder (1945), Mees (1926, 1942, 1961), Suptitz (1990) and by Ostroff, (1987).

One of the first recorded scientific images was that of the moon taken in 1840 by J. W. Draper of New York with a 20 minute exposure. This image ...