Photography Timeline (1980-1989)
President Carter fails in a daring plan to rescue 53 American hostages by a helicopter raid on Tehran. Sony demonstrates first consumer camcorder. 8th of December, Mark David Chapman kills John Lennon. They are photographed as John gives him his signature. Elsa Dorfman created portraits on 20x24 inch Polaroid. United States Military Academy in West Point, New York, class of 1980 stands at attention during graduation ceremonies with the first ever female officers. Nippon Kogaku Kogyo K.K., forerunner of Nikon, introduces the professional's Nikon F3 and discontinues the Nikon F2. |
Scitex, Hell, and Crossfield introduce computer imaging systems. |
The age of the media empires: in the wake of unprecedented profits, Hollywood studios are purchased by financial interests lying outside the United States. |
30th of March, Attempted assassination of President Ronald Reagan.
24th of August, Sony announces the Mavica, an electronic camera which uses a CCD to record images electronically for storage on a magnetic disk. The Pentax ME-F camera is the world's first autofocus SLR camera. The lens had a bulky AF unit which requires four size-AA batteries. The Fuji Instant Camera Model F10 is the first instant camera made in Japan. The Canon 35 AF ML compact camera is the first camera to have both autofocusing and auto film advance. Bill Gates says "640K ought to be enough for anyone." Sony unveiled a prototype of the Sony Mavica. This camera was an analog electronic camera that featured interchangeable lenses and a SLR viewfinder. |
Jean-Jacques Bienix's Diva, the first of a series of French thrillers combining punk/new wave guerilla aesthetics and New Hollywood publicity and video style. Steven Spielberg's E.T. The Extraterrestrial is the first film to surpass $200 million in rentals. Yellow Earth, directed by Chen Kaige and photographed by Zhang Yimou, offers critical insight into China's contemporary political culture through austere landscape cinematography and sparse dialogue. In March, the Nikon FM2 becomes the world's first 35mm SLR camera to have a 1/4000 sec. shutter speed. Sony Mavica Still Video camera. |
British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher cuts government funding for film production, thrusting television producer Channel 4 into a central position for film production. |
In Japan, 35mm SLR production falls to 5.37 million units, down by more than 30 percent from 1981's peak production of 7.67 million units. Demand for SLRs continue to fall while compact cameras become the mainstream market. Nippon Kogaku Kogyo K.K., forerunner of Nikon, introduces the F3AF, the first professional auto-focus SLR camera on the market, and their first auto-focus point & shoot camera, the L35AF. Kodak Disc camera. |
Edgar Reitz's sixteen-hour Heimat, a programmatic response to the American miniseries Holocaust, is screened as a film in two parts at European festivals and released as an eleven-part television series in Germany. MPPA rating system is revised to include a "PG-13" category. Founding of Eurimages, a fund for European film coproduction. Canon demonstrates the first electronic still camera. Japanese newspapers cover the opening of the Olympics in Los Angeles with Canon RC-701 Still Video Cameras and analog transmitter. Fuji Photo Film markets the Fujicolor HR1600 color negative film, the world's first with a film speed of ISO 1600. |
Claude Lanzmann's Shoah, a twelve-hour documentary of the Nazis' extermination of Polish Jews structured on interviews with witnesses, survivors, and former Nazis. Cable-TV mogul Ted Turner and publishing magnate Rupert Murdoch buy MGM and 20th Century-Fox, respectively. Rambo, a militarist fantasy typical of Reagan-era Hollywood cinema. Mikhail Gorbachev becomes Soviet leader promising perestroika and policy of glasnost. Richard Avedon's The Great American West. The Minolta alpha 7000 (US Maxxum), the world's first 35mm autofocus camera with a built-in lens-driving motor, is marketed in February. The fully automatic SLR becomes a major hit product. Pixar introduces digital imaging processor. |
28th of January, the NASA Space Shuttle Challenger explodes shortly after launch.
Canadian films attract international attention: Patricia Rozema's I've Heard the Mermaids Singing, Denys Arcand's The Decline of the American Empire, Atom Egoyan's Family Viewing. John Woo's A Better Tomorrow starring Chow Yun-Fat breaks box-office records in Hong Kong and initiates a cycle of "hero films." Half of major American film companies' domestic revenues come from videocassette sales. Joel Peter Witkin's The Kiss. World conference establishes standards for sound, video, and digital recordings. Fuji Photo Film markets the first single-use camera called "Utsurundesu" which becomes a runaway hit with about a million units sold within six months. Minolta introduces the market's second professional auto-focus camera, the Maxxum 9000. The Kodak Microelectronics Technology Division develop a 1.3 MP CCD image sensor, the first with more than 1 million pixels. |
Wim Wenders's Wings of Desire, a film about Berlin and Germany's past and present. Katsuhiro Otomo's Akira brings international attention to the feature-length science-fiction Japanese cartoon, or anime. The 12 nations of the European Community (EC) found MEDIA and the European Film Distribution Office to offer financial incentives for distributors to handle imported films. Canal+, a French cable television company, becomes the major source of funding for filmmaking in France. Canon produces RC-760 Still Video Camera with a 600,000 pixel CCD. USA Today begins to cover special events with the Canon RC-760 camera. Fuji is the first to introduce a disposable cameras, the Fujicolor Quick Snap. Kodak introduces disposable same year. 1st of January, Ernst Leitz Wetzlar GmbH and Wild Heerbrugg AG merge to form the Wild Leitz group. The new company employs a total 9,000 people. Konishiroku Shashin Kogyo changes its corporate name to "Konica." |
Robert Zemeckis' Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, is a triumph of animation technique combining cartoon characters with live-action. Vasily Pichul's Little Vera contains the first sex scene in Soviet cinema and becomes a hallmark for glasnost filmmaking. Pédro Almodóvar's Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, an energetic melodrama/sex comedy from Spain. Arnold Newman: Five Decades retrospective at the New York Historical Society. Black-and-white portraits of famous people photographed during his career. Garry Winogrand's massive retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City and the book Winogrand: Figments From the Real World. Sony and Fuji announce new digital cameras. In April, Nippon Kogaku Kogyo K.K. changes its corporate name to "Nikon" Nikon releases the Nikon F4 which has a ground breaking 1/8000th of a second shutter speed. |
Polish director Krzysztof Kieslowski receives international recognition for The Decalogue, a ten-part work made for Polish television. |
Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing examines black oppression within a multi-ethnic urban environment. Sony Corporation buys Columbia Pictures from Coca-Cola; Time Inc. purchases Warner Communications, Inc. April to June, Tiananmen Square Massacre.
After The Massacre In Beijing One Man Faces Down The Army by Stuart Franklin. The Berlin Wall comes down. Sony announces MCV-5000 twin ship camera with two separate CCD elements for luminance and chrominance. Letraset releases Color Studio 1.0 ™, the first professional image manipulation program for Macintosh computers. |
Following the dismantling of the Soviet bloc, film companies are privatized and western films are welcomed in eastern Europe. |