A History of Photography in 50 Cameras explores the 180-year story of perhaps the most widely used device ever built. It covers cameras in all forms, revealing the origins and development of each model and tracing the stories of the photographers who used and popularized them. Illustrated throughout with studio shots of all fifty cameras and a selection of iconic photographs made using them, it is the perfect companion guide for camera and photography enthusiasts alike.

The cameras include: The Nikon F, the “hockey puck” that saved photographer Don McCullin’s life when it stopped a sniper’s bullet during the Vietnam War. Its indestructibility, reliability and interchangeable lenses made it a favored workhorse of photojournalists. The Leica M3-D was also favored by war photographers, including David Duncan Douglas, who used the camera during his coverage of the Korean and Vietnam Wars. In 2012, one of his four customized Leica cameras sold at auction for nearly $2 million. A Speed Graphic was used to take Sam Shere’s widely published photograph of the 1937 Hindenburg disaster, “the world’s most famous news photograph ever taken.” With few shots left and no time to get the camera to his eye, he shot his Pulitzer Prize-winning image “literally from the hip. It was over so fast there was nothing else to do.” The camera phone has transformed picture-taking technology most profoundly since the invention of cameras. The “selfie” has become a new genre of photography practiced by everyone, and shared globally. In 2014, Ellen DeGeneres shared her selfie taken at the Academy Awards. By the end of the ceremony, it had been shared 2,070,132 times with no sign of stopping, crushing the record of 780,000 held by President Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle, for their 2012 post-election self-portrait.