Verifiable websites.

[Top-Cat]

Seeing as there's a whole lot of information on the internet about cameras, but surprisingly few serious books regarding the history of the camera - though there probably is one or two good ones, it's hard to browse through all the enormous amounts of junk - I thought I'd ask here if anyone knows if there might be a site or two that can be used as a verifiable source for writing an academic paper.

By that I mean internet sources that are NOT of the wiki type (such as wikipedia and camerapedia), or individual sites and blogs based on personal opinion (such as kenrockwell).

I'm guessing the brands own sites such as Nikon's own website might be considered serious (albeit biased) sources for the history of their own cameras - though I'm curious if there might be any other places (maybe even a good .edu site or similar) that might function as a serious source.

Individual documents regarding the history of the camera may prove to be helpful as well.

 

[bblhed]

You might want to think again about the Wiki sites, while the site itself may not be something you can use, a lot of them have links at the bottom of the page to the reference source. You only have to cite your actual source, not how you got to your actual source.

 

[jeffreyg]

Many years ago Life magazine had a series of books about photography that came out one/month. They covered most subjects including history. Some investigation on your part might locate them. Actually I have the series gathering dust on a bookshelf.

http://www.jeffreyglasser.com/

 

[Christopher Walrath]

Bblhed beat me to it.

 

[jeffreyg]

The correct title for the books I just mentioned is "Life Library of Photography" and another source to check out is "History of Photography From 1839 to Present" by Beaumont Newhall who is a well respected name in photography.

 

[Moopheus]

The Newhall book, like most historical overviews of photography, is more about the development of photography as a practice, and very little about the history of cameras as technological artifacts. I think the OP was asking about references to cameras as objects. It seems to me that when I've looked at manufacturer websites, the amount of detail they give about history is very very small. You'd probably need access to their actual archives to get anything better.

 

[tkamiya]

Smithonian's site may contain something you can use. Try photography.si.edu