MODEL RELEASED. Street photographer with an old- style camera. The first photographs were recorded in the 1820s, but the technology did not develop fully until the 1840s. Early cameras were large devices using plates that had to be individually loaded and exposed. The first handheld cameras, using rolls of film, were developed in the 1880s. This camera, which is mounted on a tripod, takes black-and-white photographs. Colour photography was not commercially available until the 1940s.