Human beings have long had an interest in visual illusions and the reproduction of images. The scientific study of vision led to the development of optical devices such as the phenakistiscope (1832) and the zoetrope (1834) that create the illusion of movement. The ability to mechanically create the illusion of movement and the subsequent invention of photography helped pave the way for motion-picture cinematography. In the last decade of the nineteenth century, inventors such as the Frenchmen Auguste and Louis Lumière developed the first motion-picture cameras and projectors.

Equally integral to the development of the cinema was Eastman Kodak’s creation of strong but flexible and transparent film stock that could move through the mechanisms of the camera and projector with minimal breakage. Early film stock was made from highly flammable nitrate, which caused numerous fires and fatalities before the eventual development of acetate-based safety film.

Although early movies were filmed in black and white, they were often colored through tinting or toning processes before the eventual development of two-strip and three-strip Technicolor processes in the 1930s.

The development of different camera lenses allowed for different focal lengths—the distance from the center of the lens to the point where light rays meet in sharp focus—that alter the perspective relations of an image. Wide-angle lenses have a short focal length, telephoto lenses have a long one, and a zoom is a variable focus lens. The technology of cinematography has continued to develop over the years with the introduction of more lightweight handheld cameras that were widely used during World War II, the arrival of widescreen cinematography in the 1950s, the invention of the Steadicam in the 1970s, the development of digital cinematography in the 1990s, and the recent advances in 3-D cinema.