The California Museum of Photography presents a new rotating display of cameras drawn from its extensive Technology Collection. The inaugural presentation is organized as part of Digital Capture: Southern California and the Pixel-Based Image World, an exhibition exploring six decades of artists’ engagement with digital imaging.

Camera Rotation: Digital Capture traces the emergence of early digital image-capture technologies—foregrounding the experimental phase of tools that have since become ubiquitous. Many of these devices remain familiar—some perhaps still tucked away in our homes—while others reflect paths not taken, ideas that were abandoned, adapted, or absorbed into later innovations. This presentation includes the Apple QuickTake 100, released in 1994 as one of the first digital cameras widely available to consumers, accompanied by its original packaging. Its design helped establish a model that other manufacturers quickly adopted and refined. Also featured, the Nokia 3600 camera phone, released in August 2008, represents an early moment in the convergence of mobile telephony and digital photography.

The California Museum of Photography stewards a collection of more than ten thousand cameras, viewing devices, and related photographic apparatus, and is among the largest of its kind in the United States. The collection was founded in 1973 with the donation of the Bingham Camera Collection to UCR. It comprises four major areas of focus: the Kibbey Zeiss-Ikon Collection, Curtis Polaroid Collection, Wodinsky Ihagee-Exakta Collection, and Teague Kodak Brownie Collection. Highlights include a camera attributed to Louis Daguerre, a Simon Wing multi-lens wet plate camera, a fully functional Caille Bros. Cail-O-Scope, and a Ponti megalethoscope.