The early history of Photography

by T. Michael Testi (Blogcritics.org , PhotographyToday, ATAEE)

It has been over the course of the last five years that the explosion of digital cameras has all but put the film camera industry out of business. But before you film fanatics start bashing me about all the benefits of film over digital, you have to know that I started with film over 30 years ago so to a point I agree. But as they say, facts is facts and to quote Stephen King "the world has moved on...". The film industry will not return to the golden years again.

Digital will continue to grow and get more and more refined. The state of the art will continue to over take and surpass the film camera. In my opinion, this is both a good thing and a bad thing. It makes everyone a photographer whether you have talent or not. It builds galleries all over the web regardless of your abilities. Bottom line, it dilutes everything. On the other hand, many other talented people, especially those in the inner city as well as those in rural, non-cosmopolitan areas are given much more opportunities than in years past. This is something that we will have to see what happens.

I am sure that when Kodak Brownie camera became available in 1901 many of the die hard Daguerreotype loyalists where complaining about quality and how this is going to ruin the industry. As history shows, Ansel Adams first camera was a Brownie. Now one hundred years later, somewhere out there the next Ansel Adams is wandering around with a Canon Digital Rebel 8 mega pixel camera. And again I quote Stephen King, "the world has moved on"

If you are interested in the early history of photography you should read the fine article by Scott Michaels at PhotographyToday.Net. The technology of photography in the middle 1800's was much more complicated than it is today. In fact I suspect that in the turn to the 20th century, many people looked at new techniques of film like we look at digital as a whole new world.

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