If Digital Photography Had Never Been Invented…

[johnnyrod]

It's an interesting thought. I guess as 35mm ate up MF as films became better for their size, the logical extreme is not emulsions with a significant grain size, but something much smaller as the unit of resolution, even down to a large molecule. Getting the image back out would be a bit tricky but you would presume if you can project onto a small film area of say a few mm square, you can also project back off to make prints. Lenses then may have gone the way of cellphones i.e. short focal length so naturally high DoF and easy to point and shoot.

If we presume scanning makes an appearance then you could think about film recording the image not as coloured dots but as arrays of monochrome dots, which would be converted back to colour in the scanning process - like all the bits in 24-bit colour digital images. This would simplify the film manufacture but maybe would also become the end of the road for film - it's only one step from a (portable) digital sensor.

When I was a kid in the 70s and 80s, the convenience of P&S over even rangefinders (let alone SLR or anything larger) was cleaning up in the home photo market. DX coding was yet another dial removed from the camera, for example.

In terms of processing, maybe (automatic) kiosks in shops or home kits in something the size of a coffee mug, just drop it in with a couple of tablets and let it get on with it.

 

[oftheherd]

You can use your tongue to do the same thing.
Robert

Who knew?

Could you perhaps post a you tube showing how you do that? 😀 😀 😀

 

[willie_901]

Hmmm… Why wouldn't we have mechanical image scanning and transmission (e.g., aka telefacsimile)?
Or: Analog television?

We could have those technologies.

If the weirdness (quantum nature) of the photoelectric effect was ignored by humanity, everything would have stopped there (analog electronic imaging).

Instead Einstein and many others could not ignore repeatable empirical results from the photoelectric effect and cathode-ray tubes experiments that did not fit into Newtonian physics. Those results weren't even compatible with common sense.

Analog TV cameras and TV receivers (along with image scanning) existed without transistors. But these could not exist without the photoelectric effect.

Practical application of QM tunneling theory lead to the transistor. But QM was sparked by photoelectric effect.

The European academic elite of the late 1800 to early 1900s are responsible for the demise of analog photography. Back then if governments were smaller and taxes were lower, we wouldn't have to deal with digital cameras.

 

[radi(c)al_cam]

Who knew?

Could you perhaps post a you tube showing how you do that? 😀 😀 😀

Oy vey, that's how all the «red shirts» died! :angel:

 

[RF-OG]

I dread the thought of loading my phone with film....

 

[uhoh7]

A whole class of hipsters would need another identity, and a bunch of old guys would need to find something else to wax poetic about 😉

 

[raid]

You could still see REAL photographers on the streets, like this one in Mexico 1976:

He was developing the photos inside his camera!

Many years ago (in Baghdad), if you needed a photo of yourself for some government forms, no color photos were allowed, and only B&W photos from such cameras were allowed as being acceptable. You would like a criminal usually, but this is what was needed!

 

[uhoh7]

Many years ago (in Baghdad), if you needed a photo of yourself for some government forms, no color photos were allowed, and only B&W photos from such cameras were allowed as being acceptable. You would like a criminal usually, but this is what was needed!

ha! nice 🙂 Here we have no end of fellows marching around the wilderness with large format cameras modeling Ansel Adams. No harm in that, but it gets very hard on them LOL

 

[David Hughes]

You could still see REAL photographers on the streets, like this one in Mexico 1976:

He was developing the photos inside his camera!

Hmmm, that would sell well in China, where red is a lucky colour.

Regards, David

 

[mich rassena]

I wouldn’t have pursued photography to the extent that I have, since digital’s convenience and forgiving benefits removed decades of inhibition that had discouraged me from going beyond the preset exposure modes on my SLR.

With digital, I felt inspired to actually broaden my understanding of photography, learning such basic terminology as focal length, ISO, f/stop, shutter speed, and how they all interacted to affect exposure and such. Obviously, this is a personal psychological thing, as the film-only days posed no physical impediments to acquiring the same knowledge (on the contrary...).

Your experience is similar to mine. I started using a digital point and shoot in 2004. It was only 3 megapixels, but I learned a lot simply being able to see how the photos came out immediately. I quickly saw the limitations of auto-everything and started seeking out manual settings, and eventually manual everything. Closing the feedback loop, making it easy to see the direct correlation between the camera has made it possible for me to enjoy photography rather than curse every time I got my prints back from the photo lab.

In the process I've grown to use film in a variety of cameras and really enjoy being able to purchase some of the finer cameras from other eras (all thanks to the collapse of the film market due to digital).

It's so incredibly apparent, in hindsight, how much junk was passed off on the unwary consumer, for not a small amount of money (Kodak, Polaroid, weren't the only guilty parties), which still required an outlay of money to actually use it both for film and processing.

I'm not sad how things played out, I think the film industry was in a bubble, which companies exploited for as long as possible. Innovations and new ideas were few and far between. Look at how few were able to pivot and keep going once the writing was on the wall.

 

[Ronald M]

Photography would be dead because commercial printing is / was garbage except for a few high end labs that most people are not willing to pay for. Slides were always a small % of the film business.

And you have a large % of camera users who do not want to learn, therefore auto WB , exposure, multiple scene modes make life easy.

Also the perception that digital is cheaper. True if you are high volume wedding or sports guy, not if you do birthday, christmas, and vacation pics.