Technology evolves rapidly, and it only takes a few generations for there to be a sharp divide between age groups. What do you think the next generation will know nothing about today’s photography or be surprised about?
Many in the Fstoppers community have managed to transition between film and digital. This is without a doubt the biggest change photography has ever encountered and it is revolutionary. Even though I’m in my 30s, I still vividly remember family members – especially the older generations – changing the roll of film on their cameras. I even vividly recall as a child, one day out with my family, asking to borrow a loved one’s camera to take a picture and then accidentally hitting the rewind button, rewinding the film, getting ready to take it out and sent to development. He was furious with me for wasting a reel of film and I was quite annoyed. However, it may be my last organic encounter with film.
In fact, I was the first to walk through the door of the digital era, as my family had a digital camera from a very early age. Our first was a giant silver oblong watch with a black strap, fixed lens, and a small display on the back. I can’t remember the build, but it was the millennium, and it felt like high tech. I wasn’t even a teenager before I completely forgot about the dangers and difficulties of cinema. All generations after me, save it for film enthusiasts or a loved one who will have no experience with the medium. This means that there will be some nuances of photography with film cameras that are completely lost in a few generations.
Although I was prepared for the transition from film to digital, I did not know many details when shooting with film. In fact, it wasn’t until I became a photographer and decided to try Grandpa’s Pentax SLR that I learned parts of the process that I hadn’t even considered. What immediately comes to mind is the existence of light meters. Of course, they still have their place to this day, but when I bought my first camera, I didn’t order one. It wasn’t until I was in the Lake District, halfway up a mountain road, staring at a coffee shop with a Pentax in hand, that I wondered, “How do I know the settings are correct?”
Since then, variations of lost knowledge have occurred, albeit less influential ones. For example, my girlfriend’s dad gave me a family Polaroid from the 1970s after cleaning it up and checking it worked. Excited, I ordered some original movies for it and am waiting for the chance to use it in a special place. I was told that if it took a while before using the film, I needed to keep it in the fridge – an unexpected revelation.
So my question to you is, what do you think the next generation will have to be told about photography today to understand it? That is, in 20 years’ time, what will be budding, fresh-faced photographers will be surprised to know about photography in 2022?
Lack of automation and AI
In ten years, we have seen an amazing level of improvement in what can be automated and done by AI. When I started taking pictures, there were laborious and difficult jobs, especially post-processing, I was scared and can now more or less get it done with the click of a button. There’s no reason to believe this will slow down, and I imagine that in 20 years many of the tasks we’ll be doing manually will be a click away or even automated. For example, Luminar’s AI consistently beat me to how well it can perform reasonably difficult tasks. The sky replacement function turns out to be perfect sometimes.
Back in my day, I had to make complex selections in Adobe Photoshop by hand.
How stupid was the camera
This is an area of photography that I have criticized a lot, but it still confuses me. Cameras these days are great in many ways, but the technology in them has barely changed, save for Eye AF and a few other features. The only brand that has innovated in this regard is Olympus, with its real-time long exposures, digital filters and astrophotography tools all superb. Why we don’t integrate more calculation functions and smart modes into our cameras is beyond me. Smartphones have shown how powerful the software side of photography can be today. Just this week I used portrait mode on my iPhone, did some tweaking to it, and a photographer friend of mine suggested it was taken with my medium format camera . (It sounds ridiculous, but this image happens to look like a medium format image, to be fair.)
There are a lot of areas that could be improved with the software, from the in-camera stacked autofocus by default (again, Olympus is one of the few to offer this), to handling post-production and proper connection.
Low light ability
Again, I use technology from 10 to 20 years ago, in contrast to today, as a sign of trend. A sizable improvement is the low-light capabilities of cameras with ISO and image stabilization. 20 years ago, handheld photography at sunset hardly yielded usable results. Now, I’ve taken a handheld shot at blue hour and ISO above 1,000, and you can’t tell it wasn’t shot with a tripod. I can only imagine we’ll get to the point where unless it’s pitch black, low light isn’t really a barrier.
What Do You Think It Will Be Unbelievable In 20 Years?
There are a lot of areas where I think we age poorly, but let’s question the room. What do you think the newest generation would be confused about in adulthood if they picked up our beloved craft? Haven’t you realized something about film photography? Have you been through the many evolutions of photography? Share your thoughts in the comments section below.
