A Short History of Digital Photography                  

by N GAUGER

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Numerous articles about photographing your models and the prototypes have been seen on all railroading bulletin boards. They say what f-stop to use, how to adjust depth of field and lighting. Some just show off  their great work. But you hardly see anything written about what made this possible. Why is this so easy? Why do you see so many "in-progress" pics? The digital camera has made Instant Photography available to anyone and everyone that wants it.

    But, it always wasn't like this...... Before 1991, when Kodak developed the first professional digicam, there was only film..  35mm, 620, 120, 110  etc...  Remember those "disposable" pocket 110 cameras? The disposable digicams took their place, much like CD's replacing cassettes. If you blinked, you missed it.

    As I look back, to the thousands of pics I've taken, with all the above formats, I think: "What have we become"?  Most cameras now, don't even have a "manual" setting.  That's all I knew back in 1972 (I was 14) when I first got bitten by the bug...  I begged & pleaded with Santa (dear old Mom) to buy me a camera..  That's all I wanted... Sure enough, for my birthday (in October) I got my first real camera..  A 120 roll film Brownie and 4 rolls of film. It was the best toy I ever got and I have never looked back. (I got film for X-Mas)  I shot a few rolls of thumbs, fingers and fuzzy pics of squirrels and ducks and finally learned what end to look through and where to "point & shoot".

    I decided that if I was going to have fun with this, I may as well combine my 2 hobbies & learn to take pics of trains..  Blurry pics of trains.....  Seems that the trains moved too fast to "Freeze them".   This is when I learned about being too close to your subject. I then received a hand me down Polaroid camera from my aunt, The old bellows fold out 8" wide Polaroid. (some of you might remember - putting the film under your arm while the picture developed in the wintertime).   It took good pictures, but the film was expensive....   Meanwhile in school, a friend & I were working in the photo lab, learning to develop Black &White film & prints.  So the film and paper were the  only cost to me...

    Time to bug Santa Mom again   Next Christmas, I  got nothing...... but Money!  Money that I took to a local camera store and bought a Cosmorex SE (A darn Good Russian 35mm Camera).  I started taking "Real" train pics, real infrared pics, and better color pics.  I was absolutely hooked!!!  I became the "Family Photographer", to this day, there are few pics of me,  but plenty of everyone else.   I learned the finer points of Depth of Field, film speed and lighting. I actually owned a separate hand-held light meter and I knew how to use it.

    I would buy 35mm film, take pics and developed them in school. I got an A in the course too! I also learned that the more film you used, the more money it cost to develop the prints.  Since  we paid for our own paper,  I started making contact sheets to save a bit of money (my allowance).  After I graduated, I ended up working for a photofinisher.  When you took your film to a shop to have it developed, they sent it to the photofinisher. I developed & printed Black & White pics. It took about 4 hours for the entire process for 20 rolls of film.

 

 

 

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