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I like darktable but I have a hard try understanding why it (and lightroom) tries so hard to fit into the "darkroom photo studio" metaphor. For most of the peop

I like darktable but I have a hard try understanding why it (and lightroom) tries so hard to fit into the "darkroom photo studio" metaphor. For most of the people using digital cameras today, film photography was already dying or dead when they were born.

wpietri 5y ago
I totally agree with your main point. We see other comments here where the core metaphor just doesn't resonate for them. But is the latter part true? I got my first digital camera in 1998 and I was a pretty early adopter. It honestly was not much of a camera; it had an entire 1 megapixel of resolution: https://www.dpreview.com/products/olympus/compacts/oly_d400z https://www.dpreview.com/products/olympus/compacts/oly_d400z If we're looking to fix a date when film started dying, I don't think we could put it before the year film sales peaked, which was 1999: https://phys.org/news/2011-05-longer.html https://phys.org/news/2011-05-longer.html
- jcelerier 5y ago
  People who start a photography curriculum in 2021 were born in 2002 / 2003. I'd say early adopters were users of 1992-1994 Kodak digital cameras - by 2002, both Nikon and Canon already had 6.something megapixels reflex if I'm not mistaken.
  - wpietri 5y ago
    Sorry, I'm still not following. If 2002 is your marker for the beginning of the death of film, and if people born then are starting a photography curriculum in 2021, how could they be "most of the people using digital cameras today"?
    - jcelerier 5y ago
      I thought that the median age in the world was around 20 but it's actually ~30. Though I doubt a lot of 30 years old today ever had exposure (heh) to a traditional film workflow.
      - wpietri 5y ago
        Ah, got it. We might also want to look specifically at the market for digital cameras. The median age in US and Europe is more like 40; Japan is 48. And the median age of people using digital cameras is surely higher than the population median.
- mjevans 5y ago
  2007, gut feeling based on "iPhone introduced" and roughly when I last bought a camera (which was digital) rather than a phone (which had a digital camera I used for 'all' my photos). I more strongly suspect the number depends on the space and when "professional workhorses" get replaced. Today the low-end prosumer market has been subsumed by mobile phones, and DSLRs and such more frequently use bits than film. I do agree that the low-end of the market was starting to phase out in the mid 90s, but they still sold disposables for super cheep. The digital cameras main application was a niche where someone wanted pictures for their computer or websites but didn't have a better chain for loading in analog film. Early 2000s might be the start of transition, when equipment became good enough that digital had benefits over film. Workhorse equipment replacement may have taken another 5-10 years?

wpietri 5y ago

I totally agree with your main point. We see other comments here where the core metaphor just doesn't resonate for them. But is the latter part true? I got my first digital camera in 1998 and I was a pretty early adopter. It honestly was not much of a camera; it had an entire 1 megapixel of resolution: https://www.dpreview.com/products/olympus/compacts/oly_d400z https://www.dpreview.com/products/olympus/compacts/oly_d400z If we're looking to fix a date when film started dying, I don't think we could put it before the year film sales peaked, which was 1999: https://phys.org/news/2011-05-longer.html https://phys.org/news/2011-05-longer.html

jcelerier 5y ago
People who start a photography curriculum in 2021 were born in 2002 / 2003. I'd say early adopters were users of 1992-1994 Kodak digital cameras - by 2002, both Nikon and Canon already had 6.something megapixels reflex if I'm not mistaken.
- wpietri 5y ago
  Sorry, I'm still not following. If 2002 is your marker for the beginning of the death of film, and if people born then are starting a photography curriculum in 2021, how could they be "most of the people using digital cameras today"?
  - jcelerier 5y ago
    I thought that the median age in the world was around 20 but it's actually ~30. Though I doubt a lot of 30 years old today ever had exposure (heh) to a traditional film workflow.
    - wpietri 5y ago
      Ah, got it. We might also want to look specifically at the market for digital cameras. The median age in US and Europe is more like 40; Japan is 48. And the median age of people using digital cameras is surely higher than the population median.
mjevans 5y ago
2007, gut feeling based on "iPhone introduced" and roughly when I last bought a camera (which was digital) rather than a phone (which had a digital camera I used for 'all' my photos). I more strongly suspect the number depends on the space and when "professional workhorses" get replaced. Today the low-end prosumer market has been subsumed by mobile phones, and DSLRs and such more frequently use bits than film. I do agree that the low-end of the market was starting to phase out in the mid 90s, but they still sold disposables for super cheep. The digital cameras main application was a niche where someone wanted pictures for their computer or websites but didn't have a better chain for loading in analog film. Early 2000s might be the start of transition, when equipment became good enough that digital had benefits over film. Workhorse equipment replacement may have taken another 5-10 years?