4 ms·

PhotoCD seemed like a pretty half-assed effort and there wasn't really a market for it. There were PhotoCD players but no one really wanted to view their images

by js2 4y ago

PhotoCD seemed like a pretty half-assed effort and there wasn't really a market for it. There were PhotoCD players but no one really wanted to view their images on a TV. So great, you've digitized your photo, now what? People just weren't sharing their images digitally yet. But anyway, my dad tried to sell them in his shop, and I transferred 100 of my favorite images at the time to PhotoCD in 1993. Here's a few: https://i.ibb.co/bPPgvBN/Photo-37-of-100.jpg https://i.ibb.co/bPPgvBN/Photo-37-of-100.jpg https://i.ibb.co/G5r08cY/Photo-50-of-100.jpg https://i.ibb.co/G5r08cY/Photo-50-of-100.jpg https://i.ibb.co/X2nPJgT/Photo-74-of-100.jpg https://i.ibb.co/X2nPJgT/Photo-74-of-100.jpg https://i.ibb.co/n1pTKC8/Photo-92-of-100.jpg https://i.ibb.co/n1pTKC8/Photo-92-of-100.jpg Probably shot on Kodak Gold 100 color negative with a Nikon FE2. Gosh I suddenly miss the smell of film.

ghaff 4y ago
I got a few PhotoCDs made when I first got a CD drive for my computer. PhotoCDs probably came from a place where the TV was a central fixture in many households and it probably seemed like a logical extension to how many people would have slideshows of their holiday slides. I think there was a certain baked-in assumption by Kodak and others that the digitization of photography would still look a lot like how photographs were taken and shared in the film world.
- js2 4y ago
  > How many people would have slideshows of their holiday slides. I have suffered through more than my fair share of those. > I think there was a certain baked-in assumption by Kodak and others that the digitization of photography would still look a lot like how photographs were taken and shared in the film world. I don't have any hard numbers, but at my dad's shop we probably sold and developed 95%+ negatives vs slides. We did so little E6 (much less Kodachrome) that we didn't even bother with it in-house. Most photos were shot on negative and shared as prints, not shot on slide and shared as slide shows. So if PhotoCD was supposed to take the place of a slide projector, it was already a losing proposition. To this day, I have my favorite digital photos printed, as do my family members. There's something more intimate about passing around a photo album than sitting in front of a display. I think PhotoCD was one of those things that was too early since there wasn't demand for sharing digitally yet, and then too late once digital cameras came out and made digitizing film unnecessary.
  - ghaff 4y ago
    Slides were definitely for more serious photographers many of whom mail ordered film and sent it off to Kodak or someone else for processing--though I'm sure it was still a distinct minority of film sold. One of my rituals when taking a vacation where I'd be doing a lot of photography was to place an order with B&H (via phone) for 20 or however many rolls of Ektachrome and Kodachrome. I actually wrote an article for CNET when Kodachrome processing was eventually shut down. https://www.cnet.com/tech/tech-industry/countdown-to-kodachromes-last-development/ https://www.cnet.com/tech/tech-industry/countdown-to-kodachr...
    - TedDoesntTalk 4y ago
      To think of the millions of slides that were never viewed… I inherited several thousand myself and don’t know what to do with them.
      - betamaxthetape 4y ago
        You might want to contact SalmonSnail [1]. They've been digitizing a massive amount of lost / forgotten 35mm slides, and uploading them to their Flickr account [2]. [1] https://www.timewormarchive.com/contact https://www.timewormarchive.com/contact [2] https://www.flickr.com/photos/salmonsnail/albums https://www.flickr.com/photos/salmonsnail/albums
markpeppers 4y ago
Those are fantastic photos. Link them if you have the rest posted somewhere, I’d love to see!
projektfu 4y ago
Photo CD made a lot of sense for small-time pre-press desktop publishing. The images were well scanned at high resolution at a time when desktop scanners were finicky SCSI devices that took a long time for a mediocre scan. If you were not developing your film yourself, you could do worse than to just have the lab scan the negatives for you, and indeed this is how I use my film camera for the most part, enlarging only the images I like. At the time, usable digital cameras looked like the Kodak F3 back plus shoulder-mounted hard drive in this article: https://www.businessinsider.com/digital-photography-revolution-2015-4 https://www.businessinsider.com/digital-photography-revoluti...
IIAOPSW 4y ago
There's something surreal about how I was just casually perusing the internet today and came across a random sampling of the earliest photos to exist in the digital medium, and see that the scenes captured within them are just barely contemporaneous with my own existence.

by js2 4y ago

ghaff 4y ago

I got a few PhotoCDs made when I first got a CD drive for my computer. PhotoCDs probably came from a place where the TV was a central fixture in many households and it probably seemed like a logical extension to how many people would have slideshows of their holiday slides. I think there was a certain baked-in assumption by Kodak and others that the digitization of photography would still look a lot like how photographs were taken and shared in the film world.

js2 4y ago
> How many people would have slideshows of their holiday slides. I have suffered through more than my fair share of those. > I think there was a certain baked-in assumption by Kodak and others that the digitization of photography would still look a lot like how photographs were taken and shared in the film world. I don't have any hard numbers, but at my dad's shop we probably sold and developed 95%+ negatives vs slides. We did so little E6 (much less Kodachrome) that we didn't even bother with it in-house. Most photos were shot on negative and shared as prints, not shot on slide and shared as slide shows. So if PhotoCD was supposed to take the place of a slide projector, it was already a losing proposition. To this day, I have my favorite digital photos printed, as do my family members. There's something more intimate about passing around a photo album than sitting in front of a display. I think PhotoCD was one of those things that was too early since there wasn't demand for sharing digitally yet, and then too late once digital cameras came out and made digitizing film unnecessary.
- ghaff 4y ago
  Slides were definitely for more serious photographers many of whom mail ordered film and sent it off to Kodak or someone else for processing--though I'm sure it was still a distinct minority of film sold. One of my rituals when taking a vacation where I'd be doing a lot of photography was to place an order with B&H (via phone) for 20 or however many rolls of Ektachrome and Kodachrome. I actually wrote an article for CNET when Kodachrome processing was eventually shut down. https://www.cnet.com/tech/tech-industry/countdown-to-kodachromes-last-development/ https://www.cnet.com/tech/tech-industry/countdown-to-kodachr...
  - TedDoesntTalk 4y ago
    To think of the millions of slides that were never viewed… I inherited several thousand myself and don’t know what to do with them.
    - betamaxthetape 4y ago
      You might want to contact SalmonSnail [1]. They've been digitizing a massive amount of lost / forgotten 35mm slides, and uploading them to their Flickr account [2]. [1] https://www.timewormarchive.com/contact https://www.timewormarchive.com/contact [2] https://www.flickr.com/photos/salmonsnail/albums https://www.flickr.com/photos/salmonsnail/albums

markpeppers 4y ago

Those are fantastic photos. Link them if you have the rest posted somewhere, I’d love to see!

projektfu 4y ago

Photo CD made a lot of sense for small-time pre-press desktop publishing. The images were well scanned at high resolution at a time when desktop scanners were finicky SCSI devices that took a long time for a mediocre scan. If you were not developing your film yourself, you could do worse than to just have the lab scan the negatives for you, and indeed this is how I use my film camera for the most part, enlarging only the images I like. At the time, usable digital cameras looked like the Kodak F3 back plus shoulder-mounted hard drive in this article: https://www.businessinsider.com/digital-photography-revolution-2015-4 https://www.businessinsider.com/digital-photography-revoluti...

IIAOPSW 4y ago

There's something surreal about how I was just casually perusing the internet today and came across a random sampling of the earliest photos to exist in the digital medium, and see that the scenes captured within them are just barely contemporaneous with my own existence.