It certainly caused a pause in my thoughts as I listened to the news that Kodacrome would be discontinued. I had heard it was pending, but it was still a bit of a shock.
I grew up in the Photo business. My father was a Pro from the late 1930's until he finally closed his studio in the late 90's (yes, over 50 years). He certainly saw a lot of changes in those years.
Photography did a lot for paying for my college, between processing film and taking photo-shoot jobs.
In the early years, there was processing people's shots from Brownie's, taking Portraits, School Groups, Copying “old†photo’s, Weddings, etc. As the years past, Schools no longer wanted school groups, rather they wanted individual portraits. Portrait photography switched to color. Weddings switched to Movies, then Video. Lastly photography stared going strictly digital. Towards the end of the 80’s and early 90’s about the only thing my father was still doing was copying old photographs. Even that was disappearing as people added scanners to their computers.
Just a few weeks after he closed the studio down, I bought my first digital camera. I called him and told him that it was a good thing he had, as I had just helped put “old†photography out of business, by starting the switch to Digital.
Today the only film cameras I have is the collection of “old†cameras I added to after I inherited the collection from my father, Brownies, Autographic, Speed Graphics, an original Kodak Instamatic, etc.
TTFN
Ralph
