Originally posted by DSims This is an interesting perspective I didn’t expect, and I’ll continue to think about it more.
But I do believe that even within our personal collections, the explosion in the number of digital images (whether from a higher quality camera or not) lowers our perceived value of them. Think about how we consider historical family photos one of the first possessions we’d save in the event of a fire. The number of good family photographs from the film era are relatively few, while there’s a proliferation of quality personal digital photos.
This makes it harder for us to justify the additional time and cost of better photographic gear - because we’ll get “good enough” images from our cell phones anyway. Obviously Forum members think otherwise, but our ranks are slowly shrinking.
Per image, you are almost certainly right. The high cost of film and processing certainly did put a very high threshold on image value. In film days, one only hit the shutter button for special occasions and those shots were precious. And the small number of images made each one valuable. In contrast, the cost of a click on digital camera is nearly zero and now people have thousands of images.
However, it's not the high or low value of each image that justifies buying good equipment, it's the aggregate value of all the images that might be created with that camera. That total value is still pretty high -- who would be willing to lose all the images taken over some multi-year period? And, especially for young parents, what is the value of being able to take decent pictures of that first baby?
As for the "good enough" syndrome, that's always been true. Back in the day, most film cameras were fixed-lens point-and-shoots. The negatives from pocket 110 and Disc cameras were tiny, the prints were small, but they were good enough. No doubt, many people still feel that way especially because smartphones can do a pretty decent job.
However, in the past, film images were pretty much only seen by a select few -- the photographer, household members, visiting family, and maybe a few close friends. The pictures didn't need to be good because they were only seen by a friendly and casual audience.
Social media changes that. It's no longer a friendly select few who see the pictures. It's also the rich neighbors, competitive coworkers, all one's school chums, bosses, ex-girlfriends, etc. For most people, it's hard to say "no" to an invite without looking bad. I'd wager that more than a few people feel anxiety now about the quality of their images because they are online and visible to "the world."
And if others are posting great pictures, I'm sure some huge feel pressure to up the ante -- that's why smartphone makers compete on camera performance. But if everyone has a smartphone (and everyone does), then the only way to compete in the social media photo-race might seem to be a much better camera.
Maybe the individual images themselves aren't worth much, but upstaging that obnoxious 3rd cousin is worth a lot.