I recall buying my first Digital camera around 1996. It was a Kodak digital science camera with a 756 x 504 high-resolution CCD sensor. It was primitive by today’s standards but at the time the camera was revolutionary. It was one of the first digital cameras the general public could afford. It would take 7 photos on its internal memory, it didn’t have a screen so the only way of reviewing the images was by plugging it into a computer. The immediate advantage of these early cameras was the ability to review a digitised picture on your PC without the need for a developing process. Yes, the image quality was poor but it gave an immediacy modern technology demanded. People no longer had to wait.
Kodak Digital Science Camera
Like early photography (daguerreotype process for example) opened up image-making to the masses, digital photography allowed the masses to share images with a much larger audience. Images can be shared immediately all around the world thanks to the growth of the internet and social media. Who would have thought 100 years ago an image can be taken on a mobile phone and that image can be viewed across the world instantly. Everybody is a photographer ………I believe the ability to take pictures in a digitised form and the advent of the modern email had a profound effect on social mobility in the late ’90s.