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When did ordinary people become able to afford taking large numbers of photographs within a short period of time?
I've previously read that George Eastman's invention of the Kodak camera in 1888 allowed this to occur, but I'm wondering if this is correct or if there was another event which facilitated this.
Kodak introduced the Brownie in 1900, which wasn't much more than a cardboard box with a lens and roll of film inside that sold for $1. They were a little more user friendly than most cameras at the time which used photographic plates made of glass instead of film.
When did ordinary people become able to afford taking large numbers of photographs
The Point & Shoot digitals as they have almost $0 in processing cost.
Quote:
I've previously read that George Eastman's invention of the Kodak camera in 1888...
The Kodak's were the first cameras ordinary people c/would afford to buy but most had to save up for the novelty.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Kodak
“You press the button, we do the rest.”
With this slogan George Eastman promoted during the early 1890's ...
It was loaded with a film for 100 exposures and cost $ 25.
The film and processing costs were cumbersome and not inexpensive... ~$10 was a LOT in 1900.
Like with Gilette and his razors... the money was in the blades (or film)
The early boxy Brownie cameras were popular but you had to either process the film yourself (probably not "ordinary" people) or had to have the film processed commercially. We had a couple "bellows" cameras that folded up into a case and then opened like an accordion. They had some tech advances over the various brownie models but they coexisted for decades. Easy to load film cartridges came out sometime in the 1960s or thereabouts which made loading film less risky. This was mostly the vacation snapshot type of photography. Polaroid made a stab at capturing part of the snapshot market with instant developing. The big shift to digital made everyone a photographer. You can find some of those old Brownie cameras in antique stores or yard sales so there must have been tons of them sold.
Prior to digital, the only time I ever felt I could shoot with complete abandon and no regard to cost was in the late 1960s, when I had a half-frame Agfa Paramat and knew how to bulk load and develop Plus-X and only print the shots I liked. It was a true "pocket camera" unlike boxy Brownies and gave much better results than the Instamatics at a lower cost.
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