The SHOCKING DEATH of conventional cameras?

25/09/2017

Circa 2008 – The Eiffel tower looked stunning on the eve of Christmas. It’s beautiful bright light was shining radiantly. It was a feast for my eyes. All around me I saw people engrossed in taking photos with their cameras. Some were compact cameras while others were big DSLR cameras. If I were not enchanted by the beauty of the tower, I would have gone mad by the noise of the shutters of the camera.

9 years later, I got a chance to revisit the Eiffel tower. I found myself standing exactly where I stood the last time and it was a great sense of nostalgia. The tower looked even more magnificent than last time. There was also a larger crowd present than last time. But a difference I noticed was that all almost all the people who were taking pictures were using their phones. It was very difficult to find someone who was holding a camera. I was surprised…where are the cameras gone?

To a majority of people who just take photograph casually (not a real hobby), a phone does a great job. It is also much easier to carry and has loads of picture editing apps which make your photos look “professional”. To put the icing on the cake, its super easy to upload your pictures to social media in a matter of seconds. It seems like conventional cameras have been relegated to the history books.

There are the minority who still have a lot of passion and have a very strong love for using cameras. But for the majority like me, taking pictures with your conventional camera or learning how to take pictures using a conventional camera is not the most “effective” way of wasting your time. I would rather waste my time watching a YouTube video (That is the harsh truth of society).

To give you some facts, in 2010, 17% of pictures taken were via a phone. The next year (2011), 27% of pictures taken were via a phone. With the rise in technology, there must be an unprecedented amount of people using a phone to take pictures today.

It is astonishing to see this great change. As a person who does not follow much of what is happening in the photography world, this change was slow and unknown to me. When writing this article, reality has struck me like a lightning bolt: The era of using conventional cameras has come to an end.