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Comment by throwaway13337 | Hacker News Reader

I think we're in the 'early digital camera' phase of AI art gen.

The real photographers knew they were shit photos. They were grainy, bad lenses, and ugly. A lot of people still liked them because they were much more convenient for a lot of uses than the film ones.

Well, I guess there's still a lot of film people. But film had a ceiling. Digital cameras kept getting better.

The adaptive film photographers eventually adopted the tool. A lot of their skills transferred well to the new medium. Most waited until the cameras got good enough, though.

I'm not sure when that'll be with AI art gen. Seeing scenes broken up into layers in the latest gpt image generation, though, made me think we might be near.

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Incidentally, the "early digital camera" aesthetic has been back in style for a couple of years now.

It’s the same cultural response as the analog movement. The collective sense that everything Covid on stole our future, and AI is only making it worse.

No, it hasn't. You're confusing digital cameras with Polaroids.

No, I’m not. Old digital point-and-shoots, and the harsh direct flash aesthetic, have been very popular. Some specific camera models that some random popular TikToker happened to recommend have been selling at quite a mark-up.

Two-ish decades is the standard length of a trend cycle. 00s is now retro in a cool way. Gen Z/Alpha, who have grown with phone cameras, want a different look, and having a real flash is particularly attractive because it allows taking reasonable photos in night clubs etc. Just like we did back in the day. (browsing old Facebook photos)

How do you quantify that as a trend? Prices change all the time. How many people actually bought it?

The stuff about "generations" and trend cycles is nonsense.

Ok, think what you want. I have zero interest in arguing about stuff like trying to quantify qualitative things.

Polaroids are much bigger but I've also seen a resurgence in crappy early digital cameras in young adult spaces. There's been a slow rise in all things Y2K in some spaces and getting a crummy digital cam from a thrift store or ebay is a sick find.

Quantify this. What constitutes a resurgence, or a slow rise?

No one is compiling sales charts on second hand cameras at thrift stores. But I can tell you from personal experience going to parties that more people are taking photos with old digi cams or modern old style digi cams like the kodak charmera than phones.

When gen z does use phones they end up running the images through apps like 1998 cam to make it look like digicam photos or using effects to turn video in to VHS camcorder style video.

Your personal experience means nothing.

Early digital cameras had larger pixel sizes and different spectral characteristics. They often have deeper blues and such. They have some own charms. Modern CMOS images tends to be less saturated. It's definitely not as big as Instax, though, which I suspect has been effectively kept alive by maid cafe culture[1].

1: They charge $10-20 per a quick autographed shot for a parasocial irreplaceable memory with an absolutely random female cafe employee, which justifies quite a significant range of film costs. Crazy, but it means they industrially consume medium format reversal films! I'm not complaining for that.

I saw the coolest bunch of kids in giant pants on the subway taking photos and looking at them on what was essentially my old Olympus and was transport back 25 years.

Did digital take over because of quality or convenience?

A 35 mm film camera is still much better quality than my smartphone's digital camera, especially more than a few meters away or in lower light conditions. But my smartphone is the camera I actually have with me, I don't have to buy film or wait for it to be developed, so that's what I use.

Also remember the days of the first color printers.

People were so proud to show off their colors that every single word was in a different color.

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