9th January 2026

Fifty-five odd years ago I first started out my career as a professional photographer. Some of the kit I first used would be totally unrecognisable to any of today's new photographers, whilst some would take very little getting used to!

But is that a comfort or a worry?

Chief amongst the changes is the almost complete loss of 'wet' film today, both in the professional and the amateur worlds. Show a youngster today a cassette of 35mm film, a roll of 120/220 or a 5x4 double dark slide and 99% would be at a complete loss. Yet I suspect that once film has been introduced to their world - and allowances made for handling and processing etc - a large percentage would quite quickly feel fairly comfortable with the basic mechanical technology; a camera body and a lens. What they would hate though is the inordinate amount of time twixt pressing the shutter button and seeing the final image!

I was struck by this thought over Christmas while looking at a Nikon F and F-36 Electric Motor Drive sitting alongside one of my Nikon Z 9 bodies fitted with the awesome NIKKOR Z 28-135mm f/4 PZ lens.

A fifty year old film camera body with a motor drive fitted is broadly a similar weight and size as a current professional grade digital body, and while today's NIKKOR Z range of lenses are physically larger than their half century old predecessors they are rarely heavier. Yes, old kit was much more cumbersome in comparison to modern tech, but at the time we felt that we were at the bleeding edge of photography, because we luckily weren't able to look into the future. We made the best of what we had available and I thoroughly enjoyed all of it.

I wondered how we coped with only having the capacity to shoot a maximum of 36 exposures before re-loading (save for those of us 'lucky' enough to have 250 exposure bulk backs). I marvelled that I can never really recall complaining when the film ISO (or ASA as it used to be referred to) I had loaded in my camera bodies proved to be too fast or too slow for the current lighting, forcing me to replace half used rolls of film with more suitable ones! Today we merely adjust the ISO on the fly. As I've mentioned elsewhere though, if I had to revert to traditional 'wet' film after being exposed to the current technology I should hate it - with a passion.

And yet broadly speaking the only real, momentous change, has been the move from film to digital.

Today, speaking in my twilight years, I'm astonished; both by how far we've come in half a century and yet by how little photography has fundamentally changed. At its core, photography is still about seeing the image in one's minds eye and then transferring that to some sort of medium, AI excepted!

In a couple of images I've captured my whole working life...

20260109

How Little Has Changed In 55 Years Of Photography