This year’s Nobel Prize in Physics goes to the guys who developed the CCD sensor that enabled the first tubeless video cameras and consumer-priced digital still cameras. Please add comments with examples of how either cheap video cameras or digital still cameras have changed someone’s life. I will lead off…
A friend of mine is a working mother. Her toddler’s nanny, a Mexican woman in her late 30s, carries a small digital camera with her all day every day. When Mom gets home she can review the photos and see the fun that her kid was having all day. Doing this in the film era would have required a trip to the one-hour lab every evening and a cost of $20 and therefore would never have happened.
While my two boys were in first and third grade their grandmother was dying on the opposite side of the country. Their mother commuted for three months, seeing her mother as much as possible. I took hundreds and hundreds of photos and they were up on the web and in email every day, which made both mom and grandmother feel connected to two growing boys at a time when they really needed the distraction.
There are business context examples, but that’s the one that matters to me. Mailing, or even FedExing, printed photos never would have happened. Or it would have happened twice.
Here’s an example of how it changed someone’s life a bit negatively:
I know of a local merchant who spent nearly $50,000 on a one-hour photo processing machine that was designed for 35mm film just a few years ago.
After setting up the machine and sending his employees to France (seriously) to learn all about the equipment, it now sits quietly, used maybe two or three times a week by little old ladies who still use their Instamatics.
Everybody has a camera with them all the time. A nephew once exonerated himself from accusations of causing trouble at school when video captured on his cell phone proved otherwise. The Rodney King episode is the same thing on a more dramatic scale.
“Out in public” means “able to be recorded” now. Web sites like People of Walmart are just one example.
Cartoon: The cops are reading the perp his rights while a crowd of bystanders watch, phones open. “You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say from this point forward will appear on YouTube within half an hour…”
Let’s not forget about webcams. I left China and come to Canada about 9 years ago, but my parents are still back there. At that time long distance call costs about 30 cents per minute which is very expensive for a student. Luckily I switched to using Netmeeting and a webcam to talk to my family. We can see each other even though we are thousands of miles apart. It felt like magic at that time. If a picture worths 1,000 words, video worths 10,000. Not to mention it is free, too.
My wife was recently hospitalized, having a rash all over body. Each doctor that examined her was baffled and could not give a diagnosis. Very worrying, but… one “infectious disease” specialist took pictures with her iPhone and soon these images were circulating among the Boston medical community. A prominent dermatologist saw them, invited my wife to visit, and correctly diagnosed the problem. She’s now on suitable meds and will soon be completely recovered.
Just don’t forget film cameras still do have their place, artistically. The anxiety and rush with film just cannot be replaced.