Digital Photos Rock, Film Now Extinct

With the explosion of digital photography and most recently phone cameras I got to wondering about how many photos are taken today versus back when film was the only photo format.  Now film has gone the way of the dinosaurs and earlier this year the once mighty Kodak filed for bankruptcy.

I found an article by Jonathan Good “How Many Photos Have Ever Been Taken?”, Sept 15, 2011 http://ow.ly/bcqE2 with some answers to my questions.  Historically photos were first produced in the mid 1800’s.  These were made by commercial photographers, and featured topics such asd documentation of the Civil War and the American west, and portraits.  The first consumer consumer camera was the Kodak Brownie, introduced in 1901.

Most photos were of families, people, and babies.  Since film and processing were costly, people wanted to make “every shot count”, which discouraged taking random or spontaneous photos.  Digital photography changed all that!

Film photography peaked around the year 2000, when it was estimated that the world shot 85B photos.  Cheap disposable cameras made consumer photo taking easy and accessible.  But as the graphic above illustrates, shortly after 2000 film (or analog) photography abruptly disappeared.

First there were digital cameras, which simultaneously became more and more technically sophisticated and cheaper.  Then mobile phones started to appear with built in cameras, followed by smart phones that could instantaneously transmit photos via email and over the internet,

It’s estimated we took 85B photos in 2000, Today that number is 375B.  Almost 4.5 times larger than when film was being used!

Another staggering fact – users will post an estimated 70B photos on Facebook, which is 20% of all photos taken in the world!

Facebook already has 140B photos on its pages, which dwarfs Instagram and Flickr.  Now that Facebook owns Instagram it will be interesting to see how online photo sharing continues to grow.