When I come upon old pictures of historic moments, like Buzz Aldrin’s space selfie, they look so clear and high quality. But I can’t say the same about things I come across from like the late 90s and 2000s.
Honestly, that selfie, if I hadn’t known from the caption/history, I would have assumed it was more recent or from a movie lol.
In: 7
Because they were taken on film instead of digitally. It took years for digital photography to catch up to the picture quality of high end film
Firstly whenever you see historic moments they know it is a historic moment long before they take the shot. Buzz Aldrin was not sent to the Moon with a $10 camera that had been abused for years. NASA knew this was a very historic moment and therefore went to the best of the best camera manufacturers, the Swedish Hasselblad, and asked them to make a custom version of their best camera. That selfie alone cost more then a family home just in camera equipment. And even the historic moments that were not so well planned ahead of time there were usually some news photographer who could show up on short notice with professional gear and set everything up right with the correct lighting and framing for the shot. Some of these moments have even gotten historic because of the photos, without a good photo it is less likely for a moment to become historic.
However in the 90s we got cheap consumer cameras that everyone could use. Small compact cameras that you could carry around in your pocket and just point and shoot. They had horrible lenses, the automatic settings were never quite right, the film was cheap and nobody knew how to frame or light a proper photo. There were still professionals out there with the right gear and training but you got a lot of mediocre to bad photos as the price of photos dropped. However a lot of events which would not have been captured on film normally have become immortal due to these cheap cameras.
The quality of consumer cameras did improve over time, with the exception of the digital camera transition which had much worse image quality but greater convenience. But it is not until now that regular consumer cameras that you wear around in your pocket takes images that can compare to what a professional photographer with all the gear could take back in the 60s.
The 90s is when we started moving from photographic film to digital photography. Photographic film used a gel with photoreactive chemicals which means the image is recorded down to the molecular level.
Digital sensors, by contrast, are limited by the number of light sensors in the camera. Light sensors can be made very small but not as small as a silver hallide crystal. The end result is that late stage photographic film had much better resolution than the digital photos of the 90s.
The cameras NASA sent to space cost as much as a car. The lenses were very expensive and they used film with very low grain that was also very expensive.
When movies are made they also use incredibly expensive cameras and lenses that are often rented due to the incredibly high cost.
In the late 90s and 2000s photography had become less exotic. Large companies like Kodak started producing decent quality film for very low cost and processing costs dropped because it was mostly automated.
Also in the 90s plastic became much easier to work with and disposable plastic cameras became the norm. The lens was made of plastic and didn’t focus or adjust at all it produced less clear images but they were relatively cheap.
It’s a matter of money. They have had the ability to get high quality film for ages now, but it’s really expensive. What’s funny is if you look at movies like Ben Hur made in the 50’s, it was recorded in super high definition. The issue was we didn’t have the technology to show it in that definition. So the same thing works in the form of pictures. They had the ability to make great quality pictures back then and that’s how we get some of those classic pictures. Then in the 90’s and 00’s we saw the prices fall on cameras and film. They came out with more budget oriented stuff which made it affordable as well as much smaller, but at the sacrifice of quality. It was also visible with digital cameras. I remember when they came out a nice digital camera would be like 1-2 megapixels, which didn’t look great at all. As time went on and technology advanced we now have phones that have a 48 mega camera shooting amazing quality.
Basically we’ve always been able to shoot “quality photos” but it’s been a matter of price and size. By increasing technology we’ve made it possible to make high quality cameras much smaller and more affordable without having to sacrifice quality like they did in the 90’s and 00’s.
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