I have digitized family photos from a tintype in 1880 or so all the way to Polaroids from the 1960's and it is clear to me that peak consumer-photography was late-stage B&W photography.
I shouldn't have mentioned the tintype above (I just wanted to indicate the temporal range here) because I would exclude professional "portrait" photos. And my relatives were blue-collar farmers and factory workers in the Midwaste, so their "gear" was modest for the times.
The oldest "home photos" look poor and likely came from a Brownie or similar. But then a decade or so on and the photos take on a whole new level of clarity and sharpness. That level of quality persists until the arrival of color, Polaroids....
It seems we traded color for quality sometime mid-Century.
> It seems we traded color for quality sometime mid-Century.
Absolutely. My parents have crisp B&W snapshots from their baby years in the early 60ies. They even have old B&W party snapshots from my grandparents in the 50ies, all of which look still great. Then around 1965, the snapshots become colored (not Polaroids), and the quality is... not as good. I wonder of the photographs just aged badly, or if they already looked like that 60 years ago. I also suspect that color film was much more expensive back then than B&W film, and the average consumer just bought the cheapest color films they could get.
With old color prints (or slides, non-Kodachrome in particular) there's a lot of fading relative to B&W of the equivalent era.
There was definitely a period, when there were really crappy cameras (e.g. Instamatics) for the mass market which were far crappier than any random smartphone these days. And there were really good, often (West) German-made, cameras. I'd have to look up exactly when the good Japanese cameras came along.
I'd say they started getting into their swing in the 1950s, if my father's Yashica-A twin-lens reflex is any indication. That camera produced absolutely gorgeous shots in square format on 120 roll film.
The square format TLRs were an interesting format, My high school had an ancient one and I think I shot a roll of film once for fun and giggles. Never owned one. As I recall, Rolleiflex were the kings in that category.
Rollies are ok (I have one :) but for TLRs, the thing to have is the Mamiya 330C. Great viewfinder, optional prism, and interchangeable lenses. I have one and have used it quite a lot. Lovely photos, but heavy camera. OTOH, completely indestructable. You could pound nails with the thing.
I own a Yashica, and bought a 330C to supplement it, but decided the weight was just unmanageable. Very cool camera, and if I ever worked in a studio I'm sure I would have appreciated it, but too much for me in the field.
I seem to recall that ergonomically it was a bit iffy too, but that may have just been the fact that I was more familiar with the Yashica.
Crappy cameras; smaller format films (e.g. Kodak Disc); weird hues from color photos taken in fluorescent and other non-natural light; inconsistent dyes among manufacturers (compare Fuji film to Kodachrome); an inherently lower resolution in color film. These all combine to make color photos of that era tend to look worse than b/w.
I'd also speculate that because color film on average is less sensitive to light than b/w film, it led to more blurry photos at the time, especially when taken by the many amateur photographers with their cheap cameras.
Yeah, there was a period when color photography was enabled for the plebes with really crappy cameras and film formats--I had even forgotten about the Kodak Disc. So a lot of stuff that survives from that general era in shoeboxes looks almost uniquely horrible. There were Brownies and the like before but they were still a lot less widespread.
Even a decade later, I as a high school student really into photography wasn't getting a Nikon. Started with my dad's Pony and then Retina and then used a Konica system through university and beyond until it was stolen in a break-in.
I understand they were either the first, or at least very early, to take standard cinema film (35mm) and run with it. Were the press some of the early adopters? (Tired of lugging their monstrous Graflex cameras around.)
No, that was Leitz (Leica). Nikon didn’t start making cameras at all until 1948. Their first cameras were rangefinders, sort of a cross between a Contax and a Leica. They were very good (some of my very favorite cameras), but not super popular.
Their first SLR, the Nikon F, came out in 1959 and quickly became a sensation with professionals. They’re built like tanks, and still very usable.
Don't forget Kodachrome, especially Kodachrome 25.
But, yes, even Leicas aside, Kodak Retinas among others where pretty darn good. I got my dad's Retina IIIc which I used until it just wore out eventually. And both the Nikon and Canon SLRs in particular were great once they came on the scene though some of the rangefinders from Olympus, Pentax, Canon, etc. weren't half-bad either.
APS had a lot of cool features mixed with smaller frame sizes and higher prices right when digital was taking off. I feel like they could almost bring it back - the ability to roll a half shot film back up and swap it is neat but there is no way it's going to happen and is arguably useful.
I have digitized family photos from a tintype in 1880 or so all the way to Polaroids from the 1960's and it is clear to me that peak consumer-photography was late-stage B&W photography.
I shouldn't have mentioned the tintype above (I just wanted to indicate the temporal range here) because I would exclude professional "portrait" photos. And my relatives were blue-collar farmers and factory workers in the Midwaste, so their "gear" was modest for the times.
The oldest "home photos" look poor and likely came from a Brownie or similar. But then a decade or so on and the photos take on a whole new level of clarity and sharpness. That level of quality persists until the arrival of color, Polaroids....
It seems we traded color for quality sometime mid-Century.