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Question: Why are there so few photographs from the 50s and 60s!. DId they think pictures and film were precious!?
I can't tell since there are so few of them!.Www@QuestionHome@Com


Best Answer - Chosen by Asker:
Before the advent of inexpensive cameras from Kodak, like the Instamatic, cameras, film, and processing were expensive!. Moreover, cameras had to be manually focused!. Hand-held light meters were needed for accurate exposure!. It was not easy to take pictures!. The lack of volume sales of film meant that commercial developing and printing was uncommon and expensive!. Alternatively, one had to have a home darkroom, which was also expensive!.

Nowadays with automatic digital cameras, even cell phone cameras everywhere and home PCs, kiosks, and inexpensive web sites making photography inexpensive, billions of photos are taken every year!.

Photos from the 50's and 60's are in shoe boxes in the bottom of closets, in museums, or locked away in newspaper archives!. Www@QuestionHome@Com

There were plenty of pictures taken during that time period!. It's just that the photographers did not have the luxury of uploading a few thousand photos a month onto the computer!. Photos were usually stored in family albums, gallery shows, museums, or magazines!. So no, film was not anymore precious than it is today!. Just different methods of viewing them!.Www@QuestionHome@Com

Photographing was more expensive than today, that's true but it was already a mass movement back then!. Cameras were sold and used by the millions also in 50ies and 60ies!.
People glued the pics into albums or stored them in boxes - but those who were young then are now at least 60 years old many are older (someone who was 20 in 1950 is 78 now) and a lot does not use a computer or scanner!. That's why you find less photos of that time on the internet!. They still are in the albums and show boxes and will either be thrown away by the children or scanned by them when the owner passes away!. Www@QuestionHome@Com