I agree… I remember my first camera (all my own!) With an agonizingly low allowance and long list of chores for extra film and development money… that was a fixed focus and I think 2 1/4" film.
It was only 58 years ago.
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We only lost one film. Spectacular pictures by my husband of a wildfire beyond Camps Bay. Gone.
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Digital photography was a depressing development for my father who had spent a lifetime as a photographic chemist.
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This whole thread is a striking reminder for me of what amazing changes have happened within my lifetime and even since I left university back in the 20th century. Makes me happy I’ve been able to take advantage of it, but also sad it wasn’t available in my younger years.
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Let’s put it this way: I see people complain in some threads that they have “only” a mobile phone camera and therefore cannot get the quality they want. But a few days ago, I was photographing some herbarium specimens to upload. At first I was using my “regular” camera, but the images came out grainy, so I switched to my mobile phone camera. The images are crisp. The “regular” camera is maybe 10 years old or slightly less, whereas the mobile phone camera is more like 4 years old.
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That’s the direction I was heading. Bam! Gone.
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We used to have a Kodak laboratory in Cape Town.
My father was an engineer, who liked to develop his own films. The family sternly shut OUT of that (dark) room … till he was done.
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And I grew up in the home town for Kodak where every one of my relatives worked there at some point in their lives, back when photographic film was all there was for pics and video.
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This happened to me, except with video. In 1986, I was doing a 4-month excursion into the Amazon and was given a Sony 8mm Handycam CCD-M8E (The very first model) to record the trip on. The camera had a weatherproof case with it. I had never had such equipment before and no one to teach me how to use it. I shot hours of footage on that trip. I shipped the tapes back to the US (which took 3 to 5 months in those days) and got back a letter almost a year later telling me that there was no sound on any of the video. Turns out that they had forgotten to include a mic adaptor in the kit, which connected the camera mic to the external mic on the weatherproof housing. There were no weeping emojis in those days, but this is how I felt. 
I upload a short clip from that trip for you to see if you want to. You will see a tree that is yellow. What I was explaining in the video was that, even though it never gets cold in the Amazon, some tree experience a Fall of their leaves just like in winter. They drop all their leaves and then grow them back. It is really cool to see, especially when we get a windstorm, which will cause them to all shoot up into the sky and then rain down. There is very little wind in the Amazon, except right before a storm, there will be a sudden blast of wind (maybe 40 to 50 mph), that last for around 30 seconds
1986 Sony CCD-M8E Handycam Video of a Caiman and a Tree in the Amazon Rainforest
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Maybe my kids remember VHS movies. We thought they were great – compared to analog TV movies. Then came streaming…
Another factor for the quality disparity was the nature shows on TV. Anyone else remember the Disney Nature docs? Or ‘Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom’? We were absolutely glued to the screen on those. Then along came Jacques Couseau, and the world changed forever its view of the mysterious oceans.
Now, of course, when we watch a BBC nature flick, we expect to see things in super-detailed 4K colour. And shots that never even existed before these shows have really elevated the expectations level of the whole nature film scene.
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Oh absolutely! I now shoot nature video on many thousands of dollars worth of equipment, and my stuff is amazing, but that footage you see on show like Discovery, National Geographic, and BBC Nature; that is shot on hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of equipment. A budget camera for them would be $50,000 USD. Some of their lens may run $100,000 USD. It is insane the level of equipment it takes to get the shots they do.
However, the common person does not understand this, and they expect their smartphone to do the same thing. 
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And for those of us who couldn’t afford a camera of their own there were disposable (one-time use) cameras. I remember taking a trip to France and packing several of those in my suitcase so that I would have something available to take photos. Didn’t have to worry about ruining the film by accidentally exposing it, though they did take up more space and often made a clanking noise banging into each other in my bag.
I do have a few observations posted to iNaturalist that were taken with disposable cameras, which I’m glad for.
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Oh man, a fixed 35mm lens with 24 shots where you couldn’t change settings…and they ate batteries like crazy. You had to pay per roll of film, you had to pay to develop it, and you couldn’t really tell how it turned out until you got it back.
We’re moving soon, I may try to go through my childhood photos and see if any of them are scannable and worth putting in. But we couldn’t just take a ton of photos then. You only had so much film after all and every roll was an hours wages as a high school kid
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I cant imagine how much harder focus stacking was in the days of film…
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In 1967 dollars, that would be around $5,300. I wonder what kind of gear that would have bought back then?
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Even in digital photography the pace of change was incredible. I remember in the early 1990s, learning Photoshop as part of my work as a graphic designer.
What was that like? It had exactly ONE undo, no layers or text. There was a temporary layer of a selection, but not that changeable. Stuff like drop shadows had to be done with something they called Channel Ops, and it took forever.
Most of the filters you learned to apply first in a highly cropped section of your image to see if you had the settings right. Otherwise, if you applied a filter to the whole image you would have to wait a couple minutes for the computer to render it and readjust and try again if it was wrong.
Adjustment layers? Hah!
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Absolutely (including markup and pasteup 
). Sure, it would have been wonderful to have all the benefits of digital available when I was starting out, but you know, for the most part I don’t regret all those “manual” years. They gave me an instinctive feel for light, the subject and, above all, how they interact, that I don’t believe I would or could ever have learnt in today’s digital world.
Then there was the wonderful and nerve-wracking physicality of film… I almost always shot in black and white in those days and would wind my own film, feeling around with my hands in a black bag, terrified that I might let light in, or scratch the film as I wound it.
I also had my own sort of darkroom in a glorified cupboard under the stairs. Permanently hot, sweaty and anoxic even on the coldest winter day. But it was my magic place and I loved it. It was also the only period of my life when I wore nail varnish. I spent so much time with hands in developer and fixer that my nails turned a dubious shade of yellow that was difficult to explain. No way would I have worn rubber gloves. Much too sensual the feel of the liquid, the texture of the paper and the never-ending enchantment of seeing the image emerge under my touch, just a little darker where I’d stroked with my warmish fingers. Those were the days!! But I digress…
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Some useful changes;
GPS - knowing where you took a photo
Zoom Lenses
Auto focus
Eye detection
built in flash (not always needed but better than the external cubes)
smartphone - ensures you actually have a camera with you at all times
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My home darkroom was in the basement laundry room. Cardboard over the window. Yeah, the change bag. Clickety clack of the film spools. Developer, fixer – eau de shutterbug. Good ol’ Tri-X. And litho film – made my own PC boards back in my geeky teen days.
I admit that it still amuses me to still see the dodging tool as an icon in Photoshop. What do young folks make of that?
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I dunno, but I often wonder what they make of these:
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