Cameras

My family did not own any camera when we were young.  So we did not have many childhood pictures.  Most of the pictures we had were taken by other people who had cameras. Cameras were expensive then and my parents probably feel it was not necessary to buy one.

I bought my own camera when I started working in the 1990s. It cost me about $300. The camera I bought required photographic film to capture the image. The photographic film usually came in rolls that can take up to 12, 24 or 36 pictures. We had to finish using the whole roll of film before we could get the pictures develop by the photo shop or else it would be wasteful.  

Now at the price of $100+, you can get a decent digital camera with video recording function.  We can view the images on the camera's LCD screen once we capture it to see if it turned out well.  We can edit the pictures ourselves, display them on a digital photo frame so that we do not need many photo frames to display many different pictures. We can save the pictures in a SD  card, flash drive, our computer, CD or even online.  This means fewer physical storage space as compared to putting pictures in photo albums. We can print out the pictures using a printer when we need them. This is especially useful when the children's schools want their photos for some class activities; we do not need to "sacrifice" any photos for that purpose.  

When you compare the prices of cameras then and now, you can now buy a lower priced cameras with better functions and quality.  So, in actual fact, prices of cameras had gone down.