I remember the Argus C3!

Lesson: Technology moves ahead and certainly did for photography! We have gone through several steps of astounding.

In the 9th grade, to take pictures and be more popular, I wanted a camera. So I went shopping, saw expensive Leica cameras, etc. Then I saw an Argus C3 -- I had a shot at saving enough lunch money for that. So, I started saving. My parents happened to see my savings and asked what I was doing. Dad was nice, chipped in some more, and returned from work with a good Argus C3 collection, including a light meter, carrying case, flash, etc. He had bought all that at a good discount at the US Navy base where he worked.

Mom was the secretary at a church so knew a lot of people in the congregation including one, a sports photographer for a local newspaper. Hearing about my interest in photography, he volunteered to take me on a photo shoot!

So we went to the next basketball game of my school. We decided not to use flash but just to use available light where in the dark room he would push the film, Kodak Tri-X, to a higher ISO speed than the default 400.

So, at the game I exposed a full roll of the film. Then in the dark room of the newspaper, he pushed the film to ISO 1600 or some such, and we made some 8 x 10" prints.

The prints were good! For printing, he cropped the images to make more interesting composition.

The next school day, I took the prints with me, and, yup, instantly I, or at least the prints, was popular!

For developing I got a little unit that worked without a darkroom, that is, worked in a room with normal lighting.

To help me make a darkroom, dark enough for printing if not for developing, out of the bathroom, Dad put some shutters on the outside of the window. Someone gave me an old enlarger.

Alas, the enlarger was for 4 x 5" Speed Graphic camera film. So, to enlarge a 35 mm negative from the Argus C3 to an 8 x 10" print, I would have had to have put the photo paper on the floor with the enlarger head maybe 10' higher!

Basically soon I found that developing and printing 8 x 10" images was for me in the 9th grade with associated meager financial resources, in short, too expensive.

So, I retreated to Kodak Kodachrome color film and color slides!

But with a little more money, working with black and white 35 mm film and that Argus camera could be not wildly expensive, easy to do, with some nice results, and a lot of fun.

About then I had a girlfriend, the prettiest human female I ever saw, in person or otherwise. We went outside where she leaned back against a tree trying to look pretty -- she was very successful -- and I exposed the roll!

Alas, eventually in moving, off to college, etc. I lost those color slides and the whole Argus C3 collection.

The Argus C3 was the main prop in the fun, curious, heavily CGI (computer generated images) movie Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow with, e.g., Gwyneth Paltrow carrying around the Argus!

Later when my career was going well, my wife had a girl friend who visited us and brought a Nikon SLR (single lens reflex) camera. I was hooked! Soon my boss at work was taking a trip to Japan, and I paid him enough to bring back a nice collection of Nikon camera equipment. These items I did NOT lose and still have! The lenses, the whole collection, are astounding!

There is a lesson: Actually, in usual practice, the Nikon equipment is not as much better than the Argus equipment as might be guessed: Some wide angle, telephoto, macro, f1.2 lens, although gorgeous optics, just is not much more useful than the f3.5 lens and the rest of the Argus. For the Argus, just don't try to take pictures in nearly impossible conditions and, instead, stay closer to ordinary pictures with ordinary light.

The Nikon equipment is still useful: Just have the film developed to a CD (compact disk) of JPG (joint photographic experts group) files!

But technology moves ahead: Glancing at the description of the iPhone 12 Pro Max, it's back to astounding-land again. It's unfair to call its photo capabilities those of just a camera.

So in ~100 years we have had several levels of astounding, Kodak Brownie, Speed Graphic, Leica, Argus, Nikon, SLRs with electronic sensors, smartphones, soon the iPhone 12 Pro Max, and maybe in other form factors much more.

Since now we are in line for billions of people with very capable little shirt pocket cameras, movie cameras, CGI and editing capabilities, etc., we should see a river, no, rapidly flowing oceans, of content, the best of it well into astounding-land.

When electronics started growing in importance, some people expected a lot, but did anyone really expect what we have now?