A subtle social effect of technology

Our photographic consultant was somewhat bemused by the rise of the “selfie,” that picture of one’s self possibly including others, possibly including a situation or location, taken normally with a smart-phone camera and distributed immediately and electronically. Self-portraits are as old as art and pictures of the family in front of the Grand Canyon as old as Kodak Brownies, but the enormous flood of “selfie” shots seems to be a new phenomenon. An older generation is inclined to blame the self-centered Millenials, using the newest of technology mostly in an adolescent game of self-promotion.

We think, however, that the “selfie” instead demonstrates an interesting example of how a simple technological change can result in a social phenomenon. This is not to say that technology is a cause, but it enables unexpected things—when people are included.

There is an entertaining YouTube video showing what happens when several youngsters are shown film cameras for the first time. There are many observations a film photographer could make about this (the idea of waiting to see a picture is almost intolerable, the concept of a physical print is nearly unknown), but what struck us was the fact several of them tried to take a “selfie:” holding the camera at arm’s length to take a picture of his- or herself. And those who tried were blinded by the installed, automatic flash. Thereby hangs a tale.

The physical size of your sensor, piece of film or chip of silicon, determines how big your camera will be. This sounds obvious, but it’s a much harder limit than it might seem. In the days of film, you needed something about the size of a 35mm negative (which is actually 24x36mm, or slightly under an inch by not quite an inch and a half) to make a good enlargement. There were smaller sizes, but they gave pretty grainy 8×10-inch prints. The laws of optics then determined that, to show a reasonable scene on that size of negative, you needed a lens about two inches away from the film: the canonical 50mm lens. A lens closer to the film would give a wider view, leading to a sort of “fisheye” effect that wasn’t what most people wanted for most pictures.

Now, the closer to the lens that the object is, the farther from the lens the image is (when in focus). In any camera, digital or film, as you focus on something nearer, you (or the automatic machinery) draw the lens farther away from the sensor. At some point you reach the end of travel. That’s the closest your camera will focus. If you wanted to see closer, you’d have to have a bigger camera—with all that means for lugging something around. For a standard 50mm lens, the closest point it will focus is about 3 ½ feet. This isn’t carved in stone; it’s just what years of the tension between camera size and the sort of pictures people normally took came up with. But your arms aren’t 3 ½ feet long. A film camera cannot take a selfie. (Most of them. Most of the time. Special lenses, attachments, etc., were made for the “macro” market. But you won’t find these things easily.) You can take a picture of yourself, but you need a tripod and a delayed-action shutter release (these were common) or a cooperative person nearby.

And if you had an installed, fixed flash, it was designed to give enough light for a scene several feet away from the camera, so it will surely blind (temporarily) anyone foolish enough to stare into it from a closer distance.

Smartphones have tiny sensors, truly miracles of miniaturization, so the whole camera is physically very small. That means making them big enough to focus within the length of an arm is not very hard. Selfies appeared as soon as it was possible to take them.

So it’s not the fault of some narcissistic generation, or some new social trend to be deplored.  The urge to leave one’s mark widely seems to be common among people, and takes the forms made possible by technology.