Disposing of old fashioned photography

I was at a Turkish wedding reception on Friday night – it was a lot of fun – but something interesting happened while we where there that I thought was just a nice snapshot of how technologies we (my generation and above) know never used to exist are already engrained in the minds of youngsters who can imagine nothing else.

My girlfriend took a photo of her sister and a little girl, maybe aged seven, with a disposable camera and immediately after the flash went off the little girl grabbed it (nicely) and peered at the back, clearly expecting their to be a digital image of the photo. Her face when she saw there was nothing to look at was one of complete bewilderment.

"Yes, in the old days you took photos, had no idea what they would look like, then took them to a shop where a stranger developed them, sometimes as quickly as an hour, but often longer - several days maybe - before giving them back to you, and it cost you about a fiver, and you could only get about 24 or 26 photos on each camera. And each camera cost about a tenner, and they were pretty shit. It wasn't good no, digital is so much better. How did we cope? I've no idea. Right kids, on your hoverboards, we're off to the moon !"