The most popular SLR on Flickr is the Canon Digital Rebel XT. The most popular point-and-shoot is the Canon PowerShot SD400. Guess which two cameras I use? It’s a bit of a surprise to me, because I generally don’t hold with the theory that the best product wins. However, perhaps it’s the case that the product that’s most popular with the kind of enthusiasts that post to Flickr, is the best.
Now that I’ve been participating in Flickr for a while, I’ve realized that digital technology has fundamentally changed the nature of photography. Perhaps I wasn’t looking in the right places, but I don’t recall seeing any discussion of this amidst the hype about Things Digital. On the face of it, digital cameras shouldn’t have been that big of a disruptive factor. Film cameras were so cheap they were given away as promotional items, whereas digital cameras were hundreds of dollars.