Why did early professional photographers cancel digital photography?

I don't think any professional will "deny" digital photography at an early stage. This is just an opinion, because like most new technologies, you have the so-called "technology adoption lifecycle" or an extension of the diffusion process. Diffusion also applies to any new product introduced into society. It usually uses a bell curve to explain how people adapt to the new paradigm shift based on new products.

Everett M. Rogers is a communication scholar and professor. He is famous for his theory of innovation diffusion, which was discussed in his widely acclaimed book Innovation Diffusion. The book was first published in 1962, and now it is the fifth edition. I have to study this book as part of my requirement to get a degree in electronic media communication from the University of Texas at San Antonio. I strongly recommend this book to people in any industry.

According to Wikipedia, "Rogers put forward four main factors that affect the spread of new ideas: innovation itself, communication channels, time and social system. This process relies heavily on human capital. Innovation must be widely adopted to be self-sustaining. Within the scope of adoption rate, innovation always has a critical point. "

Innovators are the first to adapt to or buy new technologies, or people with higher education and higher income, and those who dare to take risks in life. These people also want to try new things. In the digital transformation of film photography, photographers who want to see what digital and film can achieve immediately are innovators.

Innovators are like this. They want to bring new innovations to their fields. Something better than before, something to explore and realize new fields for others. This is not reinventing the wheel; This is about making a better mousetrap-making yourself different. To name a few, the most famous innovators are isaac newton, Albert Einstein, Steve Jobs and Thomas Edison.

In this communication dynamic, the next group of photographers who turn to digital technology are early adopters, sometimes called lighthouse customers. Early adopters are usually trendsetters, and they will let the public join their new adopters, which will lead to the peak of sales and adoption of new technologies. This is what top manufacturers rely on in the product life cycle and its price structure from beginning to end, so that they can not only resume research and development, but also make profits.

Followed by the early majority and the late majority, the last group finally adopted a new technology or product, known as the laggard. Most of the early ones are your conservatives. They are usually active in their communities, open to new ideas and usually have the ability to influence their colleagues, while most of the late ones are inactive, older, quite conservative and usually have a low level of education. Laggards usually have lower income, lower education and are more conservative than most people.

As you can see, the adoption of new technology or new products did not make professionals give up digital photography at the beginning, but just fell into one of the five types of typical consumer and new product diffusion cycle. In addition, like most new technologies, things are expensive at first, so when the product cycle lags behind, the technology combines bugs, which leads to market saturation or critical quality, as shown in the bell curve, so when the price drops, it can be claimed that there is only a late-comer advantage.

This is why some professional photographers thought it was wrong at the beginning of digital photography, but it was not. Unfortunately, especially with the development of the Internet and social media, many professional photographers have fallen behind, but it is those who are behind that have also increased the view that many professional photographers give up digital photography-but I can assure you that this is not the case. I hope this will help answer your question.