@Plone3000 You should have said so! For this, I don’t think you need specific facts. Just an estimate about weight and speed of cameras today in comparison to old cameras (pre-digital). Newspapers and magazines did not use actual photographic images until the 1880s (I would look for newspapers depicting photographs taken during the Civil War and you’ll know what I mean). Prior to the invention of halftone printing, even though photography was available, artists had to create engravings based on the photographs to put into the format of a printing press.
Timothy O’Sullivan, a famous photographer who is well known for his images of the Civil War, was highly bound by the photographic technology available to him. Because of the photographic process (wet plate collodian) he used, he had to basically tote around a miniature darkroom wherever he went—since the glass negatives had to be immediately developed. No way he could be in the thick of events happening all around him and successfully take photos! Most of the pictures from him were taken days after the battles had ended; you’ll notice in his famous photograph “The Harvest of Death” that the bodies are bloated from being out for several days. And, a lot of Civil War photography was staged, meaning these guys were dragging around corpses to get the composition they wanted. Gross!
Never mind needing to make etchings of photographs or carry your own darkroom-cart anymore, anyone with a cell phone camera can submit a picture/video to a news website or station (some directly from their phone, no need to transfer the image to a computer) and get it featured on the news. It’s ridiculous how much technology has changed the way we get the news.
…Why do I remember all of this? I hated my history of photography class, haha.