"It's a lot easier to shoot now. And we spend more time at a computer, which is ironic as most of us got into this career so we wouldn't be sitting at a desk."

Tony Dear puts together a very enjoyable roundtable chat with some of golf's best photographers. From the introduction:

What really impresses Furore, Murray, Perry and the others about the great photographers of the past is that they produced unforgettable, spellbinding images using cameras that, compared with today's state-of-the-art digital tools, were somewhat lacking. Cameras with autofocus changed photography, and especially sports photography, forever. According to Wikipedia, the first mass-produced autofocus camera was the Konica C35 AF, a simple point-and-shoot model that appeared in 1977.

It wasn't until 1990, however, that David Cannon began using autofocus. "Before that, I used manual focus on a 400-ml lens with a depth of field of less than three inches," he says. "Today's photographers have no clue how tough it was. There were literally very few people in the world that could manually focus those big lenses successfully."

Szurlej agrees. "Autofocus allowed many less-skilled shooters to enter the market."

No question, autofocus had a profound impact. But the emergence of digital totally revolutionized golf photography and the life of a golf photographer. "Autofocus changed the game, making sports photography a lot easier," says Furore. "But digital changed the whole profession. It has taken a lot of the craft out of photography. It's a lot easier to shoot now. And we spend more time at a computer, which is ironic as most of us got into this career so we wouldn't be sitting at a desk. I miss the tactile part of it, the magic of having that one Kodachrome that holds 'THE shot.' "

Furore adds that while using a film camera gave the user little margin for error and you never knew what you had until the film came back from the photo finisher, it was very rewarding when you got the image you had hoped for. "I'm probably romanticizing a bit, and would hate going back to it," he says. "But I do miss it."