Digital photography kind of was like this.
The operational costs (film, development) were eliminated but the capital cost (cameras) were 5x higher and needed updating more often.
A serious amateur could shoot the same film body for a decade, or even a life, with maybe some regular maintenance (fairly repairable right up through cameras made in 80s and even 90s). Maybe they had a manual focus body, then an autofocus body, and.. that was about it. The camera you were using was probably re-sellable at a decent price because the production life of any given model could run up to a decade.
With digital, the leaps & bounds being made in tech caused camera purchases to be much more frequent. Say every 2 years in 2000s, every 3-4 years in 2010s, and every 4-5 years in 2020s, as the rate of change did eventually slow. Regardless, the camera body also became practically disposable, basically a write-off if damaged, and resale value plummeted due to the rate of advancement.
As it worked out, if you were a heavy shooter, maybe the operational cost going to $0 actually netted you out on the equipment spend.
Most light hobbyists and general vacations/weddings/birthdays sharpshooter ended up spending far more in the digital era. This lasted right up until iPhones became good enough, even indoors poorly lit, that most normies don't own a single camera (5~10 years back).
Camera makers have adjusted to this new world by moving up-market, with less frequent releases, but at higher and higher price points. They understand that their main market now is hobbyists, and the decision to spend $$ vs 0 to enter the hobby is a bigger decision than spending $3k or $1.5k on a body.
I have several working cameras from the 40's and 50's and two fantastic Pentax cameras from the 60's and 70's respectively. The newer Pentax is a K1000 that I've had completely refurbished and it works like it just came out of the box.
Yup. My Cannon AE-1 from the mid-70s still works great, including the (relatively primitive) electronics. And the lenses are outstanding (I still haven't forgiven Cannon for obsoleting the FD mount pre-digital...lots of money went into that lens collection). It could probably use a light refurb, but all the camera repair shops I know closed years ago.
Unfortunately, I got out of the 'habit' of taking pictures with it because it's so much less convenient and the alternatives are 'good enough' for this rank amateur. I do occasionally look at photos I took with it and realize how much I've replaced quality with quantity. The Cannon required a certain amount of thought for each picture, whereas now we just take 50 pix with the cell phone and share out the one we think looks best.
I really like the "slowness" of the old way of taking pictures. The results are better. Really I stopped because film is so anachronistic and expensive / inconvenient to deal with. I have a DSLR that's decent but it's still not the same.
Digital photography democratized photography in ways digital theater projection didn't/couldn't. Digital projection lowered operational costs for studios significantly and theaters marginally. It didn't do anything for consumers. They got a marginally better experience at the same or higher ticket and concession prices.
Digital photography however opened the field to whole swaths of people. The operational cost of photography was a major blocker for a lot of people. The operational cost of a film camera can be integer multiples of its purchase cost. Acceptable digital cameras after about 2000 cost more than shitty 110mm cameras but about what a midrange film camera did but then had effectively zero operational cost. The cost of acceptable quality point & shoots decreased significantly in the first half of the 00s.
This got cameras in people's hands that would have never been able to afford to shoot film.
I don't think "democratized photography" is strictly the correct interpretation.
It lowered the marginal cost of a photograph to $0, and so people took many many many more photos.
But certainly in 2000, anyone buying a $400+ point&shoot digicam also owned a $2000 computer. Far more expensive against the typical era family vacation/birthday/wedding shooter with a $200ish camera, plus $9 film&dev per 36 shots. These typical users took maybe 5-12 rolls/year so there really weren't any savings there. Most of these people weren't shooting SLRs, but like a Canon Sure Shot.
I distinctly remember switching BACK to film for years in college around this era because film SLR equivalent was absurdly cheap compared to buying even an APS-C DSLR.
I think "democratized photography" is a perfectly cromulent statement to make. The cost of the PC is immaterial. People already had a PC for e-mail and porn. The average PC cost was also below $1000, not $2000. Even if they never bought a camera they still had a PC for e-mail and porn.
Photography got democratized because two different groups went digital: the 12-roll-per-year shooters and people that would never pay $10 a roll to get film developed. By 2000 there were 1-2MP point & shoots for $400 and just two years later such cameras were under $150. By the middle of the decade that would get 4-5MP (with a better overall sensor) and 10MP by the end of the decade (with yet better sensors).
Both groups were well served by the advantages of digital. They had a big viewfinder and could review photos on the camera. The 12-roll-a-year crowd could take a year's worth of photos at a single event. The new-camera-owner set could take only a handful of photos and not feel guilty for "wasting" their camera. Both groups could shoot trivial things they'd never waste film on.
Anecdata:
I got interested in photography around 99/00. The marginal cost of film ended up being prohibitive to me. I could barely afford to take enough photos to just learn the ins and outs of my camera. I then got a cheap digital point & shoot. It was 1.3MP and pretty much garbage quality optics. I used the everloving shit out of it and really learned how to use it. I learned to frame shots and to effectively use lighting. Just the fact I could take dozens of photos on a pair of rechargeable AA batteries just let me practice and experiment.
One fact that still remains (and the article suspiciously doesn't mention) is that there's still less manual work involved with digital projection: no loading/unloading/changing film reels, which means reduced personnel costs.
A bit less, but you'd be surprised how much is similar. The films are delivered on physical drives, loaded and unloaded, sent back. There's keying in timings with lights & curtains & music etc., there's checking it actually worked (because yes you're right, there isn't a projectionist sitting there the entire time).
If all goes to plan it definitely is less, I suppose it's roughly the same work for 1 showing, but almost nothing for the rest. But not nothing, and obviously it does go wrong sometimes.
