Not the Gulf War, but OIF.
"Surely," I thought, "this is some sort of anachronism. That was 2003..."
Nope. The Global War on a Noun has been going on for so long that we were a couple years into it and working photojournalists were still using film cameras.
I went and double-checked my timelines and, sure enough, in 2003 we were still in the very first generation of commercial purpose-built DSLRs: The Canon EOS-1D and Nikon D1X would have been the pro-grade models then.
At the same time, the 35mm Canon EOS 1V and Nikon F5 were probably the ultimate iterations of the pro film camera. They were bomb-proof, mature technology, and the infrastructure to handle 35mm film was still ubiquitous.
On the other hand, the 1D and D1X were developed from the same bodies, should be just as tough, and should simplify getting images home from the field.
Obviously, many were still sticking with film and that makes it feel like a long time ago, in a more real way than just looking at the dates on a calendar does.
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