[mattgperry]

No - if you were creating a lens or sensor you wouldn't even think about the orientation of the image relative to the real world. It's irrelevant - only that the pixels can be read off in an orderly manner. This is even true for analogue processes (but if the method of converting negatives to photos was different I can see it'd be a factor).

Maybe people in this thread are talking past each other but imo I agree with the commenter arguing that the image is ever "upside down", there is no image.