It always seemed strange to me that nobody painted hyper realistically before cameras were invented as you would have thought the idea of replicating something perfectly would have been more popular when we weren't able to do so at the click of a button.
You might want to check out the Hockney-Falco Thesis, advanced by painter David Hockney and physicist Charles Falco. They suggest that earlier optical aids like the Camera Lucida were utilized by realist painters like Vermeer.