Open the non direct link, select 'show desktop site' if your on mobile, then right click/long press on the image and select 'open image in new tab' to get the image link.
What the hell? When they killed the old compact site, that was the beginning of the end for me, and it turns out it's still accessible? Not going back, just can't believe I didn't know about this
No, "compact" as it was known was what predated the mobile web interface, which itself now seems to be being replaced by another interface based on new reddit. It was really lightweight and fast without any ads. The drawback was that it was never updated to display images in line or for their terrible video player. Or chat and all that new stuff.