Money piddled away like water

The decision is made. I'm selling all of my camera gear and replacing it with stuff that I'll actually use. The brutal truth is that I simply have so much that it has to be stored in several places. I don't like this and never have.

As I said, what I have cost me stupid amounts of money and the amount I'll get back, selling it, is negligible. The selling decision is more about psychological welfare than anything else. The equipment is irrevocably linked with a very bad experience from the past. I think my mental health is worth more than those God-forsaken memories. In fact, I would liken keeping equipment with those memories as very similar to a rape-victim keeping and reusing the panties she wore when she was raped. God knows, I have tried to put those memories behind me and to this day won't mention what the memories are. Each time I look at my camera gear, the memories are jogged and resentment resurfaces.

Anyway, looking forward, I will continue with photography. I'm very much thinking in terms of going for an Olympus camera (or Panasonic) with just two lenses. Any money left over is probably going to go toward taxes or rent or something similar. As an amateur, I have zero use for more than one body and surplus lenses. The difference between myself and most photographers is that I know I am an amateur and I know there's no living to be made from photography by anybody without real connections.

I'm pretty much set on getting an Olympus micro four thirds camera and two lenses - probably a 12-60 and a 70-200 which gives me effectively 24mm to 400mm coverage. That's pretty much what I have now though 99% of the time I use solely my 17-85 (27- 136). Heck, I might even get by with just the 12-60 (24-120). The key thing is I'm returning to my original goal.

In the beginning, before my hobby was usurped, I had intended to get solely a Canon XT with two lenses - 18-55 and 70-200. That was all I wanted. I didn't want all the extra garbage that I was pushed into. I would have been happy making the occasional bit of money (or not) on the side from photography. I did not want a photography business. I wanted to be left alone to enjoy my hobby.

Sadly though I love my XT dearly, it is irrevocably connected to my misery and it has to go. As I've said before, my personal welfare is more important than money. This is something many people fail to understand. I hope that with the women's panties reference, people will understand the gravity of the situation. I have been through Hell and back.

The downsizing decision

There's a company in Atlanta called KEH that buys and sells photographic equipment. I've used them before but always for buying. They send me emails every now and then. The last email was that they were going to be in Charlotte and the email before they were going to be in Chattanooga. Apparently they're going to be in Aiken sometime too. What they do is to buy cameras at events. This is quite useful for me as I don't entirely trust UPS, FedEx or USPS and a sales conversation needs eye to eye contact.

Thus, I returned to my thoughts of selling equipment. I have several lines of thought. One is that I should sell the stuff that I absolutely don't use such as my flashes as they do represent a big investment. Certainly I'll only get a small portion of the purchase price back but honestly I'm at the point when I just want shot of them and the memories they evoke.

Similar memories surround pretty much all of the rest of the equipment. Some I will definitely consider a little bit of a loss but I think it's probably time to move forward and clean house. I absolutely don't need two camera bodies. Only a professional needs two bodies.

My thoughts regarding the potential sale are to sell just the stuff I don't use or to sell the whole bally lot and start afresh with one of the mirrorless systems. Being in my late forties doesn't mean I'm over the hill. It just means I have come to my senses. I certainly would not pay big bucks and ever buy new equipment again. That's a sheer waste of money! It just really bugs me that one camera I paid $1,250 for will only get $125 back for me, especially since it has hardly ever been used. Somebody's going to have a real bargain there!

As I've said before, the money pit that lark turned out to be really hurts me and it hurts that somebody I trusted implicitly would have scammed me into such a stupid lark. It just rubs salt into the wounds that vast sums of money have been literally piddled away.

The plan is either to sell the whole lot or just the bits I never ever use. On the whole, I'm thinking of selling the whole bally lot and go mirrorless. From what I see of mirrorless, they're more compact, lighter and more up to date. My existing cameras were made in 2005/6 and a lot has happened in the past 9/10 years. Even if I buy a camera dating back two years there will have been a huge leap forward in technology. I wouldn't mind betting the image quality is far superior. The resolution should be double at least. 8 megapixels has been perfectly adequate for me but it'll be nice to see what 16 or 24 will do for me.

Heaven knows, I might even be able to sell that silly Canon Selphy printer that just gathers dust. That was bought for a facepainting and photography venture that never happened because without exception, all the facepainters I have ever met have turned out to be complete flakes.

I have a feeling that if I go to Charlotte, I'll be selling everything and starting afresh. That will be a wonderful breath of fresh air, to be honest.

The gritty truth

Just now - as one often does after a large glass of Armagnac - I read one of Thom Hogan's articles. It baffles me as to why people read his articles as opposed to mine because I usually say similar things but way before he does. Anyway, he was writing bemoaning the inconvenience of cameras. This is something I believe I wrote about some while ago. His article is here.

Those with memories (it doesn't matter how long or short) should recall without recourse to a waterboard or an electric cattleprod applied to the privates that a few postings ago, I commented that I had not used my digital SLR in many months. I did actually break that gap a few days ago and yes, I found the digital workflow to be a humungous irritation. It was not possible to edit the photos on the camera nor to connect the camera wirelessly to a tablet nor to upload the images wirelessly. Everything has to be done via a cable or by taking the memory card out.

Only today I was talking to an Elementary school teacher; we were reminiscing about a time before computers and before mobile phones. I can't imagine how inconvenient it must have been for lodgers who needed a phone to have to pay continual connection and termination fees as they moved lodgings every few weeks when lodgers now use mobile phones. I don't even have a house phone. My girlfriend does not have a house phone either. We are 100% mobile. Now think about cameras...

In the old days we would buy a roll of film and put it through our camera, often having the same film in the same camera for a couple of years as film and processing were costly.  It would take weeks for the prints to get back. Along came digital and killed the cost of film and processing but jacked up the cost of the camera to more than the amount of money most people would spend on film and processing in a lifetime.

A similar thing happened with telephones - the cost of the service and the phone rocketed as it became wireless yet the last time I knew, nobody owned the airwaves and tower to tower relays are far cheaper and faster to install and maintain than underground cables.

So we have a thing - convenience costs money. Leaping on this bandwaggon, the camera manufacturers have begrudgingly created very expensive wifi devices that plug into some cameras. The problem is smartphones are so much easier to use with built-in photo editing and easy upload that traditional cameras are beginning to look a bit like a museum piece. Indeed, I see so many businesses doing their photography with iPhones rather than cameras that I wonder very much what planet people are on when they mention photography as a business. I mean, seriously - somebody that's going to take days or weeks to produce a phenomenal (or not) image when somebody with an iPhone can produce a perfectly acceptable image within minutes and at near zero cost - the guy with a real camera is a dinosaur.

This brings us to the main point. How can camera manufactures keep producing the same outdated old crap year in, year out and expect to remain in business? Ages ago, I did a comparison between a smartphone, a digital SLR and a digital compact and the results were all perfectly acceptable. Producing something and screaming that it's quality is superior doesn't wash any more. Betamax comes to mind. Remember Betamax? Sony produced an excellent product that was far better than VHS but everybody bought VHS because it was cheaper and better marketed.

Competing on quality does not work when the world works on best affordable quality and highest convenience. All I can say is that of the big camera manufacturers now: Nikon, Canon, Pentax, Sony, Olympus and Sigma, very few if any will be left by the end of the decade unless they cease gazing at their navel fluff and set to making cameras more user friendly. People won't buy outdated junk - they'll slap a zoom lens on their phone and just sharpen the image.

cloud free sky

Today, the sky was clear. Following the same methodology as yesterday, the camera was placed on a tree stump and the exposure set at 30 seconds, f2.8 and infinity focus with a 17mm lens.

Sadly I couldn't get a higher ISO than 1600. I had thought that my 30D would have been able to achieve 3200ISO but it appears I am mistaken as it resolutely stopped at 1600.

The key to great star photos is ultra high ISO from what I hear. Clearly these photos are about the best I can achieve. They're pretty good but not what I wanted to achieve. C'est la vie!

Cloudy sky

Yesterday for the first time in six months, I actually went outside with my camera. This was a 30 second exposure with the camera placed on a tree stump and 1600 ISO selected. Sadly, it was too cloudy to get a really good star photo but it's a good attempt.

What I would have liked to have achieved is one of the really colorful photos of a black sky with the stellar purple gas clouds. Apparently the technique involves a high ISO, a long exposure and a wide, fast lens.

My attempt used a 17-35 lens at f2.8 as it's the fastest lens I have. The ISO was set at 1600 and the camera placed on a tree stump facing upwards. There was a little light pollution but not too much.

On the whole, it's not a bad phot but it's not what I wanted to achieve. On the other hand, it is only my 2nd attempt at this kind of photography.

Still considering downsizing

I won't repeat the old story but for reasons best left in the past I ended up with an overabundance of camera gear - more than I could ever possibly use, to be honest. I've listened to many arguments and many opinions, ranging from the sublime to the ludicrous.

I'm downsizing generally with the aim of being able to live full time in a motorhome that I am currently building. I had been keeping hold of my overabundance of camera gear because I felt trapped by it. The individual that finagled me into buying it and then criticized me for buying it before mocking me for not being able to turn photography into a cornucopia then threatening to take my camera gear away while at the same time deliberately driving potential clients away ended up causing issues. Let's address those. Threatening to take away my cameras made me more possessive about them - to the point I now I should sell stuff I don't use but feel pain about getting rid of it. Mocking me for not making photography make money (I really cannot fathom how anybody can make money from something nobody buys) made me hang on desperately to a doomed photography "business" that I'd never wanted in the first place. I hung onto that to the tune of a few thousand in advertising then felt a sudden relief when I finally decided that having the shadow of South Carolina Department of Revenue hanging over me every month sending threatening letters if I failed to file a zero income each month was too much and closed the business. Criticizing me for buying the gear made me more possessive about it. Having been finagled into buying the stuff, I feel obligated to keep it - especially since the money spent was donated by a deceased blood relative and even more so since the value has dropped from about $8k to about $2K. Much of the equipment has never been used yet has plummeted in value anyway. There's a lot of pain there for somebody brought up never to waste money and to be cautious about spending.

Initially, before my purchase decision was subverted, my plan had been to get a single digital SLR with maybe two or three lenses and possibly a flash. This was based on what I originally had as my 35mm kit. That in itself was largely based on advice from friends with whom I took photographs and on books and articles I'd read.

I really like the idea of wiping the slate clean - selling everything and starting again with a minimalist amount of gear, based around the things I like to do. The thinks I like - the lengths I enjoy seem to be mainly in the 17 to 100mm range (27 - 160). I have used longer lengths up to 300mm but that tends to be zoo-based photography rather than anything else.

I like photographing landscapes - old ruins etc. I like to photograph the places I visit. I dislike bulky cameras. Indeed, I found my XT and 17-35 Tamron were both bulky, unwieldy and heavy when I was in Key West in 2012. Since then my interests in photography have expanded to include astrophotography - particularly wide-field views.

I want to like my huge tripod but it really is very big, very heavy and very bulky. That with the head was a $200 purchase that I'd probably only get about $35 back on. Basically, that photography lark was the biggest most ridiculous money-pit I have ever encountered. The idea of making money from photography is just plain stupid when even the cheapest phone now has an excellent camera. The sole reason to pay for photography is in case you want to be in the photo.

Thus, I'm looking at a horrible loss of money. I'm wondering whether selling it will finally put the nightmare behind me. Then, after a brief interval I can re-equip with a smaller and more suitable kit. I like the idea of a wide, fast prime for landscapes and sky photos. I like the idea of the new high-iso cameras. I have taken some really excellent images with super color saturation with my existing kit which makes me wonder if something new will be as good.

All the time I have been fence-sitting as I have for the past 3 years at least, the value has dropped inexorably. I sold one item and didn't get its value at all via eBay and sold another and didn't get its value via Amazon. It just seems that what with underpriced shipping calculations and overcharging for money handling, Amazon and eBay get the seller significantly less than just sending the whole lot to a dealer. I've been on the verge of selling the whole lot to a dealer before but haven't because I didn't have the packaging materials for the quantity I wanted to sell. I keep meaning to attend to that but haven't managed it yet. I rather suspect that when it's gone I will feel huge remorse but will feel huge relief and will be more able to move on with my life photographically.

What will my new kit be like? I really do quite like the Nikon1 series. I hear people bitching and raving about the image quality so I don't really know the answer. There are probably things I won't be able to do as well as new things I can do. The size attracts me and the weight.

Oh woe is me!

How often does one see the "oh woe is me" type posts on internet forums. I have to admit that I generally go to the forums every time I want a good laugh. People really do post such ridiculous things! My girlfriend even notices the same - she goes to her special interest pages and finds people asking the most banal, mundane things. Her comment one day was that somebody had found weevils in their flour and wanted to know if it should be thrown out. Heavens above, I'd be amazed to find flour that didn't contain weevils. All flour contains weevils or weevil eggs and they will never hurt anybody. It's like worrying about breathing because of the bacteria naturally present in the air. Every time somebody goes to the lavatory - that smell is bacteria and the smell has never killed anybody!

At the moment I'm laughing at a posting somebody put up on one of the digital camera forums. Their camera had been stolen or such was the claim. It might have happened or they might just have posted to see the kind of ludicrous responses they'd get and whether they'd get any lynch mobs baying for blood.

The fact is that a stolen camera does have a serial number but it cannot be traced. Even if an attempt to trace it was made, it would take a herculean effort to trace it that's just not worth the price of a camera. Generally stolen electronics end up being sold in other countries. The BBC traced a stolen phone and a stolen laptop. The laptop they totally lost track of. The phone turned up in Ghana, both having been stolen in London. With a camera, there's just no way of tracking it effectively.

Certainly people with eye-fi cards have had some success in relocating their stolen cameras but honestly, would you even want it back after it had been stolen? Every time you looked at it, you'd be reminded that you'd been violated. That's the kind of memory best not retained.

The post generated lots of ways to list stolen goods on various different websites. The fact is that nobody is ever going to check that website. If Mr Crook stole a camera from Mr Victim and then advertised it on eBay, then Mr Buyer would buy it without ever asking or checking or even knowing where to check the serial number. When the camera eventually broke, it would most likely be thrown out rather than repaired because repairing disposable electronics is a false economy. By the time it needs to be repaired, something better and newer will be out for less money.

So effectively the fellow was saying "Woe is me, my camera has been stolen" and just making a huge fuss about it when there's little to be done bar saving up for a new one and being more careful with it. The "Oh woe is me" is not really about the camera. It's more about the dismay that they allowed it to be stolen in the first place. This is what my girlfriend was complaining about - pointless use of the internet to post complete piffle.

I look around at the internet and despair. It looks, judging from the vast majority that is posted online, that a great number of posters would have been better off not learning to read nor write. Society would have been so much richer. I am particularly reminded of people such as Bill Clinton (whose sole contribution during his Presidency was a hugely entertaining sex scandal) and Piers Morgan (whose poisonous presentations would do well in a Miss Marple novel).

Twaddle for nerds?

Yesterday, I received a very interesting email from Twitter. Perhaps that needs a little background on the operation of my blogs and their interaction with Twitter & Facebook etc. Every new update to my blogs gets cross-posted to multiple Twitter accounts. I believe there are probably 5 but I've lost count since I so rarely log into any of them anymore. I was just getting zero interaction from them.

In addition to the updates from my blogs (which get updated ranging from frequently to infrequently), each Twitter account has its own "gazette" that auto publishes once or twice daily from a given set of criteria. Each gazette is a collection of the day's publications that falls within given parameters, for example I might have a search going for "banana photograph" on Twitter, Facebook, Youtube or the news websites etc. That will be included in that particular gazette. If it's a Twitter publication source then the source is notified when the gazette is published via inclusion in a tweet (automatically generated). This has the advantage in that it might garner more followers since the auto-follower adders got banished by Twitter. It might also garner some genuine followers.

Further additions are the 20 automated tweets daily for each individual Twitter account. These contain hyperlinks to articles in my travel blog, for example. Each account has its own unique set of 20 Tweets.

After the Twitter follower adders had been banished by Twitter, across all the Twitter accounts there were around 15,000 followers. That ranged from 2,500 to 3,500 per account. Interaction was slim to zero which indicated almost a total lack of engagement by the followers. Looking more closely at some of the followers, many were posting and never responding. More than that, they were advertising websites and products. Many were not even Tweeting in English. Thus, I ran a follower deleter so that I didn't have to follow accounts that just didn't have anything to say. This reduced the number of accounts I was following, majorally. In fact, I ran into bars on the numbers I could delete in a day. Now there was a disparity between the numbers that I was following versus the number that was following me. More followed me than I followed back and this remains the case.

One specific account is cited here. I get regular engagement reports from Twitter. This account has around 2,000 followers and sends out 20 automated Tweets a week and retweets everything the only account I actually use broadcasts. At 20 daily, that's 140 tweets a week plus the retweets going to around 2000 followers. This means that each week, 280,000 tweets are received from me on this account plus retweets.

The engagement report stated that over the week, my tweets had been seen 205 times and that I had 2 new followers and 3 link visits. Out of 280,000 tweets, 205 actually being seen is around 0.0007% of my tweets and since each of the 280,000 has a link, just 0.00001% of the tweets gets an action.

There's little point in being truly scientific and studying the other accounts because they will (from past study) yield exactly the same kind of result. I enclose some screenshots as examples.

What conclusion can we make from this? Clearly we're going to have to make some assumptions based on the evidence and these assumptions are:

First: The vast majority of Twitter followers are bots. I operated my accounts as live but had no interaction so I turned them over to be bots. I suspect the same has happened to the vast majority of other accounts.

Second: Twitter follower adders managed to add a load of bots to my accounts and very little else. Those that could be clearly seen to be bots I have eliminated but many bots remain.

Third: Automated gazettes are almost totally worthless in adding Twitter followers. Were they great then many more followers than two would join each week.

Fourth: In terms of advertising the blogs, Twitter is pretty worthless. 3 links followed out of 280,000 tweets means that updating anything on the automated Twitter system or the automated gazette system is a pointless waste of time. There's more point in picking up a penny on the ground than advertising on Twitter.

Fifth: Facebook - for some unknown reason I get hits from Facebook. I can only assume that my blog somehow makes it to Facebook but even so - 3 hits is not much.

My conclusion, based on the weeks report (which echoes other weekly reports) and based on blog viewing figures is that there's a huge disparity between reported sources of hits and actual hits. The Twitter reports fairly accurately report what I see on my blog reports for sourced hits. Blog reports - now that's an entirely different kettle of fish. As far as the worth of Twitter and Gazettes, they're not worth the effort of setting them up nor the effort of taking them down. Their net worth appears to be precisely zero. As the title says - Twitter and Gazettes are just Twaddle for nerds.

The Gazette after six months

Six months ago, I launched Zephod's Gazette - a photo magazine. Since then it has been published daily at 7am and broadcast via Twitter. It has been published approximately 180 times. It has been viewed, according to the stats, 129 times. Publication reflects content provided by various users around the internet. Clearly most are not even interested in seeing that their content has been promoted. There are approximately 40 contributors per issue.

Another interesting thing is that promoting the paper via my Twitter account has not increased my Twitter following one little bit. I didn't really expect it would. This was largely just an experiment. I produce no content for the paper though it feeds articles off my blogs when a new article is published.

In conjunction with the photo paper, I also publish a political paper that follows the antics of the buffoon elected as Governor of South Carolina. How many times has it been proven that states fully supporting Obamacare are more prosperous as a result yet South Carolina's Governor pretends it isn't so and rejects Obamacare. That has had a few more viewers. I produce no content for that paper, instead relying upon generated content.

The only thing that I can really tell from all that is that automatically-generated newspapers don't attract viewers or readers. I notice also that the site I chose for them wants money in order to allow me to make money from advertising spaces on the paper. Clearly they're making a bit of money from people that believe their papers are going to take off majorly but the people with the papers are making no money.

It's very much like this blog - it gets a few daily and weekly viewers. Indeed it gets about 100 - 200 "views" a day yet so few clicks on advertising that it makes and income of maybe 25 cents a month. The gazette has not made my blog more popular nor my Twitter more popular. It's not worth deleting the paper just as it's not worth deleting Twitter. In a way, Twitter and automatic papers are like the dirt on your car - something that might protect the paint finish but which probably and practically has no effect whatsoever other than looking vaguely untidy.

Happy New Year

A belated Happy New Year to all my readers. This is the start of 2015 and as a fellow blogger writes: May you receive this year everything you wished for others last year.

Today there was a discussion I followed on one of those repulsive online discussion forums in which the question was put as to whether it was possible to drop a digital SLR in favor of a smartphone.

Needless to say, the suggestion that a DSLR is just too heavy and cumbersome for the vast majority of applications was met with derision and insults. One individual thought it a good idea to write "Damn, America really is either limp wristed wimps or fat people." Sadly, this is entirely indicative of internet forums and why it's such a good idea to steer clear of them.

Is a DSLR suitable for all uses? I can really see a mom going shopping, taking a DSLR and a laptop and a MiFi pad with her then composing and taking a photo of something, ensuring the light is in the right place with her children obediently holding up reflectors and flash units while other shoppers and store staff keep out of the way. Then finally she sits down in the middle of the store for a hour while she uploads and edits the photo then connects the laptop to her mifi pad and emails the photo to her sister to ask whether this is the right gift for Uncle BillyBob.

The people on digital camera forums really need to step back and see reality. On the other hand, perhaps it's not a case of their reality being as warped as it appears but more a case of the vast majority following the old rule. Those that can, do; those that can't, talk about it.

That reminds me of my old friend from university, Paul, who now lives and works in Prague. We both went to university in Britain and he went East while I went West to the US. His comment was about people boasting and bragging about sex. Those that talk about it endlessly aren't doing it while those that are don't find much to talk about that isn't a private matter.

So, to reminisce further, perhaps the old motto of one of the clubs from when I was in university some 20 years ago is applicable: "Action, not words". Get out there and enjoy photography but don't make photography a chore. To me, hulking a great big DSLR about the place is a chore. My smartphone is always with me. I can tell you that in one year I take more photos with my smartphone than in 10 years with my DSLR.