Sunday, August 23, 2015

It has been a very long time!

It has been literally ages since I last commented on the worth of internet forums. Perhaps that's because its universally accepted that the users of internet forums are generally not to be leant any credence.

Today, on a digital camera forum, somebody asked a question and got ripped to shreds over spelling mistakes and typing errors. The messenger was shot rather than the message being read. It's very reminiscent of high school playgrounds.

Needless to say, the poster responded to abuse about their typing and spelling prowess with an explanation that their laptop keyboard was broken. That elicited get more abuse with users calling the fellow yet more names because they didn't buy another keyboard. As anybody who has ever changed a laptop keyboard can tell you, it's not that easy. I've changed laptop keyboards and it can take an hour easily and that's when you know what you're doing!

By the end, I'm sure the poster's blood pressure was through the roof. They never truly got their question answered but there was a lot of mockery. This kind of think is not restricted to photography forums either.

As many of my regular readers will know, I'm building a motorhome from an old school bus. The forums for that have the same level of idiocy. As with photography forums, there are people that make a good pretence of owning a converted bus but when they offer technical advice, its usually laughably wrong.

The latest laughable advice was to get 4 golf cart batteries to power a microwave. Now my microwave is a 700w model so its not powerful. It still uses 1040 watts of power. I can guarantee that 4 golf cart batteries would become so warm that they could enter a thermal runaway reaction and catch fire.

It all reminds me of what a former workmate once said: internet forums create the most noise, carry minimal technical information and waste the most time. Camera forums are generally good to let off steam and to look for entertainingly ludicrous discussions. For technical accuracy, its better to read what is said about cameras on the back of a packet of breakfast cereal.

Tuesday, August 18, 2015

Facebook the thief

In the wake of Facebook blocking access to my account after deciding that they wanted me to send them a copy of my drivers license and social security card, I requested that they delete my account including all text, messages and photographs. They have failed to do so which means they have taken my work without payment but then, that's what Facebook is all about.

The reason Facebook is free is because its a great big data collection scam. It's like the laughing gas dentists give to patients to hide the pain of drilling and filling. It's very similar also to GHB - the infamous rape drug. People are lured in by pleasure and while they're being pleasured they're prompted for ever more personal information.

Let's connect you with old school friends, old work mates, long lost relatives etc. Then the Facebook messenger app allows Facebook to track in real time, your every movement. They can work out approximately which stores you visit, which places you visit, how often and with whom. If somebody in your friends list is in the same series of locations, its a fair bet that you're together. Indeed, if Facebook was served with a subpoena by a jilted wife, they could tell exactly where the errant husband had been 24*7 and which other Facebook users had been in the vicinity of their husband, particularly at night!

The fact Facebook doesn't delete data, ever, is scary. This is an organization with the same data collection techniques as the CIA, KGB and GCHQ. In fact, they have more information than the aforementioned combined. Being a commercial rather than a government entity means that nobody notices that what they're really doing is spying on the entire world population.

Facebook is, without a shadow of a doubt, the most sinister threat the world has faced in peacetime. All this data and it is all for sale. Who knows, Facebook could already be selling data to governments around the world that want to monitor their citizens.

Check the junk mail you receive - how closely does it relate to things you've looked at on Facebook? Check your spam - how closely does that relate? How about your junk phonecalls? And the door knockers! If you've told Facebook where you work (which they know already from your geolocation during working hours) how much junk mail do you receive at work? Those silent robo calls - are they really silent or are they trying to listen into background noise in order to ascertain what's happening in your location. Those few seconds before you hang up can give valuable information.

Don't believe the evil of Facebook? Try to delete your account!

Saturday, August 8, 2015

Yet more

Well, it IS a photography blog and it has been short on photos but long on text. I'm really not sure which people prefer - text, photos or whether anybody actually looks at my blog.



As you can see, I went to the zoo! Generally, on my Canon camera I found a 300mm lens worked well for animals. I do wonder though still about changing systems.

Sunday, August 2, 2015

To be or not to be, that is the question

Whether 'tis Nobler in the mind to suffer
The Slings and Arrows of outrageous Fortune,
Or to take Arms against a Sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them.

Thus wrote the little known playwright, William Shakespeare, some 400 years ago. This is pretty much still relevant today. Particularly regarding camera gear and worse, the temptations of marketing.

Years ago, when technology didn't change much, cameras were a pretty safe hobby. One could build a nice lens and body collection and be pretty sure that it would retain most of its value for later resale. That was when lenses were durably built from metal.

Roll on a few years when autofocus lenses came in and the lenses became not so durable nor as well made. Flaws in the focussing mechanism were hidden by the autofocus system. Lenses began to rocket in price.

In came digital which meant that in addition to the camera, a computer was needed. Then ever more storage as the camera manufacturers gradually dropped ever bigger sensors on the market. People would be fool enough to buy one camera then another then another. First a 2 megapixel camera then 3 then 4 and so on.

Being a slave to upgrading is expensive! Not only that but the upgrades aren't very often necessary. How many people actually print a photograph these days? Not me, not in the past 5 years. Everything is digital.

How many megapixels are needed? Megapixels are just a silly number these days that mean absolutely nothing. Just about any 3 megapixel and above image will more than fill a computer screen. Going to the biggest extreme, digital movies at the movie theaters are going to be 4K which means each frame is an 8 megapixel image. How many times will you be viewing your images on a movie theatre screen?

Recently, interchangeable lens compacts came in. This combined with the move away from laptops and desktops toward tablets has really changed the photographic landscape.

As far as tablets go, they're inexpensive, portable and can have keyboards added to turn them into laptops. They largely lack any way of transferring digital image files to or from them in any other way than Bluetooth or WiFi.

Needless to say, digital SLRs do not have Bluetooth nor WiFi especially legacy models. This means that digital SLRs are pretty well unusable now. Either a newer body at a cost of $500+ is needed in order to make the most of existing equipment or bite the bullet and go for a new system built around the new technology.

It would seem sensible given that cellphones take darned good photos, not to blow too much on cameras. For myself, my system was around $8,000 when purchased in 2006 - 2007 for a photography business somebody sold me hard on starting. Needless to say, it never took off because there just weren't enough clients with money to spend - especially straight after an economic crash. Slowly, that camera system has been sold off. It never realised more than quarter of what it cost. EBay and Amazon yielded such poor results after fees, postage etc that the last batch of gear was sold directly to a dealer.

Where does this leave us now? It leaves us knowing that camera gear is not an investment. It will not make a dime while there are so many out there, happy to make one photography sale a decade. It also leaves us knowing that paying a lot for gear that will be worth next to nothing a couple of years later is money that might have been more rewardingly spent on loose women, slow horses and booze.

The question now is when to sell the last of the photography junk. It held a huge place in my heart but gets rarely used on account of its bulk. The next question is, given that I have a cellphone, do I really need a camera as well? Would my camera needs be better satisfied by an ultra zoom compact or a mirrorless camera?