Sunday, January 31, 2016

What is KEH smoking?

This is a screenshot from today in which Amazon is charging $299 for an Olympus E-PL6. with 14-42 lens That sounds a pretty good deal to be honest but does not seem to be unusually cheap.
 I just added (today) the cost of a ratty old Olympus E-PL5 of unknown origin and an equally ratty old 14-42 lens of unknown origin. This is last year's version of the kit Amazon is selling new for $299. KEH wants - wait for it - $305. That's $6 more than a new model but for something that has been used, abused and probably shoved up a Orc's backside.

Seriously, what is KEH smoking? It must be truly mind-blowingly hallucinigenic for them to want more than the new price for something secondhand and legacy technology. The question is whether KEH is really in the business of selling cameras or whether they're running a hobby website.

As many of my readers know, money is extremely tight on this end of the blogsphere. So much so that I really shouldn't be considering buying anything - even food. Having said that, despite the fact I've been unable to pay any income tax this year (due to low income) or get the mandatory health insurance, I might be receiving a small tax refund. That would probably cover a few things like dental care, a trip to the optician or maybe a secondhand mirrorless camera. I might even be able to sell off the remains of my DSLR system too though I detest the horrendous waste of money it represents. Though at one time I had money, I was also in a very dark period in my life. Sadly, the Canon kit is inexorably linked to that dark period. Hence I have been looking at other cameras to replace it.

I had been considering secondhand until I saw KEH prices. At that rate, I might as well save money by buying new. At least with a new camera, I get a year's warranty and I know nothing bad has happened to it. I know it hasn't been used by an ebola patient or by a nuclear reactor worker, been stolen, fallen from 42,000 feet or been otherwise abused.

Saturday, January 23, 2016

Why it's a silly idea to buy a new camera

As my regular readers will know I possess a Canon XT. I've had it since it was new for which I paid probably $800 - $1000. Today I looked at the secondhand market and eBay seems to be selling plenty XTs for $45 or frequently less. Considering I have taken less than 10,000 photos using my camera over the past 10 years, it works out as really rotten value. In 10 years, had I used film, I would have taken less photos and been more mindful of the cost of the photo. That's not hard to do either. I haven't taken any photos for several months with my XT. I've taken a lot of photos with my phone though.

Checking my phone, I've taken 42 photos this month so far and that's a low number. I expect when I work on my bus project tomorrow I'll take a further dozen photos. My phone is something I need anyway and the camera on it was free. Currently phone cameras are way better value than DSLRs.

Looking at the resale value of cameras - you will certainly want to sell your camera at some point in order to take advantage of later developments - they're a huge money pit. Back in film days when cameras didn't change much from decade to decade they retained their value. That meant it was worth buying a camera because it could be reliably sold for about 75% of what it cost. Now because cameras and lenses are overproduced and oversold, the resale value is negligible. $1,000 for something that'll be worthless in a few short years is a pointless waste of money. Better to stick with a cameraphone and just agree that it won't be great for the more specialised photographic disciplines.

Secondhand, it's well worth buying a camera. The technology won't be the latest but if you can live with that, it could well be worthwhile. I'd like to take night sky photos but am stuck. I either have to spend $300-$400 on the cheapest suitable lens, $300-$400 on a camera with an ISO high enough to use my existing lenses or $175 on a secondhand camera and lens from one of the newer mirrorless systems. It looks obvious - sell the existing stuff and go for the mirrorless solution. There's a problem though - the mirrorless cameras have slightly less dynamic range.

I can honestly say that the way Canon has overproduced and oversold their cameras and lenses is exceptionlly shortsighted and has quite probably ruined the market. I know for sure that if the rate of release had been a lot slower - say one camera every 5 years instead of every 18 months and cameras with real differences rather than notional differences then the bottom would not have fallen out of the used camera market. What difference is there between the XT and the XTi? Simple - 2 megapixels. That is so negligible it's not worth mentioning. What is the difference between 8 megapixels and 16 megapixels? Not much - the extra 8 sounds phenomenal but in actuality means nothing. You will not see a difference on a 10x8 print nor on a 20x16 print.

As a consequence of Canon's overproduction and overselling, the market has been utterly ruined for new cameras. Who on earth is going to buy a new camera when they can buy a secondhand camera that's had hardly any use for peanuts? If I went for a mirrorless camera then I'd get secondhand and certainly not new! Indeed for the night sky photos I'd like to take, it might even be worth buying a secondhand mirrorless then simply selling the Canon stuff due to its redundancy. Honestly, I just can't see how the $300-$400 cost of a wide prime (even a budget model) can be justified when the mirrorless equivalent is so much less. In terms of modern technology, even a $175 camera comes with higher ISO than my XT and a zoom lens that's almost as fast as the budget prime. 

Buying a camera, these days, is pointless unless it has WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS and NFC built in. It's equally pointless to buy a big camera when the market is clearly favoring smaller cameras. Its certainly not possible to get smaller than a phone camera! So, the question is - how is Canon etc going to manage to sell their overpriced junk? Seriously, if the camera is going to be worthless in 10 years or 5 years then what's the point in buying it? Better to spend the money on hookers and have some value out of it! I certainly don't feel I've had good value out of my Canon camera. And before you go on about my needing to use it more, I've had a phone camera for 3 years and have already taken 6,000 photos with it. That's  way more than my DSLR in 10 years!

Tuesday, January 19, 2016

Mobile thinking

Mentally wandering along Tottenham Court Road, I've been wondering about how to go about photography without a working Macbook. Certainly I can use my Android tablet to work on photos but the lack of RAW processing and the lack of a way of uploading RAW (or even JPEG for that matter) to my tablet is a hinderance. Another problem is the lack of a way of transferring the photos to bulk storage. Certainly somewhere (unless I have since thrown it out) I have a bulk storage unit from which I removed the hard drive. That thing was expensive and not all that great. It was pretty much before its time - it needed a flash hard drive rather than a moving hard drive.

As m'lady is set to abandon her satellite internet, I'm back in the position I was in last year when I abandoned Windstream. She`s doing it for very much the same reason - cost. She's paying $80 a month for 10GB of data. I was paying $55 for unlimited data. The problem is that neither of us uses more than about 2GB. My phone comes with 5GB which should cover me for all I need. She'll probably use my MiFi pad and use $40 of data every 2 months (a $40, 4GB package only expires after 2 months).

Thinking about the motorhome I've been building over the last year or so, that will require mobile internet. This was factored into my thinking hence the MiFi pad. Another reason why I particularly like the MiFi pad is that I'm not advertised as being in a particular location. Windstream had a nasty habit of publishing my name, address and Windstream phone number in the Windstream phone book. That was particularly worrysome because at the time I was being stalked quite intensively. Since I never actually put a phone on the line, using it purely for DSL, I never got any harrassing phonecalls. Having said that, I did try plugging a phone in and from dawn til dusk I'd be getting advertising calls. That phone lasted 3 days before being unplugged and dumped in the eBay box.

One of the irksome things about my old-school digital cameras is the total lack of connectivity. Bluetooth, NFC and WiFi are the only ways to communicate with tablets and these days with many laptops. Loath as I am to sell something for half a peanut, I might be forced to do just that, purely in order to keep taking photos. I can't really see my buying another Macbook when they cost almost 4 times what a Windows laptop does. Mind, if I did buy a laptop, Windows would not last much further than the "Do you agree to the terms and conditions" because the answer would be an emphatic no. Instead, I would install Linux. Linux has improved in terms of user interface, dramatically since it was first released and now ranks on a par with Mac. Windows is left behind in the dust.

Going forward, the future definitely looks mobile and lightweight. One of the main concerns is something that can be charged off a non mains voltage supply. Tablets, phones and mifi pads can all be charged via USB. Cameras have a problem as the chargers are all bricks that hang off a wall socket and gobble 110v. Perhaps I should say that's the problem with my camera. My decade old superzoon compact that no longer takes good photos takes AA batteries which are easily chargeable while mobile. Modern cameras don't take AA batteries which is in my opinion a gigantic leap backward. Instead they use non standard lithium batteries that cannot be used in any other device and each battery needs its own funky little charger.

Monday, January 11, 2016

Why I don't use Facebook

Earlier today a friend sent screenshots of a conversation she had on Facebook via their messaging service with a scammer. Very entertaining! The big problem I have with Facebook is not the scammers nor the fact they closed my account for refusing to reveal my true identity, thus opening me up to scammers, stalkers and other villains. I have been stalked fairly consistently in the past and thus am not willing to open myself up again to such a danger.

The screenshots below depict exactly what happened. In terms of photographic context, that might seem murky but I'll explain it. Villains want your camera gear to sell to buy drugs, hookers and so on. Facebook makes it easy for villains to find you and where you live. They're not all as stupid as the villain in the screenshots. Incidentally, they did apparently ring my friend's redundant Google Voice number from a number identified as (260) 702-2273 which comes up as a Verizon cellphone number.





Needless to say, I had to paste over the more graphic details in order to make this publishable! The naughty images were of 3 different women and different from the user's profile. Although the user called, there was no message left other than a vague noise of something rattling in the background. As that was the only number to have called her Google Voice in many moons, it's highly unlikely to be an accidental call.

My recommendation - stay as far away from Facebook as you possibly can. Avoiding Bank of America is also a good idea as I recently noticed they were adding $12 a month charges onto a positive balance.

Sunday, January 10, 2016

Jim Bean meets Alcoholics Anonymous

I seem to do this fairly regularly with a lot of Android apps. Today was the day I dumped my Twitter app. Thank heavens that I don't actually have to pay for Android apps. Twitter just got on my tits again because of its continual censorship of my tweets. Certainly I still have Twitter with its auto posts whenever I post a blog entry but I took the app itself off my tablet. I was so tired of writing a carefully considered and witty response to things people said only to have the Twitter app refuse to send it.

Years ago, I refused to pay money for any Windows software because it was just plain awful. I have yet to see any Windows software that is actually worth paying for. Look at Windows itself - so riddled with bugs that Microsoft has to come out with fixes every few days. Windows is a product that never ever gets out of beta testing stage. When Microsoft finds it has such a mess that it cannot possibly fix it any more and have it actually work properly, they release a new version with all new bugs and holes. It's absolutely the same with bought Windows software. After buying Windows software a few times and finding it never actually worked, I quit throwing money away on it and went for the free versions instead. They stood the same chance of not working but at least they were free.

Move on a few years and I went Mac and what a relief that was - none of this constant update and fix bullshit. I had the same Mac for 8 years without an issue - until the battery died. Of course, being electronic, replacing the battery is something you just don't do. Many times I've found electronics just don't last much longer than the battery. My first experience of this was a pocket calculator. The batteries died so I replaced them and a few weeks later the calculator did too. The experience has been true so many times that these days I just refuse to buy batteries for anything electronic because like as not, it'll just die.

So, I'm currently an Android tablet only user. This is, I believe, my 4th Android tablet since 2012. They're not worth throwing a lot of money at because they don't last too long either. My first tablet was a refurbished Nook Color and that was a complete piece of trash. In the end I sold the damned thing on eBay for not very much, about 5 months after I bought it. My next tablet was an RCA 7 inch with 8GB. That was pretty awful and after 6 months I ended up just giving it away. After that I bought a refurbished Nexus 7 which conked out after 14 months. It needed a factory reset so I gave it a factory reset and found the repair partition had been erased (not by me). That led to my current Android tablet (an RCA 7 inch with 16GB). It really is not worth spending money on electronic crap - it just doesn't last much longer than a bottle of Jim Bean at an Alcoholics Anonymous convention.

Perhaps my biggest gripe about tablets is the lack of connectivity to cameras such as my existing Canon XT, to mass storage and to printers. The cloud is all well and good but there are areas where the sun shines. I want to be able to load photos on my tablet from my camera, play with them in a photo processing package and then upload to a mass storage device without having to piddle about with the internet. Let's just face it - I live in an old bus. How much internet do you think I actually get in my old bus? How much do you want to bet that I'm willing to burn through my 5GB a month of data on my phone uploading photos to the cloud? This is why we need a local storage option and local photo processing option on Android tablets.

Saturday, January 9, 2016

Amazon - the tampon of online retail

In South Carolina at least, Amazon's status went from tax-free to taxed on the 1st of January. This means all of Amazon's prices are about 10% higher than anywhere else. This is because Amazon came to South Carolina, opened a warehouse promising thousands of jobs then employed donkey labor from South Carolina and imported all the staff for the worthwhile jobs from elsewhere. It was a typically exploitative move - get somebody else to build the factory, employ a few minimum wage serfs on short term contracts and then after the tax break ends, go someplace else.

The writing is on the wall for Amazon's presence in South Carolina. Now that the residents of South Carolina have to pay an extra 10% basically because they live in the same state that Amazon has a warehouse then I can't imagine many people in South Carolina continuing to purchase their goods - photographic or otherwise from Amazon.

As I said - Amazon is like a tampon - they go in, create a bloody mess and then they're out, never to return. No commercial entity can survive being taxed when none of their competitors are. I don't think, if South Carolinians have any sense at all, that they'll be buying much from Amazon now.

As far as Amazon went anyway, they were pretty darned expensive. They buy cheap stuff from China and hike the prices terribly. A while ago I needed a battery-powered shower head for my photo trips. I saw it on Amazon and on eBay - same exact unit. Amazon was $10 more expensive. There was a time when Amazon was actually cheaper. That vanished as soon as Jeff Bezos decided he wanted to use Amazon to fund his own private space program. 

My experience of Amazon has been extremely variable. I only buy things I cannot obtain elsewhere cheaper via Amazon. Even so, I've had allegedly new books arrive as really dog-eared, old books. I've ordered things that never ever shipped nor arrived. On the other hand I've had some things arrive swiftly. In terms of selling, selling stuff via Amazon is much more expensive than selling via eBay - which was already such a rip-off that it frequently works out better just to throw the damn thing in the trash than attempt to sell it. That had a knock on for me - I now don't buy ANYTHING unless it's absolutely unavoidable. Case in point - the fast lens, new camera or new camera system I'd like in order to take decent night sky photos. I simply refuse to blow yet more money on a hobby that doesn't stand a chance of making a profit. 

I look at photography like this - the lowest amount spent on gear that will produce an acceptible inage is money well spent. Money spent that will not show an improvement or which will result in the aquisition of an item that will be seldome used is money shamelessly wasted and more than that, represents an item that's going to take up valuable space that could be used to house something that's actually worth having.

Back in the dim and distant past, I allowed somebody to over-ride my native caution and fill my head with baloney about actually making money from photography. Let's just say that in the years before I arrived in the USA, photography had earned me just about $300 in total. Since I arrived in the US, it earned me $225 in total. Now when I lived elsewhere, photography was purely a hobby that occasionally made money. That's the way it should have stayed but I allowed myself to be convinced by somebody that I later decided was probably a sociopath to follow photography professionally. Needless to say, that didn't work out and I ended up spending an extraordinary amount on camera gear that rapidly plummeted in value. Some equipment was never even used when I eventually managed to sell it (for far less than I paid - probably only 20% of the purchase price).That has made me extremely cautious about expenditure on camera gear in general.

In terms of camera expenditure, if I was to get a wide lens then I'd have nothing to sell to fund or part fund it because everything unwanted has already been sold. If I sold everything, changed systems and wasn't as impressed, that would be a downer. On the other hand I'm also asking myself whether since my phone has such a darned good camera, I really need or want a stand-alone camera that only works as a camera. Indeed, look at most of the recent news stories and they're almost all photographed with cellphones.

Friday, January 8, 2016

Another day in the useless world of DPReview

Years ago, a workmate summed forums up as wasting a lot of time, conveying minimum technical information and creating a lot of noise. I read the digital camera forums mostly for a good laugh. DPReview has to be the one that gives me the most laughs.

It transpired that somebody bought a 75-300 lens and a wide-angle converter with their camera. Now the 75-300 isn't the best for sharpness but it's adequate. When stopped down to f8, it's about as good as most other lenses. The silly billy then posted about it on a digital camera board instead of trying to work out how to get the best out of it.
Let's just say the recommendation to throw it all in the nearest river is about the most stupid suggestion I have ever encountered. Even if it's not possible to return equipment that the original poster clearly couldn't use, it would still be possible to sell it via eBay and it still might be usable for lower resolution photography or videography. The danger of posting something that stupid is that some guillable fool might actually do it.

I am rather glad that I'm not a member of any forums any more. I had to deal with assinine answers to practical questions. I need not have bothered because invariably after digging around I found every answer and more than I needed. All I had from forums was aggravation.

So, this is another typical day in the useless world of DPReview. Just for a laugh, I looked at some of the "reviews" of camera gear. Most read like sales brochures and the "test" photography was extremely uninspiring and unchallenging. Needless to say, the next question is - who owns DPReview? It seems pretty much to be an Amazon venture.

Interesting - a formerly independent camera review website owned by a camera retailler. How unbiassed is that likely to be? From the reviews, extremely biassed. From the "discussions" just a load of pillocks posting for the sake of posting.

My recommendation - give forums a miss as well as camera review sites.

Thursday, January 7, 2016

The ideal camera?

Thinking more about yesterday and the pro photographer that commmented about camera manufacturers loading equipment down with worthless features just in order to charge more. In the example of the 580EX2 flash for example, all that's wanted is a flash with ETTL and manual control. Auto-zooming, strobing, remote control etc is just extra stuff that's pure garbage. Canon's $600 flash is $60 of flash and $540 of absolute trash that could be stripped off easily! Nikon etc do exactly the same thing. And people are amazed that photographers use cheaper Chinese flashes and avoid using flashes altogether. Indeed, I used to have several Canon flashes but I sold them all. Their value was plummeting and the amount they were used was minimal. They were one of the worst purchases I ever made!

In terms of cameras, the same abuse of the consumer has been going on for years. Ever funkier focussing and metering systems. Ever more funky modes. Dozens of un-needed, un-used and un-desired features. Megapixels have been trickled out appallingly slowly. Indeed, the camera companies have been operating as a cartel for the past 20 years, ensuring nobody offers more megapixels or more ISO than anybody else. The companies pretended to be in a race to megapixels but it was all planned down to the minutae. Now that everybody has adequate megapixels, their pretend competition is over ISO. Both could have been done at exactly the same time. The technology hasn't changed in a decade.

Now we get to the nitty gritty of what we, as consumers, need. We don't need LCDs on the backs of cameras - why would a professional be wasting their time looking at a screen when they should be concentrating on the next image? Similarly, amateurs think the screen is invaluable. I never use mine - total waste of space and battery power. What about all those funky modes? As far as I'm concerned, I use manual or aperture priority. I don't do shutter priority, program or any other funky mode. Total waste of time for companies to put them on. What about ISOs? Well, I have used 1600 and would use 3200 if I had it. I would like more of an ISO range but it's not a killer for me.

Things that have vanished from cameras that I miss badly are the hyperfocal scale on the lenses, which was very useful, the aperture ring from the lens barrel which I also miss badly. I miss the split screen focussing aid and the optical view of the aperture as well as the shutter speed indication.

In terms of controls, push buttons and touch screens just don't cut it for me. Give me old fashioned dials where I know what I'm doing in the dark without a flashlight. The Canon 580EX was absolute garbge in this respect - I needed a manual and a flashlight just to be able to use the bloody thing. The same with current Canon cameras.

Give me a flash that has ETTL and manual modes and a camera with control over ISO, shutter speed and aperture priority. I wouldn't want to be bothered with anything else. White balance could easily be auto and file format solely RAW. Photographers want to take pictures, not fiddle around with pointless settings on miracles of technology that are really camera companies waving their dicks at each other!

The ONLY camera that is solely a photographers camera is the Sigma SD10 though it is very lacking in higher ISOs. I do like the Foveon sensor though it badly needs higher ISOs. The Bayer sensor gives higher ISOs but lacks color layering.

So, camera companies - dump your ridiculous cartel and get cracking on a real camera that I alctually want to buy to use. I have an XT and I sufffer its stupidity. I have yet to see a modern camera that's as good as my Nikon FM was.

Tuesday, January 5, 2016

Photo Processing - the pro way..

Today I made my first visit to the camera club. Two things of great interest there:
The first was a presentation by a photographer who works for AP and Getty. It was interesting to note that his post processing echoed mine. He corrected for saturation, clarity and a few other parameters, globally just as I do - no fiddle farting around (as my late aunty would have said). 
The second was that included in the show and tell element were cellphone images, projected to huge sizes. They were excellent. That really knocks on the head any notion that cellphone images are in any way inferior.

In discussion, the pro stated that he uploaded his images to the agencies via FTP and uploaded about 70% of the photo he took. He didn't just blaze away like so many amateurs would. I'm always suspicious of photographers that guarantee or claim to take more than a hundred photos of a wedding. At the end of the day, the bride and groom want the traditional posed shot with the priest at the altar or near enough then the rest just go in an album. Nobody wants the torture of going through an album with more than 20 or so images.

Another thing the pro stated was that he lived with two other guys and that it was getting harder every year to make money from photography. Judging from his living arrangements, very hard as it didn't seem he made enough to pay rent and his attire didn't exude wealth either. And all that while agecies were willing to fly him from one side of the county to the other. It seems the skills are in demand but the work is expected to be done almost gratis.

If there is a message from tonight's presentation, it's that photography isn't a worthwhile income no matter how good you are at it and that it's not worth wasting too much time post processing. The balance of a photo is 99% composition/exposure and only 1% post processing.

Another message is that DSLRs just aren`t needed. Indeed, the pro`s comments on flashes when I commented that I thought the Canon 580EX2 represented very poor value for money was that he agreed because in his opinion manufacturers like to load things with features in order just to charge more without the features even being necessary. Indeed, the pro didn't use flash equipment at all. He used to until it all got spoiled by water and now does not. Again that suggests he cannot afford to replace it. His available light photos indoors were wonderful. Bang goes the daft notion that flashes are really needed or that expensive flashes are essential.

 From my high-speed photography, I used a 580EX2 on 1/128th power only. I could have done exactly what I did with an elderly Vivitar 283. For my other photography, the on-camera flash is just fine. High ISOs eliminate the need of flashes in many instances. Indeed, the pro found carrying flashes to be cumbersome and not carrying them to be liberating.

For myself, I still believe that DSLRs are the dodos of the camera world. Indeed, the smartphone takes such great images that its getting really hard to justify the extra cost of anything else.

Monday, January 4, 2016

Twitter is censoring my tweets!

Ok, so it is not a particularly photographic post but it is - kinda - because my blog updates pass through Twitter via TwitterFeed. I've been finding my updates haven't been getting through reliably and have noticed that my Tweets of late have been hit or miss as to whether they go through.

Today I sent a tweet with the word "hag" in it and the tweet refused to send. I changed the word to "bag" and the tweet went through with no problem. The "hag" tweet still is refusing to transmit. This must be a recent update to Twitter as it only affects my tablet. My phone has not had a software update in a while as I turned them off because they waste so much data for so little gain. The tablet is new with the latest Twitter client.

I've noticed Twitter has been selective as to which tweets it will send for quite a while. I don't think there's any reason why I should be on anybody's naughty list. Certainly I didn't get any lumps of coal this Christmas. I am not a member of any terrorist groups (unless you call white male anglo-saxons a terrorist group).

Ooh... Perhaps I'm a terrorist because I agree with and support Donald Trump in his campaign to be President and agree with many of his more forthright opinions. Maybe I'm guilty of not being willing to bow down and worship the enemies of freedom. Perhaps I'm antisocial because I go from home to work and back every day and only go out socially once a month?

But the fact is that Twitter is censoring my tweets. This tweet today is proof positive. I'd been kinda suspecting my tweets have been being censored for a couple of weeks. I've had so many that have just refused to send - with no discernable reason other than the tone of some being a little stern.

Well, welcome to the New World Order. The jackboot of opression is here. Next there will be forced labor camps, state sanctioned murder, women being forced to leave education and to live as servile sex objects limited to lives spent cooking, cleaning and child bearing.