The Stupid British Photographer

No, I’m not talking about the kind of oaf that wields a smartphone camera in the botanical gardens and tramples over the rare and endangered plants carefully cultivated by skilled horticulturists in order to take a photograph of a piece of chewing gum on the back of a bench because it’s “artistic”. I’m not even talking about the kind of buffoon that climbs tall buildings from the outside while endangering life and limb while causing consternation to the general public, police, ambulancemen, firemen etc and risking hefty fines just to get that “perfect” photograph that just about every maintainance worker up there has already taken. Nor am I talking about those that wander into long closed facilities in order to take photographs of ruin while concrete blocks sail gaily from on high, landing with a thud on the ground next to them.

What I am talking about is the kind of fool that actually believes Britain will be better outside the European Union. Well, I suspect the Europeans would be a lot happier if Britain was outside since it’s universally agreed that the British moan, whine, grumble and complain an awful lot. In fact, on my last trip to Britain I found an awful lot of pessimistic, negative people whose mouths were as foul as their body odor. (And you wonder why I choose to live in the USA).

For some inexplicable reason, the British population has allowed itself to be hoodwinked into voting in a non-legally-binding refurendum (opinion poll) to leave the European Union. Sure - the EU can come out with heavy-handed legislation but then on the other hand so does the British Parliament. That’s not a reason to leave. There’s money and power at foot here and it’s not money and power flowing into Britain if it leaves the EU. The usual vocal expresses of poison and bilge (The Daily Express and the Daily Mail) are staunchly advocating leaving the EU while painting a rose-tinted version of how Britain will be better afterwards. These newspapers are actually not independent. Follow the links and you’ll find Russian connections.

Who would benefit from upheaval and instability in Europe? The Russians, of course. With enough upheaval and instability they could easily march back into Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Poland, Czechoslovakia etc but that’s not their goal. Individual nation states run as puppet countries from the safety of Moscow is the ultimate goal. Everybody will think they’re still independent but it’s just an illusion. Look at the furor over the US elections with allegations of meddling by the Russians with their “Internet Research Foundation”.

So while we’re all quietly ignoring the potential future of Britain annexed into Soviet Union 2 with Vladimir Putin’s face on the Poundski and where the Lord’s Prayer recited daily in school assemblies throughout the country now says “Oh Benevolant Vladimir, give us our daily bread that we may serve you”, let’s look at what will definitely happen if Britain doesn’t get annexed by the new Soviet Union. It’s really quite a lot and quite involved.

• Emergency trade agreements will have to apply leaving Britain at a massive competitive disadvantage. 
• More staff will be required to manage borders. 
• British exports will plunge expanding the budget deficit
• Millions will be laid off or forced into early retirement
• Pensions will be cut
• Unemployment pay will cease to exist
• Sickness pay will cease to exist
• Everything that can be sold by the government will be sold
• Millions will be evicted from their homes due to inability to pay rent or to get anybody to pay their rent for them.
• Vast slum encampments will spring up wherever there’s a vacant space. 
• Public health programs will be cut back
• Cholera, Typhus and Dysentry will return
• Leprosy will return and leper colonies will be established
• The lights will go out as they did in the 70s but for different but similar reasons.
• The EU will start sending aid packages
• Boatloads of refugees from Britain will start arriving in Ireland, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Germany, Holland, Italy, Spain and France.

And as for photography? Nobody will be able to afford the electricity to charge their camera. Nobody will be able to afford fuel for their car to go anywhere nice. The animals in the zoos will have been long since eaten by the starving population. That is, of course, if the photographer hasn’t already pawned his camera to buy a stale loaf of bread.

How stupid can the British be?

Which way is the right way?

Thinking about whether to buy a camera or to stick with a phone is alaways a tough choice. This is something I was thinking about yesterday. I already have cameras and phones and have no intention of being exclusive to one or the other. Having said that I went out the other day specifically to take some autumn photos.

That’s one I took with an Olympus PM1 with a 14-42 standard lens (I don’t own any other lenses for my Olympus). I’m sure you’ll agree it’s really quite a pleasant photo. I don’t think I could have improved on this by using a Canon DSLR.

This photo was taken with my $29 cheapo ZTE cellphone. Both photos show you clearly what you’re looking at. The cellphone image is a bit softer (which could be fixed with post processing). Neither images have had an after photo twiddling - they’re both straight from camera JPEGS.

Years ago when people actually wasted money on printing photos to put in physical albums and to hang on walls while the prints faded it actually made sense to go for a higher-end camera. These days though almost all booboos can be fixed with automatic software tools. The kicker is most photographs will only ever be displayed digitally which is pretty low resolution.

Do you really want to see my quick lunch from the other day printed to 16”x20” and hung on a wall somewhere? Of course not! Posted on social media though that would be fine and dandy. The point is that the only place 99.99% of images will ever be displayed is via social media. Aside from wedding photos (forget the “albums” nobody cares about those. They’re sold by “photographers” who’re more into a quick buck that anything else), nobody much cares about prints. In fact, most couples would rather have the digital images and simply press delete when their partnership breaks up.

The trade off is simple - a camera will provide an excessively high quality images while a phone will allow you to share an adequate quality image easily. There’s your choice. You can be anal and go for high quality - in which case you go for a Leica or practical and go for a cellphone. Anything between those two is just a distraction.

Most digital cameras (my PM1 included) can take excellent movies. Now the movie above was taken with a cellphone (my ZTE). The movie taken with my PM1 was obviously of higher quality but uploading a large file would have burned up too much bandwidth and taken up too much storage space. Having said that, the only difference was a slight increase in clarity. That was probably more due to my having a polarizer permanently mounted on the lens.

So, how important is uploadability to you? For me, it’s important. This is why 90% of my blog images these days are taken with a cellphone. This is why this blog gets so little attention these days. I like it to be mostly camera based. With a cellphone of limited speed and bandwidth as my sole internet connection, I can’t afford to waste the data. My cellphone uploads automatically without my having to press buttons. The images are instantly ready to share. The killer is - they’re good enough to use in publications. I’ve published several cellphone images in books I’ve written. A real camera makes the photos a bit better and a bit easier to take BUT is the convenience tradeoff worthwhile.

I’ll leave you with a question... If you’re walking down the street and suddenly Lady Gaga walks by naked aside from a leather collar and being lead on by an equally naked Bruce Willis who’s holding a leash attached to that collar, are you going to take a photo with your cellphone or with your camera? Will you even have your camera with you?

A thousand poor decisions

Nikon, Canon, Olympus, Pentax, Minolta, Konica, Yashica, Zenit, Zorki and Praktika - what do they all have in common? Poor decision making - that's what! Now who, you might be asking are Minolta, Konica, Yashica, Zenti, Zorki and Praktika? They're all camera manufacturers that failed to adapt to digital and perished as a consequence.

Agfa, Kodak, Ilford and a thousand other companies had just one product - film and failed to adapt to digital. Agfa vanished, Kodak went bankrupt (twice) and Ilford is in its death throes. Just like the current MLM fad, Lularoe (who sell overpriced leggings in vomit-inducing colors and patterns), they'll be gone soon.

Nikon, Canon, Olympus, Panasonic and Pentax are waiting for the grim reaper to arrive to take them to the deathly museum of perished companies. The same reason everybody else perished - failure to adapt to the market and failure to identify what it is that the market really wants.

I've been into photography since my first camera back in 1973 that was given to me by my late aunty and late grandmother. That was a Kodak 126 Instamatic. It took cartridge film in a square 35mm format. I loved that camera though my parents were not too impressed with the cost of film and developing.

Over the years I've used various cameras and followed developments in the camera world fairly closely until about ten years ago when it seemed that camera companies were failing to innovate. Pentax was a classic example - they would keep re-releasing the same camera with slightly changed functions and with a new model number every year or so. It was the same blessed camera! Niko, Canon etc pretty much do exactly the same thing albeit on a longer timeframe.

It's all been a case of milking the market. Slowly increasing ISOs until there are so many zeroes they had to make the display wider to accommodate them. In practical purposes there's no need for these ludicrous ISOs. They went for ludicrous shutter speeds until they reached the limit of the technology. Again, there's no need for it. If 1/1,000 isn't fast enough to freeze motion then 1/16,000 isn't going to do it either. It's all become pointless feature clutter. The same with resolution - ever higher resolution that provides nobody with anything worthwhile. If the photo isn't good at 8 megapixels, it's not going to be any better at 800 megapixels.

For some strange reason and I'm not sure why, manufacturers have been slow to realise that ISO, shutter speed, fantastic lenses and more megapixels are not what the public wants. Sure - ask one of the people that post on those ludicrous online discussion groups that abound and they'll spout the most exotic requirements and why it's essential. The problem is that all these "features" have taken away from cameras the very thing that made them fun and usable.

If I bought a film camera I had 4 things I could set - shutter speed, ISO, aperture and focus. That was it. It required no great big manual to explain how to access these features. In fact, most cameras didn't have much of a manual. Now if I buy a camera, the manual has become so huge that it's like a car manual - and how many of us read car manuals?

Cameras have been bogged down by flash trash. Scene settings - why on earth would anybody want to fumble their way through a hard-to-read and equally hard to navigate menu on a pokey little screen to put their camera in "sunset" mode? Or at a party - to put their camera in "mother-in-law" mode?

I have several cameras. I have an XT that I bought new, 12 years ago for a massive price and which is now unsalable but which produces excellent images. That has scene modes, I have an Olympus I bought secondhand for next to nothing yet which had originally been some ludicrous price just five years before.That has a really terrible menu. I have a 15 year old Canon S1 IS compact that nobody would ever buy. That has scene modes too.

So why am I against "scene" modes? Simple - the kind of person that would have used scene modes is the kind of person that would use a phone instead of a camera because it's simpler to use and more inline with what they actually need and want. Scene modes have no place on a camera.

Then there're all the "features" - none of which anybody ever needs. The camera companies are just not listening to their users. They're listening to the product worshippers from camera sales groups. Most of those people love technology and talking about technology but probably never do anything other than taking a photo of their dinner and posting it on facebook with their phone camera.

I went to take photos of the eclipse with my Olympus. I did reasonably well. Digging through the menu for the controls was a real challenge though. Uploading the images was a challenge. Charging the battery was a challenge. These are the things manufacturers are ignoring. Nobody but nobody wants more complicated fancy electronic features on a camera.

What do I want in a camera? I want something small - the Olympus is nice and small. I want something I can easily upload photos with. I've not yet seen that feature on any camera. I want something I can charge easily - I've not yet seen that feature either.

To transfer images I have to go to all the performance of pulling a memory card out or connecting a data cable to a computer. I can't just sit it beside my iPad and let the iPad transfer the images across. I've not seen a camera that can just be placed on a Qi wireless charging station or plugged into a USB port to charge. This is how electronics are charged, these days.

All this head-in-the-sand attitude is going to get the camera manufacturers is their names added to the list of such illustrious names as Coronet, Fed, Minolta, Yashica etc. I have my 3 cameras plus my tablet/phone. No prizes for guessing I use my tablet or phone far more than anything else for my photography.

Why don't I use my XT? It's big, bulky and needs a computer to transfer the data. Why don't I use my Olympus? Though I can read JPEG images from the card using a card reader on my iPad, it's still not very user friendly. I can't just plug either into a handy USB port to charge.

These days, if I want to take a picture, I pick up my tablet or my phone.

Boom! I just took that photo of my desk. It uploaded to Google instantly and I included it in my blog a few seconds later. How easy was that? Even if all I had to do was to stand the camera on an NFC pad for it to upload to a tablet, that would be something.

The way things are going I can see the tombstones being ordered shortly for Nikon, Canon, Pentax, Panasonic, Sony and Olympus. The lack of tablet support, specifically iPad support, is what's going to kill the vast majority of these companies How long have we had tablets? Was it  2009 when the iPad first came out? Seems to me that 8 years of resting on their laurels should have taught the camera companies something. Plummeting sales means only one thing - the public dont want to buy your product. I share as gees are eggs would never buy shares in a deadbeat company.

The 2017 Solar Eclipse

Not feeling particularly like fiddle-fiddling around with my DSLR, I chose today to use my Olympus PM1 and 14-42mm lens as my camera of opportunity. Being so light and small meant I could use a very old and flimsy tripod that I paid $30 for a few years ago. While it did not perform at all well with a heavier DSLR, it performs well with my lighter mirrorless camera.

The actual eclipse started before I bothered to get out there with my camera. Having said that I was set up and photographing before and during totality. One of my first shots was just a plain ordinary photo of the sun. The moon was taking a bite out of the sun in the first photo but it didn't show up too well.

In the next photo, I tried going to manual mode from iAuto and underexposed a little. The crescent of the moon cutting into the sun didn't show up at all. It's not a bad photograph though.

 Next, I pulled off the mylar sunglasses that my girlfriend had given me to view the sun and put one eyepiece over the lens. That worked well. It's possible to see clearly that a bite has been taken out of the sun. In retrospect I would have liked to zoom in and take another photo but I'll have to wait 70 years for the next solar eclipse in Columbia, South Carolina or go to one of the other locations. I gather there are solar eclipses fairly regularly across the world. The next full eclipse is either 2025 or 2026.

 Having taken a photo like that, the moon ate more of the sun to such an extent that it became really quite dim though not dark. The sky did not turn black as I'd thought it might have. To be honest, the first eclipse I was when I was a very small child. The next was in the years 1990-2005 though I can't recall exactly which year. I'd been living in Britain and the BBC had droned on so much about the eclipse that I was thoroughly tired of it by the time it eventually turned up. Thus, I didn't pay too much attention. I looked and noted it was dark outside but that was all.

Suddently totality happened. Clearly having a polarizing filter on the lens didn't help as evidenced by the reflection of the sun with the moon in front on the front element. It was rather interesting to see everything go darker and rather unique to see light levels that low without any afternoon or morning color cast.

 Looking at the photo I realise that using iAuto I had achieved my goal. The stars are visible in the photo or at least some of the brighter ones are. There are a couple to the right that appear as single red pixels. Those are not hot or stuck pixels - they're real planets.

Enlarging the central portion of the photo it's possible to see a star just above and to the left of the eclipsed sun. For those of a technical disposition, the exposure was 1.3 seconds, f5.6 at ISO 200. Bang went my theory about exposing for 5 seconds at ISO 1600 and f3.5. iAuto saw to that and came up with the goods. Now I've heard a lot of bunk about iAuto and auto this and auto that but honestly, it does seem to make photography easier and makes for better images.

Does anybody remember the old days when nobody used a light meter? I do. I used not to have a light meter on my camera. I used to have to gauge exposure by ambient light. In fact a neighbor and I used to call out exposures then check them on a light meter. We were rarely if ever wrong. Then in came light meters which eliminated bad light estimation. Then came auto exposure which eliminated dark or light photos. Then in came auto-focus which eliminated out of focus images. Then came digital and intelligent programming. 

Given that even the average phone is a splendid camera, I'm highly unsurprised to find most people now take photos with their phones and that professional photographers are finding it harder than ever to sell their snake oil. I see adverts by expensive wedding photographers and wonder who is ever dumb enough to fall for that one. Heck, if they''re dumb enough to pay for photography when their friends cell phone images will be of excellent quality and shared on facebook within seconds then I've got a bridge to sell. That's if you don't prefer to buy blinker fluid or need your car radiator flushed.

So, will I be at the next solar eclipse? I cannot say definitely that I won't though I find the idea unlikely. On the other hand I never ever thought I'd have made the journey from the United Kingdom to the United States of America nor that I'd end up living here. Stranger things clearly having already happened, I might indeed be at the next total solar eclipse. That's going to be either Chili or Argentina on July 2nd, 2019. That would be my mother's 88th birthday had she not passed away last year. Perhaps that's a message from beyond telling me to be there?

The Eclipse challenge

Two minutes of totality. That's not very much! My goal or challenge this eclipse is to try to photograph the eclipse with the stars in the background. This, I shall do with my Olympus PM1 and 14-42 lens. This is an older camera that I purchased secondhand a couple of years ago.

Experimenting with it last year, I found 40 seconds at 128,000 ISO at f3.5 resulted in an extreme over exposure with banding. I've not used the camera a whole lot so you might say it's almost strange territory.

Let's say that was overexposed by 4 stops (it was probably more) then 40 seconds becomes 1.25 seconds. There's no point in stopping down as the lens is focused at infinity and any areas slightly out of focus just won't be a problem.

We can conclude that on a dark night that a good exposure will be 128,000ISO, 1.25 seconds and f3.5. Now bringing that up for those that have a maximum ISO of 1600, we have 3 stops to add to exposure so 10 seconds should do the trick. Thus, your ideal night sky would be 1600 ISO, 10 seconds at f3.5. I say f3.5 because that's what most lenses are, wide open.

In terms of zoom length, unless you want to burn your eyes and sensor into oblivion then stick with wider angles such as 14mm on my Olympus or 28mm on 35mm or 18mm on a 1.5/1.6 crop sensor. With a 1" sensor that would be 10mm. Basically, keep it simple - keep the lens wide open.

As far as tripods are concerned, a decent tripod is a great help. I've shot sky photos with the camera placed on a tree stump, pointed upwards before now and it has worked really well. I'm not quite sure where the sun will be on the 21st (eclipse day) so a tripod or a bean bag will be very helpful.

As far as eclipse glasses and funky filters are concerned, I wouldn't personally bother. There's nothing to be gained from photos of the moon partially over the sun. It's not something a million other people won't put on Facebook etc while thinking they're the smartest, coolest kids in town instead of the dumbest. There's nothing particularly to be gained from watching the moon go across the sun either.

As a matter of fact, I've been through 2 total eclipses before. Two in Britain - the first I was too young to know what it was all about - and one where the media had bored the pants off everybody by blathering about the eclipse 24x7 for the previous few weeks. That one, I was so bored by that I never even went outside to look at it. My dad just tutted over the darkness and switched a light on while continuing to read his book.

My sole recommendation other than trying an exposure of ISO 1600, F3.5 and 10 seconds with a 10/14/18/28mm lens (or whatever the widest your kit lens will do) is to try to limit sensor exposure to the sun. The sun might harm your sensor. Now I'm not that worried. My PM1 cost me $75 secondhand two years ago. If I had to replace it, I'd be looking at about the same price. It's not earth shatteringly expensive.

Speaking of secondhand cameras, there are so many really good secondhand cameras out there that there's little point for anybody to buy new any more (other than to single-handedly and heroically maintain the cocaine habits of the bosses at the camera manufacturers). If I go out looking for a secondhand camera, I can find 8 and more megapixel cameras for next to nothing. The dimwits amongst us have fallen for the "upgrade" scam enough that there are plenty good cameras with hardly any wear, available.

Not once have I ever complained that my 8 megapixel 2007 Canon XT lacked resolution. It has been more than adequate for every task Ive thrown at it. The sole reason I have an Olympus PM1 now is not because of it's 20 megapixels but because of it's light weight and small size. I just found the Canon a bit big and bulky to hump around. It's fine for a studio or something similar but for travel, it just takes up too much space.

They say the best camera is the one you have with you. When I had a smartphone, I always had a really good camera with me. Now I don't have a smartphone, it doesn't particularly bother me. I dumped social media at about the same time as my smartphone quit on me. Neither were bringing me much joy so I canned the expense and time wasting.

If there are any clear nights then it might be a good idea to head out to practice photographing starry nights. If the moon is bright in the sky then photograph that too. Bracket your exposures. You only likely get one chance at this eclipse. Who knows what will happen between now and the next. The moon might fall apart (it is really old), there might be a zombie apocalypse (Voodoo is famous for its zombies)  or even an invasion from Mars (a sample return might bring back energy-based life forms that cannot be detected until it's too late).

Atmospheric photography

A great camera and a great lens helps to take great atmospheric photographs. This is not always the case however. Even the humblest camera can take a great photo. Today I'll show a photo taken using a Samsung Gusto flip phone. Yes, a flip phone.

Nothing has been altered. This is exactly as the scene looked at 05:45 one morning as I started the engine of the schoolbus I drive for work. Ok. I'll admit it... I love driving schoolbusses even though it's in no way lucrative.

The important thing is the colors of the early Dawn are shining through. Sure, the photo would have been better in landscape, would have been better not shot through a grubby bus windshield, would have been better shot with a better camera but it's there and it looks good.

Comparing cameras

On the left is a 2003 marvel of technology. The quick rundown is that it is 3 megapixel, one of the first image stabilized super zooms and did VGA video.

On the right is a marvel of 2012 technology. The quick rundown is that its is 12 megapixel, has image stabilization and high definition video.

The camera on the left cost $500 from Best Buy. The camera on the right I paid $60 for the camera, $60 for the lens, $10 approx for the strap, lens cap and polarizing filter. New, I'm sure that lot would have cost about the same as the Best Buy purchase.

What has all this technology done in the intervening decade? Not much to be honest. The image size is bigger but that's really about it. They've tinkered with ISO speeds raising a 400 max to 12,800, tinkered with image size and gone from standard AA batteries to some funky-ass lithium firebomb. That's it. That's all a decade of development has produced. It's as though camera companies have been happily sitting on their thumbs for a decade.

I can take a video with the Canon and publish it on YouTube and it will be indistinguishable from a video taken with the Olympus. By the time the video has been viewed at VGA resolution, there's no discernible difference. To be honest, who wants to spend the time downloading high resolution videos anyway? The content quality just is not worth spending the time on, even on professionally produced commercial videos. They're just moving wallpaper.

I can take a photo with the Canon and compare it with one taken on the Olympus. While the size is larger, that's the only difference. Viewed and shared online there is no difference. Who wants to spend the time downloading a high resolution image of Machu Pichu? We've all seen it - a grey stone ruin on top of a green hill surrounded by forests. No point in downloading yet another image and spending the bandwidth nor the storage space.

Photography in the last decade has become disposable. Nobody wants to lug a camera around and why should they? The photo of the two cameras was taken with my tablet. Even I don't use a camera very often now. Sure, I'll use one if I go on a special trip but 90% of the time even the worst photo from the cheapest cellphone will do.

Look online and you'll find cellphone images everywhere. A photo of aunt Maud and Uncle Albert standing in front of the pizza house or the White House or their own house. It's a matter of personal family record and that's it. No more, no less. There's no need for a high quality image.

When people pass away, what are the images their heirs treasure? Not the 50,000 photos of a perfume bottle standing on a table but the family photos. Content trumps everything.

The change in focus of photography toward disposable imagery has pretty much killed the passion many held for photography. That and the fact it's no longer a challenge. When it was harder to take good photos, there was an interest and a challenge. Now that every camera from the last decade can take well saturated, well focused, blur free images and in fact so can just about every cellphone and tablet, the interest has gone for most. That leaves me feeling somewhat of a dinosaur!

I'm going to have to say there's no difference really between any of the cameras/phone cameras produced in the last decade. I'll get pundits arguing against me but that's par for the course online. They will show me pretty pictures and explain at length why they think I'm an arsehole. The reality is that a picture is a picture; content is still king and every camera from the last decade will produce an equally acceptable image.

Four months onward

In May last year, my last Android tablet committed suicide. Unlike the other tablets, the charging port didn't break. This time, the operating system corrupted itself. It got slower and slower then finally ceased functioning so I gave it a factory reset which effectively turned the thing into a brick. Thus I went for an iPad.

The iPad has been pretty good. The software available is more limited and limiting but the user experience is excellent. Apple is somewhat miserable about the storage available online with 5GB as opposed to Googles 15GB and connectivity to other devices is hopeless. A camera memory card reader is available at about $30 or around the price of a cheap Android tablet that will connect easily to my existing card readers. As a pure consumption only device the iPad is excellent. The clunky connectivity is what kills it.

Sometime last year I went over to using an Olympus mirrorless camera. I still have not upgraded from the single lens I bought at the same time nor have I purchased an eye level viewfinder for it. I have found the iAuto setting is pretty good and covers most of the situations I need, most of the time. In fact, I've not found a single situation it hasn't handled superbly.

About four months ago I switched to my current flip phone having used smart phones for the previous 7 years. In all practical purposes I can find nothing that I'm actually missing with this setup. In fact I find my time is more mine as I am not continually checking for messages or notifications. I'm not getting all excited about an email arriving only to find it's another breast enhancement or penis enlargement message.

Having been using my Olympus camera, I find it's much more user friendly than my Canon digital SLR. In fact, comparing the two makes the Canon look like a Fisher-Price sized toy. Big chunky cameras and big chunky lenses for toddlers hands to grasp. The Olympus I can put in a single jacket pocket. Best of all, instead of spending $1000 like I did on my Canon camera and then watching it depreciate down to $10 on eBay, I spent $50 on a used Olympus.

The problem with the Olympus is that I can't get the images off it without using somebody else's computer. The software won't run on my elderly MacBook. My elderly MacBook can't be upgraded any further in terms of operating system and the battery is dead. A replacement battery from eBay turned out to be fake and worked for two weeks before quitting.

So, photographically, I'm pretty much on stop for the moment unless I borrow somebody else's computer - which I am loathe to do. The way forward is limited by money. The options would appear to be:

• Buy an overly expensive gizmo for my iPad and hope the iPad lasts longer than a couple more months. The longest I've had from a tablet before it broke is 14 months. Cost $25

•  Buy a new battery for my MacBook and hope I can cope with just jpeg images since nothing will read the orf image files.  Cost $100-$250 (Apple refuses to say how much exactly)

•  Buy a cheap android tablet for uploading images only. ($40)

•  Buy a new Apple laptop and pray it lasts as long as my old one. ($800-$1500)

There really seems little to choose between the first and third options. They allow me to handle jpeg images but not orf images. That's pretty much a killer for serious photography as is the inability to store the images locally. A laptop would have a good hard drive. There is of course the other option if using just memory cards for storage. Use a card and store it. That would work pretty well and to be honest, I think this rotating magnetic disk idea has had its day.

The big stumbling block is of course money. How much I can afford to spend out of how much I have while leaving a little behind to copewith an emergency. Being out of work from March to September of 2014 depleted my funds terribly. Then continuing to stay in a hovel that cost more than my income for a further 7 months put my funds on the critical list. When I say a hovel, I do mean a hovel. I was in a house with drug dealers to the left and right, not far from the jail. I'm not sure what kind of pigs lived in the place before me but they left it in an awful state. I never got my deposit back but then I wasn't expecting to when they asked for it. Any landlord that would rent out a nasty place in a nasty area isn't going to be too honest.

So since then I've been double bunking while also converting an old schoolbus into a home. That has been a painfully slow progress due to lack of funds and having to do it all while being paid effectively less than minimum wage. $9 an hour sounds ok until there are no benefits and only 4 hours a day and only for 180 days a year. To save you working it out, that's $6,480 a year gross. Barely enough to get to and from work etc. I was stuck on that for 2 years until I got my current position which still leaves me eligible for food stamps, rent assistance etc - if I applied.

As I'm now earning a shade more money though not enough to need to file taxes, I feel I can afford a little improvement. The last 3 years have been very rough! Indeed life hasn't been rosy for longer than that even. Without too much risk, I might be able to splurge up to the price of a cheap tablet.

Nikon and Canon to merge

News comes of a planned merger between Canon and Nikon. It seems that declining profits in a world where just about everybody can produce good quality images from their phones, be they flip phones or smart phones has led to a decline in the number of real cameras being purchased.

Reading the joint companies pre press release documentation they agree that while Nikon's smaller left hand lens mount might be problematic for Canon users, mounting a bigger Canon lens onto a Nikon will be harder. It seems that some product realignment is going to occur.

1 Canon and Nikon will not be called Canikon but rather Guandong Cameras since that's largely where the components are made.
2 The Nikon 1 line and Canon M lines will disappear.
3 Nikons bayonet will be used solely for mirrorless cameras and Nikon mount DSLR production will cease as of April 15th.
4 Canon DSLRs will continue to be made under the Guandong brand.
5 New cameras from Guandong will be internet connected meaning instant uploads of both jpeg and raw files.
6 Guandong Cameras will use the Adobe DNG file format rather than Canons CR2 or Nikons NEF.
7 In an attempt to make cameras cheaper there will be a trial line of internet connected cameras that carry advertising. In order to take a picture a 30 second advert must be viewed.

The future for the merged companies looks bright according to the current Presudents of both Nikon and Canon who met to seal the historical deal yesterday. Both will head off to retirement as soon as their successor is appointed.

Death of a Photography Magazine

Word on the grapevine is that the US magazine Popular Photography is about to close down. This is entirely unsurprising though the reason given by the source is an entirely wrong summation of the issues. The site http://www.thephoblographer.com/ claims that the popularity of cell phone photography has killed the magazine. This such is a complete and utter misunderstanding of the business of magazines that I have to question the mental competency of the author.

Magazines depend upon advertising. Advertisers are paying ever less as they are spreading their advertising ever further. That's only part of the story however. Magazines commonly have a cover price. None of that cover price makes it back to the publisher. 

The cover price persuades retailers to stock the magazine because $10 for a product that has zero cost represents a good profit. Many years ago I worked for a nationwide book retailer. Magazines were delivered and put out. Some were sold, which represented profit. Some were stolen which really didn't amount to any loss other than a theoretical loss of imaginary profit. Some were damaged in the store and disposed of in the trash. When the next issue came in, the old ones were thrown out and the new ones were out on the shelf. 

So, magazines are essentially Scotch mist, financially. Where the publisher makes their money is from selling advertising. That's basically a loser's game. I've lost count of the number of magazines, websites etc that have gone under due to lack of income. This blog is a hobby blog but carries some advertising. The promise is that I can make money from allowing Google to plaster it with adverts. The truth is I get 1 or 2 cents income a month but I'll only get a payout when the total gets to $100.

Magazines are dependent upon retailers giving an accurate estimate of sales that they can then repeat 

to their advertisers in order to convince them to spend money. Retailers can't be bothered to report back on magazines sold. Their business is in making money, not helping others make money and magazines are two a penny to them.

The problem with magazines from a consumer's point of view is that they're terribly expensive for what they provide. Allied to that, the photography in magazines is usually quite terrible and the journalism is even worse being riddled with technical errors. The killer for the average consumer is the cost.

I'm an average consumer and I've not bought any magazines for decades. I'd rather buy a book on the subject if I feel I need to learn faster than by trial and error. As an example, one magazine I wanted to read was $10. A more comprehensive book was $40. No prizes for guessing that I went for the book instead.

In terms of the argument that cell phones have destroyed magazines, its two separate issues. Cell phones and tablets with cameras have certainly decimated the camera market. The cell phone produces images that quite frankly are very close to SLR quality. The proliferation of images has done more to destroy the fascination with the creation of images than anything else.

When cameras can produce sharp, well focused images with great detail and color, there's little need for a "professional" behind the lens. Don't like the photo, retake it. My theory is the proliferation of good quality images has really destroyed a lot of the art behind photography.

So, we do have a general decline in interest in photography as a hobby. At the same time, people take 

images at the drop of a hat on their cellphone and upload to Facebook. When people have seen a million photos of Machu Pichu or a million photographs of Brooklyn Bridge, there's little incentive to pick up a camera to take a better image that like as not will just be the same as one that one has not yet seen.

I take photographs for myself. It's true that for the last two years I've done very little photography. That's because my photography has been documenting the conversion of my bus into a motorhome rather than actively taking photos for the sake of the art.

As can be seen, my latest "photograph" is hardly exciting nor artistic. This is the way my photography has headed. I rather suspect that since good quality photos are so easy to obtain, they have become increasingly utilitarian and hence have lost their sex appeal. That, however, is not why the magazine went under. The dimwit that wrote the original article really does need a class in basic economics!

Nobody reads my blog/Twitter/Facebook

By now most readers should be wondering why Facebook and Twitter are even mentioned. The truth is, they're not used by the author. Certainly some legacy accounts might still broadcast the latest blog posts but these are accounts long since abandoned. It just turned out that Twitter was of significantly less use than a Rabbi in Mecca. Pretty much the same story with Facebook.

Everybody posts on Twitter but nobody reads anything. It's like Facebook etc. Unless one is famous, nobody gives a hoot what people think, feel or say. It's a total waste of time having Twitter, Facebook etc unless as you're famous. When people are famous, they pay staff to post for them. Meanwhile all the dumb suckers of the world believe their insignificant contributions on twitter, Facebook etc are somehow worthwhile then worry about why nobody gives a hoot. The dumbest then start paying for followers. Can you believe that? People actually paying for likes and followers. It's like an elementary school playground where pedophiles hand out sweeties to little children so they'll think positively of the pedophile.

After my smartphone decided to practice the honorable and ancient art of Hari Kiri (an example many politicians should follow), it was time to question why even to possess one. Looking at costs, $12.88 plus tax looked much more interesting than $400 for a new smartphone and $15 a month looked much more interesting than $45 a month. The crazy thing is of course nobody much calls nor texts so 300 minutes a month should be ample. The kicker is the battery should last up to 31 days on standby. That means no more charging my phone every couple of hours! This is bonuses all the way... cheap phone, cheap service, long battery and it's lighter and smaller to carry.

The upshot is that the change from smartphone to phone robs me of the smartphone camera. That, honestly, was the only part of the smartphone that had a lot of use. Sure, GPS was used a lot but it's possible to have a better GPS unit that doesn't fade out when out of AT&T coverage.

Looking at the dumb phone, it is even possible to use both Facebook and Twitter via SMS, assuming somebody was insane enough to desire to do such a strange and quite frankly laughable thing. The idea of using Social Media to me is not just faintly ludicrous but totally insane. A friend had her house burgled a few days ago. She had posted that she was at a class in a library and that's when the burglars struck. Had she posted that she was home with her new Pit Bull then I doubt that she'd have been burgled.

Look at the daft things people do on Social Media:

• Publish their real names
• Link their accounts to those of family and friends
• Announce where they work
• Announce where they live
• Show photos of their houses
• Show photos of their expensive toys
• Announce where they are
• Tell the world when they're not home
• Announce how much they earn
• Show photos of themselves
• Put up posts and photos that might be regretted in later life

One of my friends is an attorney. Attorneys love Facebook, particularly divorce attorneys. The woman comes in saying her husband is cheating on her. The attorney checks out her husband's female acquaintances online and sure enough, there is a photo of him trying to taste somebody's tonsils on a beach somewhere. People forget that everything posted online can be used against them, whatever they post. This is why all authors use pseudonyms (or pen names).

Thus, with the lack of a smartphone, I'm now pushed more toward using an actual camera for my photos. The cellphone camera does work. It's just not that great. This is an example of what my cellphone can do.

It's not bad as a quick photo but honestly, it lacks clarity, definition and resolution. It'd be fine for its real purpose which is to record photographs of car accidents and let the insurance company work out the rest.

So has getting rid of a smartphone been beneficial? On the positive side...

• Less bulk & weight to carry
• Less charge level anxiety
• Replacement cost is considerably lower
• Running cost is considerably lower
• More time to do real world things

On the downside...

• Not much of a camera
• No instant sharing of photos
• Need to use separate GPS, camera
• No internet access
• Nothing to play with when bored

On the whole, life is way better without a smartphone. Astute readers will notice that throughout this blog there have been many reports of fancy electronic gizmos that fail. More astute readers will question the costs of smartphone worship. Seriously... the cameras are quite good on them but smartphones have a replacement cycle not of obsolescence but they just are designed to break. Take mine for example. When the battery is flat, it can be recharged on a Qi pad. When there's just a little charge in it, it cannot! Definitely programmed to be annoying enough to be replaced!

Going back to the title, most people only waste their time on Twitter, Facebook etc because it's already installed on their phones.