Changing direction slowly

For a long time I have been slowly selling off camera gear that I acquired as the result of a photography business I was coerced into starting. A month or two back I took the remains to the local camera club and managed to sell both camera bags and the tripod. It was a beautiful tripod - good and solid but not heavy. It also extended to about 7 feet height and had my favorite type of head - the 3D head. A few days ago I sold one of my two cameras and one of my two remaining lenses.

Depreciation on the equipment I sold has been phenomenal and trying to sell it all has been incredibly difficult. It’s as though nobody wants to buy camera gear any more. I’m sure there must still be plenty by the way that camera companies keep churning out cameras and lenses, introducing newer models each year, sometimes several times a year.

Craigslist and eBay have been total dead ends. I sold a ton of stuff for next to nothing to a camera retailer. The retailer was astonished but honestly, I’d had absolutely enough of advertising on eBay and getting no takers while being charged for listings. Sure - ebay is alleged to have free listings but I fell foul of that one time before. In order to sell without being charged there can only be one photo and there can be no reserve or minimum price. Hence a tablet that normally sold for $75 on ebay went for $12. That was utterly ludicrous. Mind, as I had so little luck in selling anything online I let it go for that just to be shot of it.

The amount of money lost on that ludicrous business (whoever heard of a photographer actually turning a profit?) was phenomenal. Let’s just say that about $10,000 turned into about $1,000. I could curse the person that coerced me into starting the business but that’s not really profitable. I’m slowly succeeding in turning dead items with bad memories into small sums of money.

Has this killed my interest in photography? Not quite. It came pretty close though. I do take far more photos with my cellphone than with an actual camera but I have plans for my newer camera. As I’m sure you’re all aware, I had a full setup with a Canon XT, Canon 30D, Canon 18-55, Canon 17-85, Canon 70-300, Tamron 28-75, Canon 50mm, a tripod, four Canon flashes, a Canon flash controller, studio lights with umbrellas, lightstands, camera bags - the whole 9 yards. The original plan had been just to have one camera and a couple of lenses. That would have kept me very happy for years. Sadly that plan was subverted.

How much money did I make from photography? Well, I had two paying sessions for $225 in total plus I wrote my books which at 65c profit per book has raked in probably another $200 so far. Then I had a session which I was thoroughly scammed with somebody giving me a check written on a closed bank account. I also had somebody book a session then cancel as soon as I arrived.

How much money do others make from photography? Judging from the vast numbers of photographers that are advertising, not very much. Indeed I met a few photographers and those that support themselves entirely from photography are very, very poor. Word has it that many of the wedding photographers run wedding photography as a side hustle or as retirement income. Quite a few run it as a tax loss.

So, where forward from here? I bought a secondhand Olympus PM1 a few years ago and it takes absolutely stunning photos. I’m sure when I get to processing the Olympus raw files I will be able to make any picture even more stunning.

Remaining from the nightmare are my Canon XT and a 70-300 lens. The camera is good but bulky and the lens is good but bulky. These days I’m in favor of smaller and lighter. The software in the cameras is so good now that control over aperture and shutter speed is much less important than it used to be. Thus I can get along quite happily with my PM1 since the vast majority of my photos are landscapes.

Two things I might get for my PM1 are the optional viewfinder and a longer lens. The XT and 70-300 are just bulky and really I’d like still to sell them. Time was during film days when camera manufacturers prided themselves on making smaller, more usable cameras. These days they have great big fishcher-price sized plastic monstrosities. Nikon had a good thing with their 1 line but went and shot themselves in the foot by discontinuing it.

Once tha remaining Canon kit is sold I shall be a lot happier There will be nothing left of the photography business nor of the nightmare. If it had not been purchased with an inheritance then I would have had few qualms about just tossing it all into a dumpster to be shot of it and the memories. I feel I have to claw back as much as I can from the wasted money.

I can’t realistically see much point in having anything other than perhaps a tabletop tripod. I take the occasional long-exposure photo but with the 25,000ISO maximum on my PM1 I can pretty well shoot hand held in all but the dimmest light.

My longest lens on the Canon went to 300mm with it being sharpest from 70 til 200mm. On a 1.4 crop factor that lens worked more as a 420mm lens. On the Olympus there is a 42-150mm lens which on the Olympus 2 crop factor is 84 - 300mm. To be honest though with my Canon a lot of the time I found 300mm was just a little too much quite often so the Olympus could work well.

The additional viewfinder and lens would turn the Olympus into a pretty decent pocket sized camera system. In fact with a system like that there would be no real need for a dedicated camera bag. One of the photographers I know (he makes his money from investments) uses an Olympus system exclusively and never has a camera bag. He just puts spare lenses into his jacket pockets. Unlike the photographers of old that had multiple backup cameras, he only ever carries one body. They’re so reliable now that there’s just no point in having multiples. Add to that that each photo can be shot at a different ISO, in color or in monochrome, the need for multiple bodies loaded with different films is nil.

Of course my biggest blunder with the photography business was in buying everything brand new. I’d only ever once before bought a brand new camera and that was a particularly awful Pentax. Since then I never bought new until I got the Canons. I have not bought new since. My Olympus was $75 secondhand. The lens was $75 secondhand. I’ll probably pay $75 for the 42-150 too. For my own use I have no need for new stuff.

I really like the Olympus because it’s small. I really liked the Nikon 1 series but they were chronically overpriced, even secondhand. My hesitation with the Nikon was because I wanted to take night sky images. I’ve not yet mastered that with the Olympus though. With the Canon it was pretty straightforward - even though this is mildly overexposed.

Sky photos have been done to death now that it’s possible to do them so they don’t truly excite me any more. Where I like to use my camera is on day trips and weekend trips. My phone is excellent as a camera but lacks a little of the finesse of a dedicated camera. Where my Olympus fails is in lacking any way of uploading images wirelessly.

Changing from being direction from Canon to Olympus is pretty slow but then I’m in no hurry. I’ve been through many camera systems in my life. Zenit, Praktika, Pentax, Nikon, Canon and now Olympus. Throughout all that time I have realised that no matter how brilliant and how much others admire my photos, nobody is going to pay money for them. Pert of that is because Flickr is out there with all the free images your heart could ever desire. Pick an image taken by a tourist and unless that tourist now lives in your own country, it’s going to be well nigh impossible for them to pursue you for copyright infringement even if you use that image commercially. Thus image sales are never going to happen.

My photography is for my own enjoyment and always has been despite the buffoons that try to convince me to sell images professionally. I’ve heard it said that Olympus isn’t of professional quality bus neither is the iPhone and yet plenty iPhone images grace websites, books and magazines.  indeed in my own books what do you think I used to take a photo of my camera setup but a cellphone?

Once I’ve got the Canon stuff out of the way and the Olympus stuff that I want then I might try my next experiment - Schlieren imaging. It looks awfully confusing from the descriptions I’ve seen. I bet though that once I get into it, it’ll work out as technically challenging but essentially as simple as high-speed imaging. Speaking of high-speed imaging, I still have a dismantled Vivitar 283 that I do eventually intend to use for more high-speed photography.

Nikon’s steaming piles of crap - the Z6 and Z7

Today Nikon announced the replacement for the 1 series (which was fairly half-assed itself). The 1 series was very expensive and lacked a decent camera. It was a novel concept worthy of further development yet the cameras were clunky beta testing models rather than anything substantial. In order to be creative, menus had to be navigated that just made the whole process much more fraught. Indeed, I tried a Nikon J1 when it came out and though it would permit me to do the things I wanted to do I had to hunt through several menues to find the options. By that time, that once in a lifetime shot of Michelle Obama’s skirt lifting to reveal that she was just a transvestite male would have long gone.

Nikon’s development of the 1 series eventually came out with a half decent but chronically overpriced camera and just as they were getting somewhere with the line, they killed it off. Now we find out why - the new camera range with the Z6 and Z7.

I won’t bore you with a review of the Z6 and Z7 - you can read fanboy reviews anywhere. The fact is that these things are the biggest pile of donkey doo-doo that Nikon has produced in quite a while. I’d say they’re on a par with Canon’s M system for awfulness. In fact I’ll guarantee that like the Nikon 1 system this new nightmare will go the way of Nikon’s Pronea system. Remember that? It used APS film. If you can’t remember, you’re probably too young and it’s definitely not worth looking up.

What makes the Z6 and Z7 so awful? Two things... First Nikon has continued with its Fischer-Price design methodology where cameras are deliberately over-sized so that toddlers can handle them easily. I really don’t know what Nikon has been thinking or if indeed they have been thinking. Their heads must surely be in their pants. The last good camera Nikon ever produced was probably the Nikon F3 or the Nikon FM2. Everything since then has been clumsily bulky and ludicrously plastic.

The second thing that makes the Z6 and Z7 really quite terrible is the price. $3,000 for a camera body? Let’s take a look at just how hard it is to make a Z6 or Z7. Don’t give me that utter BS about R&D because hardly any went into them. They’re just supersized Nikon 1 cameras. There’s nothing mechanical in either of them - just plan electronics assembled in China by work-camp labor for no real wages. The parts are the cheapest they can buy in China. Essentially you have a $30 camera with a $3,000 price tag.

For an added bonus, in order to make the cameras seem as if they’re worth buying, the megapixel count is blown out of all proportion. 24 and 45 megapixels? Who on earth needs that? Sure - I have a 20 megapixel Olympus mirrorless. I paid $75 for it three or for years ago. I have an 8 megapixel DSLR that I bought 12 years ago. I even have a 3 megapixel compact that I bought 14 years ago. They will all produce an image more than adequate to grace a digital photo album or a Facebook page.

This picture was taken with an 8 megapixel DSLR back in 2007. There are no problems with this that could be solved by using 10, 20, 30, 40 or 46 megapixels. These inflated megapixel counts are really just a pissing contest. Immature gadget addicts will buy them just so they can say theirs is bigger. That’s the only reason these things will sell. They will, of course, “justify” their purchases with specious arguments over the size of print they can make while totally neglecting to mention they don’t actually print all that much because they can’t afford to. They certainly can’t afford to print a 47 megapixel image to 300dpi (their preferred measurement) as that would be way bigger than any commercially available print. Look at your walls... how many framed 16”x20” prints can you hang on them before the walls look like a crowded mess?

This new system is Nikon desperately trying to grab a non-existent market sector. Amateur photography is all but dead. Not many people now want to buy a camera. Why should they? Their iPhone will produce an excellent image and most cellphones these days produce all the image quality people need. 

This is a cellphone image of some welding I had just completed. Nothing wrong with that picture! The cellphone in question was a cheap $29 ZTE cellphone. Documentary photography has gone to the cellphone. Many journalists use cellphones rather than TV cameras or cameras. We are at the point where expensive, over-specified cameras have become a joke. Nikon’s Z6 and Z7 are just a joke. They’re not serious cameras.

If Nikon really wanted to grab the market sector back from cellphones then they have to include data plans into their phones. They have to make upload instant from anywhere and via 4G, 3G and wifi. I have no idea what memory card they’re using but I gather it’s smaller than a standard SD card - which is already the smallest card one can comfortably use. Of course, Nikon doesn’t really care - they’re just going to slap out overpriced cameras that appeal to fewer and fewer users until their camera division eventually goes belly up.

My advice - don’t waste your money on this Z6/Z7 junk. If you want to take good pictures, look at secondhand cameras. These overbloated mega pickle counts are just there to con the unwary into buying something they don’t need. I love photography but 99.9% of the time I use a cellphone. A great many of my photographer friends are the same way, We get all the quality we need from a cellphone. If you really must have a camera then look at the secondhand market. There are plenty cretins willing to sell their expensive cameras for next to nothing in order to fund the latest Fischer-Price toy camera from Nikon etc.

Nice one Nikon. You’ll con somebody yet into buying your Z6/Z7. For me though, my opinion is that they’re  just great big steaming piles of crap.