The Photo Camper

Years ago the photo camper had an easy time. A selenium cell light meter or just plain old exposure calculation charts that were frequently memorized, a few rolls of film and a mechanical camera. Though heavier, mechanical cameras never suffered from the cold. Indeed the Leica M4 could work down to -20F (-29C). 

These days the worry is always of battery depletion. Running out of film now is highly unlikely since memory cards are so small, light and easy to pack. Whereas a film photographer with a mechanical camera could shoot until she ran out of film, the digital photographer does not have this luxury. Typically with a compact digital camera such as an Olympus PM1 (cited as I own one), the battery will last maybe 300 photos. That means carrying multiple batteries and of course multiple memory cards and hoping that they will remain charged.

There is, however, another option. While a film photographer could carry a bag containing fifty rolls of film or 2,000 exposures, the digital photographer can carry a lightweight solar panel. The two below are both 10W flexible solar panels. The one on the left can be found on Aliexpress sold as a 20W solar panel and the one on the right can be found on eBay sold as a 20W/30W/50W/60W solar panel. Don't believe the figures - they're both really 10W. 

Of course, solar panels on their own are no good to man nor beast. To go with them since both have USB fittings on the back, you'd need a USB cable. In fact I'd recommend several since the micro USB connectors seem to be particularly fragile.

Many phones, cameras and laptops or tablets can be charged straight off USB. That's good on the down days when one is just sitting around camp doing laundry etc. For the go getting photographer I do recommend another approach. 

This is a nifty little charger that will run off a USB charging source. It charges just about any battery in common usage including 18650 lithium batteries. It will charge NiMh, NiCad and LIon batteries in a wide variety of sizes.  It also has another trick up its sleeve - it can also be used as a power bank. Taking the micro USB end of the cable out of the micro USB socket and putting the standard USB end into the standard USB socket on the back, the micro USB end can be used to charge devices.

With all the batteries for the photographer's devices charged, the solar panel can be left in the sun charging 18650 batteries so when the photographer gets back to camp at the end of a long gruelling day the 18650s are charged and it's possible to charge camera, phone, etc. 

Speaking of camera battery charging there is another option. There are plenty USB powered camera battery chargers. Apologies for the lack of clarity and focus on the photos of the camera battery charger. I took these with my interim cell phone. More on that, later.

So, everything a photographer needs to carry can be charged from a simple lightweight solar panel. The caveat is that there has to be sufficient sun and that the solar panel cannot be damaged. 

Now, a quick calculation. I got 11W out of that panel at midday on a good day with no clouds. How much will that generate on an average day? Assuming 50% capacity over 8 hours then that's going to be 80WH or about 6AH. So there should be plenty to charge one camera battery in a day or all four 18650 cells or a cell phone or a compact laptop/tablet. To be a real power hog, more panels would be needed but they're not expensive.

Typically a 10W flexible solar panel is mis-sold as a 20W/30W/50W/60W and it absolutely is not. Go for the lowest priced flexible panel and it'll likely be 10W. The tell-tale sign is the photo of the back of the panel which will demonstrate clearly that it has no sticker.

As can be seen, neither panel has a sticker advising the capacity or any other technical details. Once the panel is purchased and the capacity verified as being less than advertised, it's possible to take out a claim against the seller on eBay or AliExpress and get a refund. It'll cost the seller more to get the panel shipped back on top of the refund so basically, that's how to get a free solar panel. Both of those were free because the seller lied about capacity. If one buys something and it is not as advertised, under law one deserves redress. The Aliexpress panel I had to chase through the bank for a chargeback as AliExpress seems to be crooked. I don't advise AliExpress. eBay is much more straightforward. I've heard some pretty rough things about BangGood too but haven't used them so can't give an opinion.

As for the AliExpress and eBay sellers, I urge everybody to buy mis-advertised solar panels and then to make a claim against the seller via AliExpress and eBay. That was the bad actors can be wiped off the face of the planet. There is no room in this world for dishonesty and if you get a free solar panel out of it, that's a sheer bonus. For myself, I have two flexible 10W panels that really aren't that much use for anything bar camping which is an activity I don't pursue. Sold used, I'd probably not get as much money as it would cost to post them to a buyer so they're sitting taking up not very much space in my attic.

Now, why the blurry images of the camera battery charger? Well, for a long time, Straight Talk was the carrier of choice for my phone. It became pretty darned good. It was possible to use Verizon or AT&T or any of the other also-ran networks. Thus my phone was on Verizon through Straight Talk. At the beginning $45 got 3GB data plus the phone could be used as a hotspot. That in fact is exactly what I used the phone for and the only reason I had a phone. Then the service improved to 4GB and $45 then 5GB and $45 then in came a lower priced plan $35 for 4GB then $35 for 5GB. Then suddenly the use of my phone as a hotspot was blocked. I paid for my data and didn't use it all every month yet the hotspot feature was blocked. That led to an investigation when I discovered that I'd been paying for a service that I was not getting. Clearly no amount of arguing against a mindless corporate entity would have any effect on a commercial decision affecting not just me but others too. I voted with my feet and went for a straight AT&T prepay phone. Currently that's 2GB data for $35 but a new plan is coming with 8GB a month for a $99 payment that covers 3 months. Effectively that's 3GB more data per month than Straight Talk for $2 less per month. 

The most annoying thing about changing providers like that was that I'd not long bought an iPhone on Straight Talk. I liked my iPhone but could not put up with zero service. So, I have an interim phone that works well enough but takes lousy pictures. That was the route chosen just in case AT&T didn't work out. It seems to be working out so perhaps the next step will be to get a better Android or an iPhone.

 

Olympus has fallen

Today there was news that Olympus was going out of cameras (again). For those of us with memories longer than 3 minutes, they did this before then returned to cameras.

Back in the 1980s or 1990s, a friend of mine had an Olympus OM4ti. It was a lovely camera that could be used to take some spectacular photos. The lens was good enough to render exceptionally sharp images when paired with the right film. When the world went autofocus, Olympus did not commit the money into R&D then found that their market had dropped and basically got out of film photography.

A few years later and digital photography became popular. Olympus moved back into photography and developed some really quite good digital cameras. I had one and it was excellent. Then the mobile phone market exploded with some really good cameras on the phones. That was when Olympus's compact camera market began to die.

Meanwhile Olympus had developed their four thirds digital SLR which did really well. That was then redeveloped into micro four thirds and the lens mount shared with Panasonic. I think they did this because they knew they were likely to abandon the camera market at some point.

Today we hear that Olympus is selling its camera division and getting out of consumer photography. They cite the loss of market to phone cameras. While I will agree that phone cameras are really good and convenient, that argument is old hat. I rather suspect Coronavirus has put a big dent in sales and that lack of R&D has had the division floundering for a while.

The big problem with most camera companies is their business model has changed. In the old days of film cameras, a new camera would come out every few years. With the digital world they're bringing out a new camera every 6 months. That's utterly ridiculous! They're spending all their money on developing and marketing newer cameras without realising the market they're selling to is getting slowly smaller.

Where Olympus went wrong... Instead of following the model of almost all the other manufacturers they should have developed a new camera every few years rather than every 6 months. Who cares what the megapixel size of the camera is anyway. Seriously - show me the difference between a 45 megapixel image and a 14 megapixel image on a Facebook page. There isn't any! Olympus believed its own bullshit about megapixels being important which is largely why they had to follow the new standard of a new camera every 6 months.

OK. Let's look at who buys cameras....
Mom and Pop - they just use their smartphone. They don't want to have to lug a camera bag or even a camera around. They just want to enjoy life.
Kids - they just use their smartphone and likely cheap smarphones because they're rough on things.
The rest - well only a minority will want to use a "proper" camera because to most, the image from a smartphone is good enough.

So, we have a very small camera market. Now let's try to sell a new camera with more megapixels to the same person every 6 months. Nope - not happening! I regard myself as a typical digital camera owner..

I use an elderly Olympus micro four thirds camera. I'm not even sure how many megapixels it has. I could look it up but can't be bothered. That tells you how much interest I have in megapixels. I also have an even more elderly Canon digital SLR. Near 15 years ago, that was new and I paid something like $800 for it. Now, XTs regularly go for about $20 on eBay. The only reason I don't use the XT much is because of the size and weight. In fact the XT I keep for sentimental reasons though I sold everything else that I had with it. That was an 8 megapixel camera.

So, my Olympus I paid $75 for secondhand. I have two lenses with it and can do pretty much any photography that my heart desires. I do use the Olympus but not that often. I use my smartphone most days for photos.

What camera companies are fighting a losing battle against is that nobody now much cares about cameras. Image quality is good enough on just about any camera whether from a smartphone of anything else. Lenses, sensors and software have combined to render the difference between a $2,000 camera and a $20 smartphone camera moot. The sole difference between a smartphone camera and an independent camera is versatility. I can add longer lenses or take longer exposures on an independent camera.

Another thing that really does demolish camera companies is the sheer quantity of free images available. Why should I buy a spiffy camera to shoot photos of Machu Pichu when I can go there, have a good time and just download pics from the internet later of exactly where I've been?

In the old days, if somebody went somewhere exotic, the photos would be taken and then put into a big album that guests would be subjected to. That was why people didn't visit each other - nobody wanted to be subjected to the accursed photo album. Now they just stick it on Facebook and their friends just click "like" on the whole album without looking at the pictures and everybody is happy. As I've said before, great megapixel counts are not needed for online publication.

Camera companies need to realise that they can't survive any more by selling new cameras all the time. They need to go back to their roots where they sold new cameras occasionally but survived by selling lenses and other accessories. Camera companies lens selections are just awful. Nikon used to have a hundred different lenses. Now, barely 20. Updating lenses every couple of years is just a scam too. It's pretty much spitting on their customers because if somebody buys V1 of the lens then they come out with V2, the owner of the V1 won't be able to sell it for as much as if there wasn't a V2. That leads to the owner just buying minimal lenses and keeping it like that or just buying secondhand and keeping the kit minimal or just going over to smarphones.

Where the micro four thirds line really lacks is longer lenses. There just aren't that many affordable long lenses. Nikon manages to produce a compact camera with a 24-3000mm zoom. That is just about every lens range ever needed by anybody. That compact is horribly overpriced at $1,000 but offers everything the Olympuses can offer including a long lens that Olympus doesn't offer.

So, Olympus produced good stuff. They rested on their laurels, followed the wrong path and now decide to leave the room. Bye, bye Olympus - don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out. Maybe see you back in a few years (again).

A month later

Covid is still present and enough idiots are walking around without masks and sufficient idiots have ganged up on governments that governments have bowed to pressure to let people go back to work. All the medical experts are forecasting a second, more deadly wave of Coronavirus in the autumn. I agree. This is exactly what happened with Spanish Flu in 1918.

So this leaves me stuck at home most of the time. I've been doing a lot of those maintenance projects that just got put to one side while I was working full time. I've also been working on growing vegetables. Sure - vegetables are not expensive but they're a lot cheaper grown yourself. A packet of seeds is about a dollar and a half. The potting soil was used last year and is still good. The water comes from a well. What's there to cost money?

So here are two pictures. The first is corn planted as seed, 3 days earlier. The second is the same corn a day later. Quite impressive progress!

Yes, both of those photos were taken with an iPhone. I'm afraid that's as exciting as my photography gets these days. I have no intention of going out unless I absolutely have to due to the risk of catching Covid-19. Sure, I wear a mask and it's a better quality mask than most have but even so there's still a chance of catching the virus.

It will be so nice to be able to go out again to take photos in nice places. The fact is though that because people are not wearing masks and are not social distancing (staying 6 feet or 2 meters apart) the virus is going to keep spreading. There will be a second wave of it in the autumn, just like 1918.

There are certainly photographers out and about. I have noticed though that most are now using cellphones for their pictures and that news TV broadcasters are also using cheaper cameras. The times of plenty are well and truly over. Look at YouTube as an example of that - is it possible to tell the difference between a video shot on a cellphone and one shot on a professional camera? Even the so-called professionals use amateur designated cameras. There has been such a blurring of the lines with equipment quality that it's not really possible to distinguish between the cameras now.

With the low bar to producing high quality output, the difference between professional and amateur is just in sales skills. I have no interest - zero - zilch - nada - in selling photographs professionally as it's a mugs market. Who's going to buy a perfect photo of something when they can download a perfectly adequate version or something similar off the internet? Who's going to hire a photographer when they can take a perfectly usable photo with their phone? We all know where photos end up these days. Not on walls or in galleries but online in costly web albums nobody views or on social media.

Speaking of social media, this blog is my only social media outlet. I used to have automated Twitter bots broadcasting this blog to the Twitterverse. I'd had my Twitter accounts and had never ever managed to have any conversations, just getting ignored or receiving foul mouthed responses. In the end I automated the Twitter accounts. Seriously - if people aren't going to respond to Tweets, there's no point whatsoever in bothering.

I have tried the main social media outlets - Twitter, LinekedIn, Facebook and found them all to be pretty dismal. Twitter just seemed to get no response. LinkedIn after about 12 months demands I send them a copy of my ID and I have zero desire to do that. Who exactly is LinkedIn anyway? I have no financial business with them so their request for a copy of my ID is like some dodgy looking dude knocking on my door at midnight and shouting through my mailbox that he needs a copy of my ID while filling the house with a combination of halitosis and marijuana vapors. Who care anyway? It's just as easy to set up a new account. As for "professional development", pull the other one - the internet's for messing about and not for "professional" anything.

Facebook is the same story as LinkedIn. They're another dodgy dude knocking on the door at midnight asking for information they have no right to have. In fact Facebook is a much nastier proposition. If you have their app on your phone, tablet or computer, it'll be snitching on you to advertisers, targeting you in a very sinister way with advertising. Just about the best thing you can do with Mr Zuckerburg's SnitchBook is press DELETE. I deleted SnitchBook years ago. In fact I can almost name a date. I know it was some time in very early 2011 or very late 2010. I have not missed it.

LinkedIn I tried more recently and just didn't feel like creating a brand new account. For what it's allegedly intended, it's utterly valueless. Like Twitter and Facebook, advertising and harvesting relationships, locations and habits has taken over and become everything the site is about. One day I'll probably even delete my blogs as anonymity is more prized to me now than ever before.

Covid-19 photography and the "professional"

It has been a very long time since I did a photography update. This has been due to several factors. I'm sure you'll recognize them.

1. Work - this has me busy during the school year as I work 5am to 5pm for the school district. Yes, it's long hours but the overtime makes up for that and the fact I don't have to work during public holidays, at weekends or in the summer.

2. I'm concentrating on two other projects at the moment. One has taken almost 6 years. That's due to it being a big project during which I'm having to learn new skills to complete it. Then there's the safety aspect where everything has to be tested before implementation. 

3. The other project has barely got started - I have to complete the big project before I can really afford myself the time and space to work on the other project.

4. Other demands on my time. I'd love to go out with my camera but doing so generally involves driving and while I'm a darned good driver, I try to stay off the roads during my free time.

I'm using a phone camera more these days than an actual camera. It works though fuddy-duddy camera fanatics will all disapprove. Their point is one of "ultimate image quality". They're the kind of people that want the most megapixels despite the fact none of them will ever make use of all those megapixels. Each and every one is a hypocrite because they buy their expensive cameras on purchase plans and pay so much every month yet they don't put their money where their mouth is and buy high definition medium and large format cameras. It's more a case of "I could just about afford payments for this camera so I can laugh at the camera you actually own. 

Some while ago I was at Chimney Rock. While I was up there, I was taking photos with my old, secondhand Olympus whatever-it-is micro four thirds camera. Two fellows were poncing about, waving their cameras in very obvious ways to try to make me look envious. They asked how many megapixels I had. I told them - very much to their incredulity - that I really didn't know. They bragged about theirs having so many megapixels to which I showed no interest at all. They lost that one!

I thought people had stopped fussing about megapixels a long time back. Every camera on the market has sufficient megapixels to put a decent sized image on Facebook. That's the only place most of these braggarts will ever show their work. Indeed, it has got to the point where megapixels are now utterly irrelevant.

Any photographer worth the time of day will be concentrating on using whatever camera they have to hand to produce worthwhile photographs. Most of the time that's a phone. The same people that spend thousands on their cameras will scream about how they would never use a phone for their photography yet they do the job. The whole point of a camera - and this escapes many people - is to take pictures. I don't know too many people that buy a phone just to brag about it to other people yet that's what camera owners do. 

"Woohoo. Look at me. I just spent $5,000 on this camera". Yeah well look at me, I reply. The camera I'm using was $600 brand new but I paid $75 for it when I bought it after the dick that paid full price sold it. That dick lost $525 or around 90% of its value. Imagine that $5,000 camera sold for 10% of its value (if indeed it ever got that much). That's a $4,500 loss. That's several months rent, a good chunk towards a new car or food for a year.

Now we have Covid-19 and all those expensive cameras are lying idle. People cannot leave their houses unless they are on a work trip or a trip to get essentials. A walk around a photogenic area is NOT an essential.

I carry my phone with me all the time. I never know when I might get called in to work. I'm a state employee and on call. So, when I see something ridiculous I will photograph it. Heaven knows what the fellow is doing with his trousers half way down or why but that was what I saw on my way out of the grocery store car park.

Is it shot with a camera with the perfect settings, perfect exposure, perfect lighting, fifty million megapixels etc? No - it's shot with an iPhone through a grubby windscreen. The gritty atmosphere is all there. The action is there and the story is there. You know why the shot was taken. You know the star of the shot. You know where it was. All we don't know is the why this fellow would do this. I can only assume that the cabin fever caused by Covid-19 lockdown has affected his brain.

With the downtime, it's perhaps time for those that consider themselves to be "professional" to reconsider their options. Just about everybody and their dog now has a camera. Most people just don't care whether their pictures have the ultimate quality. Throughout photographic history, the "professional" has always been fairly dubious and has changed the name of what they do.

• When photography first started, the professional was the one that could afford the camera.
• As photography became more common, the professional was the one that had the better camera.
• As autofocus, auto exposure and then digital came in, the playing field leveled considerably so the professional had to sell themselves on skills.
• Now everybody has a perfectly adequate camera on their cellphone, its very hard to distinguish what makes a professional any better than a casual phone user.

Over the years "professional" photography has always enjoyed a very seedy image. Now, while everybody is housebound, there is no such thing as "professional" photography. Nobody is out there making a living from photography. Even the newscasters are sitting in their living rooms talking to the camera on their laptop. It is thus time for the professional photographer to take stock of where they are in life.

Today there was an interesting article elsewhere about just such a thing. There were 9 points raised. Paraphrasing they were:

1. Look at your gear. Just what in there don't you need? What can you get shot of that you've hardly ever used?
2. Redraft contracts - well - that's a joke really. With all the cameras around taking perfectly adequate photos, better just to throw contracts away. 
3. Back up your photos - always worth doing. I suggest copying the SD card onto a solid state hard drive and also onto Blu-Ray. Then store each in physically separate locations. Keep the Blu-Rays in a safety deposit box and the SD cards in a fire safe. This "cloud stuff" could just go poof - no matter how much you've spent on it.
4. Update your portfolio - I suppose them mean update your brag box. The photos you show on Facebook. Seriously - nobody's going to pay money for a "professional" when they have a darned good cell phone camera and can keep taking photos until they get what they want.
5. Experiment taking different kind of photograph. Now is the time to try out Schlieren photography, high speed photography. All the stuff can be ordered online and it's cheap once you have the camera. 
6. The big laugh "selling stock photos". I can't believe the jerks put that in their list. Stock photos are a money loser immediately. Why should somebody pay for a photo when they can just go to one of the free photo websites or just take a photo themselves? It makes no sense.
7. Diversify income. Yes - this is what you need to do. If you have been struggling under the delusion people will actually pay for photography and are finding they aren't as keen as you are then you definitely need to get another line of work. 
8. Prioritize spending. Seriously - if you're not getting income you should not be spending. While there are people legitimately idle due to the Coronavirus (me for example) they're usually on a retainer (like me). 
9. Take up a new hobby. There's nothing wrong with photography as a hobby but as I said, if your passion is outdoor photography then yes, you might need a backup hobby. 

I said it was an interesting article. I've changed my mind a bit now. It was yet another example of some tired old hack putting out a word quota on "professional" photography. There was less of substance to the original article than I'd thought. Mind, substance isn't one I'd put into a sentence that included the oxymoron of "Professional Photography".

Honestly, if you're an amateur photographer then good for you. Follow your passion. If you're calling yourself a "professional" then you're fooling nobody but yourself. All those wonderful "contracts" are like as not pity purchases from people that feel sorry for you.