Is camera gear now disposable?

Looking at the current rash of new cameras, computers, tablets, phones and other electronic gizmos, at first the sheer quantity available to the consumer is seemingly overwhelming. Hundreds of manufacturers all competing to relieve the consumer of the contents of their wallets.

Computers used to be one of the main grounds for competition until people discovered that as internet consumers rather than creators, they didn't need phenomenal processing power or incredible storage. They just want to play online games, read websites and possibly post opinions that have zero ultimate effect on news websites. For that, tablets will do. Of course, computers were made to be disposable. Every other year people had to upgrade to the next computer because their old computer would be no match for all the updates Microsoft came out with (commonly called bloat). So, computers were disposable. Now though since computers have largely caught up, Microsoft is making the operating system disposable by coming out with a new one every two years, knowing full well most people don't want to be bothered installing a new operating system and are well used to having to change computers.

Tablets and phones follow the same path as computers starting out with inefficient and underspecified devices with almost reasonable devices being highly priced. Look in any store and there will be a plethora of $40 - $50 tablets with 8GB of memory. With luck in the $50 - $75 range you'll find tablets with 16GB. They tend to be usable as opposed to the 8GB tablets. There is one caveat... How well built the device is. As an example, I used to use a Nexus 7 that I got secondhand for $100 from Walmart. That was fine until it died (which took a year). Basically the reason it died was planned obsalescence. It was designed to fail. My latest tablet (a $50 RCA Voyager Pro) has just died - after 4 months. That's 8 months short of the warranty. Needless to say, the company say they'll fix it if I post it to them (at my expense) and wait 3 - 4 weeks without a tablet (that I use daily). That's just being treated with contempt by RCA. It ensures only one thing - that I will never buy another RCA product as long as I live!
 
Cameras are very much disposable. Every 18 months, camera companies come out with new cameras. When that happens, the used price of cameras drops dramatically. Back in the days of film cameras, film cameras largely maintained their values. With the disposability of electronics, they don't. As an example, I paid $1,100 for a Canon 30D back in 2006. It was and still is a pretty good camera. In terms of value it has plummeted to next to nothing. That camera is listed in as new condition in secondhand camera stores at $115. Sold to a camera store or via eBay, it would raise only a fraction of that.

Going further, lenses are also disposable. Every couple of years insignificantly modified models of lenses are released. The resale value of the older edition plummets. The same goes for flashes. A hugely expensive flash plumments in resale value due to new variants.

Taking the whole lot as camera gear in its broadest sense, phones, computers, tablets, cameras and lenses, manufacturers seem to treat them with the same contempt as their customers. Devices are just made to be thrown away. It doesn't matter how much they cost - how many hundreds or thousands. The fact consumers cannot afford to buy items that plummet in value to zero (like my 30D) does not seem to have been recognised by manufacturers.

The above has led to a very interesting situation. Phones now have built-in cameras which are of high quality. People are ceasing to buy cameras because they don't see much point in spending hundreds or thousands on equipment they won't get anything for if they try to sell it a couple of years down the line. Currently this is really hurting camera manufacturers. They're experiencing a 35% a year contraction in the market. Long term this means bankruptcy. They have only themselves to blame by making camera gear disposable.

Dynamic range and equivalancy

First off, let me just say that the whole issue of equivalancy is about the most juvenille load of old garbage I have ever had the misfortune of encountering. It's akin that that constant snobbery over megapixels. Let's look at some of the great photos of the past - anything by Ansel Adams for example. Nobody goes around saying FP4 - should've used TRI-X. They just admire the image. 

When digital images are considered, people peep at pixels, blowing tiny portions of images up to unimaginable proportions. The actual image is simply not considered. Instead, the technical specifications of cameras are discussed. People that do this know nothing nor care anything about photography. Such people are not photographers but gadget freaks - people that pride themselves on having the latest shiny gadgets. 

People engage in embittered debates from embedded opinions about the merits of one gadget versus anouther and their capabilities. Does it really matter whether one camera has more dynamic range than another to anybody bar a gadget freak? By the way, I despise gadget freaks to the point that I would welcome a firey chasm opening up and swallowing them forever.

Dynamic range to be simple is the number of gradations between the lightest and darkest area it's possible to represent in an image. Gradations in a photographic context are called stops but that's not imnportant for this article. While it's possible to agree that film has more of a range than digital, in no way does this demean any digital image nor a film image. Having used both film and digital, I can say that there is a difference but used well, it makes zero difference which medium is used.

Equivalency is another battleground that should not exist. Film and digital are different mediums. End of story. Neither can be equivalent to the other because they're so different. In any case, isn't it the image that is what they're both about. Taking a photo of the same scene with a digital and a film camera just to compare the merits of both is just plain idiotic.

The modern term for people such as those that fret the small stuff over camers is measurebaters. I still use a Canon XT. It's 11 years old. It still works just fine. I have considered getting something different for various reasons. I could get a whole new system or another camera of the same brand but more recent or I could get a new lens. The only kind of image I can't take with my current setup is star photos. Sure - I'd like to be able to do that but it is just one kind of photography. Maybe tax refund time will allow me to experiment.

In truth though, photography is my hobby while my life revolves around other things. I am tremendously annoyed by measurebaters as they serve to do nothing but repulse me. I truly question what kind of God allows such beings to slither like Eve's serpent upon the surface of this earth!

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.

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.

Lithium battery replacements. How to tell good from bad

Over the years I've use a lot of lithium batteries. Quite honestly, I abhor them. I think the world would be a lot better place without lithium batteries and without nickel cadmium batteries too. Nickle Metal Hydride are the otherwise bright spark in an otherwise dismal battery world.

As far as laptop batteries, we don't have a choice any more - everybody has gone over entirely to lithium batteries. In my case, I have a 10 year old Mac laptop. It worked until the battery died. I did what everybody does and went on ebay to buy a cheap lithium battery. Instead of spending $80, I spent $20. Perhaps that shouldn't be spent but more wasted - it worked fine the first few times then started giving the same problems the old original did before it stopped totally. I have yet to save enough to replace that battery with the genuine article. I won't be buying another fake.

With camera batteries, I bought a fake from B&H to power my Canon XT and it worked and is still working, 10 years later. I bought a fake from B&H to power my 30D and it worked once then when I went to charge it again, a year later (I don't take my DSLRs out of storage very often), it was totally dead and wouldn't take a charge.

This pretty much echoes my entire experience of knock-off products. If it's a knock off and costs more than 1% of the price of the real thing, it's way too expensive. I've never had a genuine article fail on me - it's always the cheap knock off that fails. I don't expect a long life for my RCA tablet, for example but equally I expected more than 14 months from my Nexus 7. The reason I went for the cheaper knock-off this time is that since the real thing only lasts barely a year, if I go through two RCA tablets in a year I'm still financially way ahead!

Tablets and batteries are not the same thing, however. The technology of lithium batteries is just plain scary. Lithium combines with water to produce hydrogen. Normally, water is used to extinguish fires. With a lithium battery fire, water doesn't extinguish it, it feeds the fire. And people keep their phones in their pants pocket and their shirt pocket where it's constantly bathed in a very humid atmosphere. It's equally scary to see people drinking while holding cups near their computers. They're a spill and a spark away from a conflagration that canot be extinguished with normal fire-fighting equipment.

So, do you really, truly trust budget and knock-off batteries where god alone knows what corners have been cut. Could the battery have been made by a devious al-Quaida or ISIS operative? My best advice is to toss your fake batteries in your next-door neighbors trash (don't want to set your own trash on fire).

Samsung quits the camera business. #photography

Samsung announced they're quitting the camera business in both the UK and Germany. This does not really surprise me as Samsung was not a traditional camera manufacturer. This is their statement regarding the UK.

“We quickly adapt to market needs and demands. In the UK, we have seen a gradual and sustained decline in demand for standalone digital cameras and camcorders and related accessories. For this reason, we have taken the decision to phase out the sales and marketing of these products. This is a local decision, based on local market conditions.”

Their market analysis is spot on. Smartphones have eliminated compact digital cameras just as digital cameras eliminated film cameras. Similarly, digital SLRs are suffering. The vast majority don't need the sophistication or the excess.

I myself am finding it hard using a smartphone, to find time to use a DSLR. The camera with me (the smartphone) is worth far more than the camera I don't have with me. Yes, there is a compromise in image quality and versatility but that's more than made up for by the convenience.

Its not possible to compare what's happening now to any other period in camera history. Just about everybody owns at least one camera and possibly more than just one. In the past, somebody with a camera was a rarity and SLRs produced far better images. Now the difference between a DSLR, a digital compact, an interchangeable lens compact and a cellphone is much harder to see.

The only time that there is a visible difference between the images produced is when they're used outside the normal range of images. That will be low light and action photos. Having said that, its still pretty close!

Certainly some of the signs are unreadable but it's pretty darned good. That, by the way, was taken with a Nexus 4 cellphone.

Predictions and crystal balls? Well, I think Panasonic and Olympus might get out as might Fujifilm. That'll leave Pentax, Nikon, Sony, Canon and Leica. Even so, the market will be oversupplied.

Camera Review websites

In the aftermath of the furore on the camera forum that couldn't bare the truth to be aired, the plethora of camera review sites came to mind. There just seem to be so many! Some are plainly bogus, being owned by camera stores, camera makers and brand fanzines. The rest are just plain suspect.

Given that advertising revenue worldwide across the internet is reducing due to competition and the realization that most internet users either block adverts or don't have the money to buy products, such websites cannot afford to write high quality reviews or articles. Indeed, most content these days is used generated (spelling and grammatical errors unchecked with Android oddities thrown into the mix) on review websites.

In order to increase traffic, many websites add forums for users to discuss things. With wafer thin margins, paid moderators are not used. Instead volunteer moderators are the norm. The problem there is that while forums increase traffic, they don't increase revenue. Putting a forum just attracts the kind of person that spends all their life on internet forums. For proof of that, look at the post counts. 10,000 posts is not unusual for a forum addict. Going further, how much time are they spending, reading forums and responding? How much time is left for gainful employment?

It strikes me that the vast majority of internet users, use the internet because it is cheap entertainment. Indeed, its very popular entertainment given the number of internet centric gadgets that abound. I'm thinking of smartphones, smart watches, tablets etc. Without the internet, they're of less value than the average brick. It's amazing how internet addiction has become the norm. With all this addiction to the internet and widespread internet consumption, advertising budgets have further to go. Hence, revenue for carrying advertisements dwindles.

In the days of magazines, some were almost decent but the vast majority were purely advertising vehicles. Indeed those that still exist are largely advertising vehicles with juvenile articles thrown in in order to perpetuate the falsehood that the buyer is getting a magazine worth reading. Truth be told, the original purpose of a magazine was for something short to read on the toilet that could then be used as toilet paper.

Amidst all this declining revenue, review websites have to supplement their income whether it's from bribes, paid reviews or by selling users details. Thus, the era of the independent review is truly gone.

Another thing to question is, with the thousands of camera review websites out there, is how many have bought the cameras they go on to review and how many get free cameras or camera loans? It just strikes me that they can't all have actually had their hands on the cameras they review. Camera companies can't be dumb enough to loan out cameras to anybody that claims to have a review website? I can imagine it now: "Hey, Leica, gissa S2 for my review website" followed by "psst, mate, wanna by a snapshot camera. Only $5 or two beers and she's yours".

Indeed, I am reminded of a cartoon I saw today. Two people were sitting at a table talking. One commented that his laxative had more Facebook friends than he did. Everything seems to have become internet centric rather than life centric. People are beginning to rely upon these websites and forums for their purchase decisions instead of real life. It's quite scary!