Whine, moan, complain and bitch

Where would you normally expect to find people that constantly whine, moan, complain and bitch? Well, there are several places - school playgrounds, university bars, drug dens, brothels, prisons etc but what I'm talking about here is internet forums. It seems to infect camera clubs as much as internet forums. The number of times I head one of my friends complaining about the cliques and general meanness of several of the camera clubs he was a member of had me questioning him as to why he bothered going to which he said he only went to the occasional meeting when there was something interesting going on.

My own experience of camera clubs is about the same - people that like to play politics and "organise" the club. Then there are the people that like to gossip and back-stab. Sure - we get all this kind of garbage in the average workplace and the average children's playground. Who needs this in their relaxation interests?

Similarly internet forums are like this. I don't know how many I have tried over the years. They are all the same. A hardcore clique that eventually causes so much hassle to new members that new members just do not remain. My sole use for forums was to try to spread news of my blogs, even if that meant joining some rather odious forums and making a few dozen posts.

One of the popular discussions was "what would be your ideal camera" to which the answer should be "the one I have in my hand that I have paid for". It very rarely is the answer given which is bizarre. The usual thing is for somebody to post a question then for just about everybody to debate tangents off the original question. Then tangents off the tangents. Very rarely are discussions that go over about 5 posts worth reading.

If people did anything other than discuss garbage endlessly and indulge in bitching, whining, moaning and complaining then forums might be worthwhile. An old work colleague summed them up as "maximum time soak, minimum technical accuracy, maximum noise". Perhaps the whole problem is that forums are not based around photography but rather around discussion. On discussion groups, people like to talk and will talk about anything. Bring back the photography! All these forums do is drive people to drink!

Retail me not!

Every photographer is familiar with retail - where you go in to buy something and are served by a not terribly competent person who really couldn't care less if you bought something or not or whether it was even the right thing. Really and truly that shop assistant probably wishes you would go away so they could continue texting their friends.

Looking at it from the manager's point of view, they know the staff are low quality and unmotivated. They're not allowed to pay them enough to get good quality staff so the service is always going to be sucky. All the managers can do is threaten staff with dismissal if they suck too badly.

From the employees point of view, it's probably about the only company that would take them on amidst a mass of unemployed people. The money they receive does not really pay their living expenses so they have to bunk and sometimes double bunk with others.

A few days ago I wrote an article about telephone etiquette. Yesterday I had a phonecall from somebody that said I'd applied for a job with them and they wanted to interview me today. Needless to say, I turned up and was appalled at what I saw. The place was dirty and a gambling establishment. My role there - should I ever accept such a role - would be to run around for 8 hours a day for possibly the giddy heights of $8 per hour. Given that it's 25 miles from me and would use 2.5 gallons of fuel per day at a cost to me of $10.50 (or an hour and a half's wages) and that my rent is $525 a month, that job would have me paying to work. The hours were 25 to 30 a week and without tax that would represent a maximum of $240 a week out of which I'd lose (since it's a 4 day a week job) $42. That leaves $198 a week out of which $131 would be rent. That leaves $66.75 left for food, medical, clothing etc. Of course since tax would be charged I would be getting a lot less. One of my old paychecks from a store where I earned $279 in one week gave me $238 after tax. If we therefore assume that tax will be 15% then that would leave me with $31 for food, expenses, car insurance, car tax etc each week. That is of course not counting unexpected expenses which do crop up on an almost weekly basis. Nor does it cover vehicle maintenance etc.

I guess the moral here is I must remember to ask questions before agreeing to attend interviews - especially for jobs that I don't believe I applied for.

So, retailers - don't call me. I'll call you if I want to work retail again. Retail is OK as a hobby job or a part-time job for stay-at-home moms. It's not a job anybody can live on for an extended period.

All the nonsense

It really is entertaining to read the photography forums. There's so much bullshit on them being paraded as opinion and truth. One of the most popular bits of nonsense fought over on most forums is something like the larger the image sensor on a camera, the lower the digital image noise on the images at higher ISOs. Well, possibly but we are now at such high resolution on the sensors that the noise produced at higher ISOs (some of which were unheard of in film days) is so infinitesimally small that it is of absolutely no consequence.

The vast majority of the people on digital camera discussion forums are not amateur photographers or hobbyist photographers. They probably call themselves that but they are not. What they are is consumerists. They are not photographers - sure they might take photographs but they are not photographers. They buy the latest equipment and parade it either online or in person for bragging rights. Then they sell it in order to "upgrade" or for some pathetic excuse they contrive as an excuse to get the latest version. Why they have to give a reason or an excuse, God alone knows.

I still use 8 megapixel digital SLRs. They're 7 years out of date now. They work. They work very well. The only thing they won't do is video and who really cares about video anyway? I have far more fun with GIF than video. Video, GIF and still photography are three entirely different skillsets. Video is the skill I have the least patience for nor interest in. GIF is pure fun and stills are pure fun.

• Video needs steady panning, steady zooming, strict noise control and careful planning. If the panning is not perfectly even, the zooming is jerky or the camera zooms in then out or pans one way then the other, it runs a severe risk of inducing motion nausea into the audience.
• Still images merely require the photographer to keep the camera still while the photograph is being taken.
• GIF images require the photographer to keep the camera still for a couple of seconds while taking several photos one after the other in continuous mode. Usually this is about 5 photos. On my camera I can take 3 photos a second which means I have to hold still for about 3 seconds which isn't at all hard.

I have - as I said - no real interest in video and don't really expect to gain any either. I shall not be upgrading to a newer camera within the foreseeable future. There's just no need as video is about the only thing I don't have.

Going back to the baloney about noise and image sizes, the question is what one is comparing this mythical noise to and when the noise becomes unacceptable. I used to use Ilford black and white films - Pan F, FP4 and HP5. I also tried Kodak TMax3200 for color I generally used Agfa color slide film and Konica 100. I did try Konica 3200. Above 5x7 with any of those films and grain began to become apparent. With a 3 megapixel digital I can print to 10x8 without any apparent degradation. With 8 megapixels I can print to 16 x 24 without grain becoming apparent.

It becomes a question more of what we are trying to achieve. Are we simply trying to match film - if so then we have surpassed what film can do. We have surpassed what film can do, many times over and on many grounds. In the past, the largest prints were 10x8 and more commonly 5x7 as the large size. 6x4 became the de-facto standard print though in years past, the 6x4 was big with the standard lab print being 3.5 x 4.5. Now people want ever bigger prints. Many demand a 6x4 as a standard size and 8.5x11 or A4 as their big print. Needless to say, some want even bigger and now printers are commonly available for amateurs that will print to 13 x 19 or A3. Prints are now available on demand to much larger sizes and the consumerists are demanding that their cameras be able to produce images that size and bigger in order that they can crop and still get a huge print.

I have a problem with this kind of thing. People's expectations are out of control. How many 10 x 8 prints are hung on the average wall? Not too many. How many 16 x 24 prints are on the average wall? The excuse I hear for people wanting these ridiculously high megapixel count cameras is because they might want a huge print to sell or to use. The chances of selling photographs is very slim. So slim it's not worthy of adult consideration. The chance of wanting to print something to a ridiculous size is pretty slim - about as slim as finding a lab that will do it. Where is the sense in it all? Large sensors that will print flawlessly to very large sizes have several issues.

• The cameras are ridiculously expensive
• The prints are ridiculously expensive
• There's nowhere to hang such huge prints.
• The file sizes are massive and require massive amounts of storage.
• Massive files require more massive computing power to handle them.

There is absolutely no advantage to having huge sensors and ridiculous megapixel counts at vast cost just for the possibility of a hint of a slight chance that you might get 50 cents back on a $100 print. Nobody buys photography any more! Similarly, being able to hang a huge print on a wall is a ludicrous aspiration as few of us live in houses big enough to hang a huge print.

In the old days, prints were put carefully into family albums. Now the trend is to show them online with a maximum resolution of 1024x768 as anything larger would take forever to download. There's also a trend toward digital displays which are inherently lower resolution. This makes a complete nonsense of the desire for ever larger sensors.

It should come as no surprise to discover that I think little of the kind of person that will spend hours pouring over an internet forum, posting every 5 minutes into some dreary discussion as to why equipment x is so much better than equipment y.  The chances are that if they own the equipment it is never going to come out to be used - they're forever going to be "testing" it.