At last, back to photography

For a long time, my photography blog has been neglected. This is largely because at the time I was concentrating solely upon my bus conversion blog and the real life creation of my home in an old school bus. That's pretty much completed though there are a few small things remaining to do.

Meanwhile, my much-loved 2007 MacBook began to act up in about 2014. I gave it a new battery (which gave out after just two weeks) and upgraded the operating system too. By 2019 it became pretty evident that the MacBook was pretty much dead. Sure - I gave it yet another new battery and even put a new hard drive in it but never could get it to work properly. Then I tried Linux on it and it still refused to work correctly. 

As MacBooks are over $1,000 I have not got a new MacBook this time. Instead I got myself a cheapie Asus E203MA for $250 and tried it. I was not greatly impressed that Windows 10 seemed to be more eye candy than substance. Nor was I impressed by the fact Windows 10 left only 10GB free from a 64GB hard drive. 

That's the laptop pre-Linux. Since I installed Linux I have 36GB of free space after installing a lot of relevant software. I installed RawTherapee to handly my RAW files and some C++ and Pascal programming software since I'm making a return to my roots.

In the past I have been a bit dismissive of Linux. I'm not thrilled about the fact that the image processing software is so fragmentary but what's available seems a lot better than that Gimp thing that was out a few years ago. Coming also from years of using iPad and Android tablets, it's almost strange to have to go to a website to use social media.

As you can see, that's one of my attempts to get my MacBook working again. The problem is that the screen will go dark after just a short while. I'm sure it's a simple fix but it's not worth paying Apple to fix a 12 year old laptop. Perhaps more to the point, I'm just not going to throw more money at it. I had an excellent lesson in not throwing money at fixing laptops about 20 years ago.

I'd bought an old IBM laptop which was warrantied for 3 months by the secondhand vendor. Pretty much a week after the warranty was up, something died on it. I spent money and bought a part then fixed it and it worked for a while longer then a different part went out. By the time this had gone for a further 3 months I'd spent as much as I'd paid for it in spare parts and never had a truly functioning laptop. In the end I looked at the costs and figured I'd spent most of the price of a new laptop on what was effectively a door stop. Rather than blowing more money, I stripped it to sell it for parts via ebay and didn't have a single taker. In the end, after 6 months of trying to sell the equivalent of a turd, I threw the whole thing on a bonfire and just burned it.

I'll keep the hard drive from my MacBook because I'm pretty sure I will get myself a new MacBook one day. The MacBook itself is probably not even headed for eBay. I have such rotten luck trying to sell anything on eBay that I largely don't bother. Those that have longer memories will recall it took forever to get rid of most of my Canon camera gear. I still have one lens that I'd like to sell and somebody that's got interest but not the money. I dropped a ton of money on Canon stuff.

By contrast, when I bought my Olympus kit, I spent the least possible and bought it all secondhand. I have no complaints. I'm very happy with it. Of course the reason I bought new with the Canon was due to unholy influences from a third party that clouded my rationality. I'd also been sold on the idea of running a photography business which really was a load of nonsense. Instead I should have been concentrating on improving my C++ and writing some software that would have got me noticed.

Anyway, the photography blog is alive and well.

An interesting day out

Yesterday I went to a state park. I carried my Olympus camera. It was so nice in comparison to my old Canon camera and I’ll tell you why.

1. The entire camera is light and around my neck weighed almost nothing with the kit lens attached.
2. I had a longer lens (equivalent to 80-300mm) in a jacket pocket that was also very light and not really noticeable. 
3. I had a spare memory card and spare battery in my inside pocket.
4. I did not need a camera bag.

Now with my old Canon stuff, I’d have needed a protective bag because everything was just so big and bulky not to mention heavy. Just look at the difference in size.

The Olympus is on the left and the Canon on the right - both are with kit lenses. I can tell you right now which I prefer to carry and that is of course why I sold my Canon equipment. The only thing I regret about selling my Canon equipment is that I waited so long and lost so much money doing it.

This is one of the photos I took yesterday. Look at the color and resolution. Look at the exquisite detail and yet this is just an out of camera JPEG. I don’t have the ability right now to handle RAW images. 

Now let’s look at costs. New, I paid probably $800 for the XT and $100 for the lens for a total of $900. It’s now worth maybe $50 combined. That’s at least 95% depreciation. My Olympus I paid $75 for the camera and $50 for the lens. I can’t imagine that depreciating. New the body would have been $600 and I’m not sure what the lens would have been. I didn’t make the mistake this time - I bought secondhand.

When I was out, I saw one fellow with a massive Hassleblad digital. I didn’t talk to him as I knew I was well out of his league in his opinion. I did speak to another photographer who was using a Canon professional camera and who was all in favor of megapixels. I asked what he used those excessive megapixels for and all he said was he did a lot of editing. Well, editing is fine but what the heck did he need those megapixels for. I never got an answer to that. He didn’t seem to think too much of my reckoning anything over 8 megapixels is really overkill for most people. I guess he’d swallowed the camera marketing baloney hook, line and sinker.

All I can say is I am very happy with my cheap secondhand Olympus kit. It does everything I want with the push of a single button. Now if I were to go back to high-speed photography, I probably could still do that with my Olympus. I’d just have to focus manually. No problem!

How much is enough?

Canon and Nikon have done it again. They’ve produced a completely new range of cameras that none of their existing lenses will fit without some kind of adaptor. This is utterly ridiculous! Both have made a move from cameras with mirrors to mirrorless cameras, which they could quite easily have done without designing a whole new system. I just dn’t get the whole new system thing - that just seems to me an excuse to try to sell more lenses.

Meanwhile Nikon quietly discontinued their small 1 system. That was a huge blow if not a slap in the face to everybody that has bought a 1 system camera. Those things were small and neat though way overpriced.

The big marketing spiel is all about “full frame” in other words 24x36mm sensors. I’m afraid sensor size is about as overblown as megapixels now. Cameras are available with well past 20 megapixels yet there is no earthly reason to have that many pixels. I currently have two cameras - an old Canon XT that currently lacks a lens. I’ll probably get an 18-55 at some point. That’s 8 megapixels. I still see no earthly reason why 8 megapixels is not more than adequate for most people. In fact there is no camera produced in the last 10 years that is not perfectly adequate. My other camera is an old Olympus PM1 with the standard lens. That produces 20 megapixel images which are way in advance of what I actually need.

Ever more megapixels means ever more storage needed. It does not mean any improvement in image quality. It just means the images are bigger, harder to store and that’s it. Bigger sensors just mean more money spent on the camera and that’s it. It does not improve image quality. Image quality is 100% in the hands of the photographer.

These new systems are utterly meaningless. They’re all about Canon and Nikon milking the hobbyists for all they can get. The hobbyists are the people without the intelligence to see that they’re being milked.

This photograph was taken with a Canon XT and a table lamp. It’s not 100% the look I was aiming at but it’s not bad. The image quality is excellent. That’s 8 megapixels on a 1.6 crop sensor.

This is a straight from camera Olympus photo taken on 20 megapixels. I could tweak it a bit, sharpening and making it pop a little more like I did with the first picture but it is in no way inferior to the first picture. The sensor is 20 megapixels on a 2 crop factor.

This is straight from a cellphone. It’s 8 megapixels. Heaven knows what the crop factor is but it’s a pretty good photo.

Now you’ve seen images take with different megapixel counts, different sized sensors and you’re seriously going to tell me that a brand new camera system with a “full frame” camera with a stupid megapixel count is going to make your photographs that much better? I think you need to check yourself into the nut farm if you say it will!

Mark my words - this new Canon and Nikon thing is nothing more than a way of scamming yet more money out of innocent customers.