More closures

Recently I read about the closure of the DPReview website. This does not surprise me in the slightest. Ever since smartphones came out with ever larger megapixel counts and ever better image quality fewer people have been buying stand-alone cameras. 

In the world of photography, convenience is everything. A camera that can upload images straight to social media for instant display is a winner. The camera companies were far too slow to recognise this. Thus, ever fewer compact cameras were sold and why should they when people could get an adequate if not excellent photograph from a cellphone for which they paid just $50 or less. A compact camera offered zoom but cost four times that and images could not be uploaded without a computer.

The above image was taken with a cellphone and is a crop of the cellphone image. Certainly it's slightly blurry but it shows everything needed for this particular I2C board. This is not an artsy image but rather a utilitarian image. Many of the photography activists decried utilitarian imaging but that's because they had their craniums firmly inserted up their rectums. All images are utilitarian and for many utilitarian uses quality is secondary or not even a factor.

This is yet another utilitarian usage of photography. It's a photo I sent to my job after testing positive for Covid in August last year. 

I never did a lot of fancy fru-fru stuff with photography. It was all photography for a purpose. Many people lack that purpose. I record neat scenes, holidays and day trips then I document accidents and make YouTube videos with my cellphone. 

To be blunt, I have a DSLR that has not been used in several years. I have a mirrorless camera with interchangeable lenses and that too has not been used in a couple of years. I just opt for the camera on my phone most of the time. It's always there and ready for use. The image quality is super.

So, a website on cameras closing down when people are just not buying cameras any more does not surprise me at all. I am rather impressed that they kept going for so long. 

I did have a huge amount of camera gear which I should have offloaded far before I did. I got a pittance over what I paid but on the other hand I got something. I could still offload my old Canon XT but since I can buy the same camera for $25 on eBay there's no reason to try to sell it. When I had it new, I paid something like $800 for it. Now it's not worth even 5% of its original value. I've even seen one with two lenses going for $60 on eBay. I can rest pretty well assured that even the more modern camera would not fetch much but I'm very glad I bought it secondhand. I'm glad also that I reduced my "professional" level of kit to an occasional amateur level. I can't say that more than one camera and one lens is at all practical. Switching lenses mid hike is just an annoyance. 

I used to believe that I needed every lens possible on a hike and carried ludicrous weights of gear. There was no enjoyment of the hike but the pictures were good. Now I take something minimal and take a lot of pictures and enjoy the hike. If I can't zoom in close enough on the one thing then I have dozens if not hundreds of photos of other equally good things.

Now that cellphones are so good, I question whether I need to bring a camera when I go places. Most of the time I do not as the camera batteries are always flat. Always having a cellphone with a good camera changes a lot of perspectives.

As for the camera companies, Nikon, Canon, Olympus, Pentax and Minolta:

Nikon - still producing some film cameras but concentrating on mirrorless compacts

Canon - No film cameras but plenty DSLR and mirrorless compacts

Olympus - Left the room

Pentax - No film cameras but plenty DSLRs

Minolta - Bought by Sony, producing mirrorless compacts.

Nikon and Canon seem to be providing compacts for the growing trend of YouTube video making. Having said that I make 4K videos for my YouTube channel with my cellphone. I honestly cannot see the camera companies continuing ad infinitum. Indeed, the quotation I read about the Olympus exit from photography was this: the"extremely severe digital camera market" was no longer profitable.

Further contraction of the camera market is a certainty, not a possibility. As for camera review websites - fewer buyers mean fewer readers. Fewer readers mean less income from advertising. Less income means lower profits and lower profits mean fewer staff until such a point as it all becomes uneconomical as with many of the now gone review sites.

General camera companies are now circling the drain.

News filtered through the media void or Nikon abandoning full-sized cameras.

A few days ago I heard Nikon had abandoned its AI system for the new Z system having dabbled with their 1 system and abandoning that in the same way they developed cameras and lenses for their APS system about 30 years ago. Having seen the noisy results from the 1 system, they were probably right to abandon in when they did. Now, with advances in technology they need to give it a second look. There is a market for small cameras.

Having said that, I write an awful lot - books and blogs. I include a lot of photographs with my books and blogs. This photo was probably on some blog or other of mine. The quality is decent enough for books, magazines and websites. It's not top notch but who really cares? It does its job. 

So, with phone cameras getting ever better and just about everybody and their dog owning a phone with a decent camera, the market really has vanished for both cheap compacts and for expensive compacts. There aren't even many of the kid-proof cameras any more as people give their kids an old phone to use for taking photos and if it gets broken they trash it and give the kid the next old phone.

Videography is heading the same way. Decades ago cameras of questionable quality cost thousands. Now their quality can be eclipsed in a simple cellphone. Indeed I shoot video for one of my sites. I shoot in 720p because that's the maximum the camera on the screen side of an old iPhone will do. It's good enough for the moment and well representative of what's new on YouTube anyway. Some videos go to 4K or even 8K but for viewing on a tablet, phone or computer screen, the extra expanse of pixels at high cost is not merited. 

A year or two back I met a couple of people out with cameras. They had big gadget bags with just about everything under the sun inside. I had a camera on a strap around my neck, under my jacket, a longer lens in one pocket and a spare couple of batteries in the other. I was good. We chatted and then they noticed my small Olympus PM1 and asked how many megapixels. They were not impressed when I could not remember and why should I remember? It produces excellent images at all the sizes I am likely to want to use. I'm not going to buy a super duper camera just do that I can produce the biggest ever prints. That's just plain stupidity. In fact I think most cameras these days produce images way in excess of most people's needs or desires. All that does is clog up storage with bulky image files.

There were people who poo-poohed the smaller camera formats because the image quality "wasn't there". A photographer friend in Columbia commented that he had both the big Canon system and the little Olympus Micro four thirds system. His opinion was that while he could see a very slight advantage with the bigger sensor, it was so slight that it would be totally lost when it came to printing or displaying. 

The world is getting smaller. Fewer people are buying big bulky camera systems because they are big and bulky for no real gain. The smaller systems seem the way to go. I'm very glad I jumped ship from Canon to Olympus and very glad I decided to stick with one camera and two lenses. Of those two lenses, I use the standard zoom the most as it covers 90% of what I want to do. The longer lens was a disappointment to be honest. A much longer lens would have cost so much more that it was not worth the money for the amount it would be used. The bigger lens I have is not used much either.

Looking back at the photos I've taken and used the most, over the past 3 years they have all been cellphone images. I recall many instances of people with expensive cameras poo-poohing everything taken with a smaller sensor but I see plenty photographs. I never wonder what camera was used now what lens nor even who the photographer was.

Cameras have become cheaper and more utilitarian just as photography has become cheaper and more utilitarian. I hear people claiming to be photographers claiming they charge hundreds if not thousands. That's simply laughable. Most product catalog pages on websites are taken with simple, small cameras like cell phones. Nobody deliberately goes all out on ultimate expense when cheap will do. Somebody criticized one of my images for being blurry and they could shoot it better. My answer - well go back in time do it and I might look at it.

It is not surprising that Nikon has gone for smaller cameras. What is surprising is that they are still making cameras given that they have become such a small niche market. 20 years ago even newspapers were turning away from cameras and going toward cellphones for photography. Perhaps the niche is now people making youtube videos who use the cameras for video making. While I have not ventured beyond a cellphone for making my YouTube videos, perhaps one day I will. Perhaps one day I will use a Raspberry Pi camera and software to record video onto USB memory stick. 

As far as any dreams of people making money out of photography are concerned, they're dreams and that is all. Everybody and their dog has access to a perfectly adequate camera for videos and for stills that will produce a perfectly adequate resolution. Out of 100 wedding guests all taking pictures of the bride and groom, some will take really nice images that the couple will cherish and share them, free.

Is this the last posting?

I have not updated this blog in a very long time - two years by the looks of things! I moved on from photography with a camera and started using a smartphone. 

When I realised that just about any phone now produces excellent quality images and that it really doesn't matter whether an image is taken on a phone or a camera because people are interested in the image rather than the perceived quality of the image it was very releasing. I went over to smartphone photography and haven't looked back.

Meanwhile I went back to my  roots - computing and electronics. Having taken a long break from them, I picked up a Raspberry Pi microcontroller and started using my skills.

I might still update this blog but don't count on it. I had a whole load of fun writing it and had an absolute blast doing the April 1st posts. In recent years I would remember to do an April 1st post a few days into April so there really wasn't much point then.

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.

A cellphone, a camera, a tablet

A cellphone, a camera and a tablet. That’s all most travel photographers and photojournalists need. In fact much journalism now is done by journalists that dictate their stories to MP3 on their iPhone and send it together with iPhone photos and videos straight back to the office for either automatic transcription or manual transcription by minimum wage typists.

There has been a massive and I do mean a massive change in technology over the past 30 years. As a youngster I remember being taken on a tour of the local newspaper. At that time the words were made from cast lead and placed on trays used for printing. Then, the papers had darkrooms and each roll of film had to make it back to the lab, be developed and printed before it could be used. All very time-consuming, expensive and quite polluting.

As I have said on many occasions, there’s sod all difference between most cameras for 99% of all users and usage. Those amateurs that buy hyper expensive cameras then “prove” that they can produce a better image are fooling only themselves. Those that buy brand new kit are fools to themselves too.

Let’s look at the kit above. Ignoring the cellphone which is there just to demonstrate a cellphone (it does work, it cost me $15 and I’m using it as well as my main phone - which I used to take the picture), there’s a 4 year old 7” tablet, a 10 year old camera and lens both of which I bought secondhand, 4 years ago and a cheap Bluetooth keyboard. Even including my main phone which was $40, there’s probably less than two or three days wages for most low-paid people there.

That lot gets used for 90% of my blog postings and has for the past few years. Before I had the keyboard I used to use the terrible onscreen keyboard which led to some hilarious autocorrections. Eventually I’d had enough and added the Bluetooth keyboard.

The more pretentious individual - the type that buys only the most expensive lenses, cameras and other equipment, changing it whenever something new comes out - will, of course turn their snout up at minimalist equipment like this. In fact a few months ago I was at one of the national parks. There, I chatted with a fellow who had hiked to the top of a pretty big hill with a massive camera bag. He was very snooty when he found my camera is “only” 12 megapixels when he had the latest, greatest 50 megapixel monster. There’s no reason for that snootiness, nor for the pretentiousness.

If I truly wanted the latest and greatest, I’d ask myself why. My decision process goes along the lines...

• Most any digital camera produced in the last 10 years or so has ample resolution for most people. Given that very few images are actually printed there’s very little reason for most people to have huge resolutions. Indeed, even a 6 megapixel image printed at 300 PPI would measure 8 inches by 10 inches. 300 PPI is the absolute limit of human vision and quite candidly it would be possible to use lower PPI without anybody really noticing unless their nose was pressed right up against the print. If their nose is pressed against the print, they’re not appreciating the image but trying to find something to moan about.
• All digital cameras will take a decent photo. There are no dogs out there so brand makes no difference nor does model.
• Cost makes a difference. The more you spend on a camera, the less you can spend on anything else.
• New versus used - why take the price hit by buying new? My 10 year old 12 megapixel Olympus PM1 cost me $75 when I bought it, 4 years ago. New that camera cost $400. I saved myself $325 of depreciation. Nothing in photography ever appreciates in value - it all depreciates as fast as a brick falling through space. 
• As for lenses - certainly there is a difference, some of the cheaper lenses from independent makers are not that great. They’re soft and blurry. This is why I won’t buy independent lenses. But I won’t buy new lenses either. Again, they depreciate and as long as they work just fine, who cares what they look like. 
• At the end of the day the question has to be - do you want to take pictures or do you want to pose? If the answer is to take pictures then an expensive kit is not needed. If it’s to pose then you’ll want to get the expensive stuff but remember posing can only be done for a few months until the next big thing comes out.

The cost of the kit shown is not high because it was all secondhand. The point of it is what can be done with it. I’m done with spending money out the wazoo for things that don’t get used often. I’ve been there, seen it, done it and got the tee shirt. I would really like a long lens for my Olympus. I did get a 45-150 which is about the equivalent of a 90-300 but 300 is just not quite long enough for the longer stuff that I’d want to do. Doublers seem to have gone right off the market so the only solution would be to get a T2 mount lens or an M42 mount lens and the corresponding adaptor. The question is whether even then it would be financially worthwhile. It’s not that I make any money from photography. In fact I don’t think anybody really makes money from photography. They make their money from add-ons rather than photography since everybody with a cellphone can take decent enough pictures - hence, of course, many journalists now do their photography with an iPhone.

The struggle against weight

Years ago, a camera meant a great big thing that had a wet plate and needed to be set up on a solid tripod for several minutes. The “camera bag” of old was almost a horse-drawn cart. These days cameras have become smaller and much easier to use.

Yesterday I was using my cellphone camera. See what I mean - in 100 years we have gone from cameras the size of a desk to cameras that fit in a pocket! The quality of images has increased tremendously too. That image is probably sharper and higher quality than those I was getting from my manual focus 35mm film camera of 20 years ago.

Looking around my stored things, I found my old 110 camera. The film is very long expired but that’s what I used to use as a lightweight travel camera. It worked really well too. I have very fond memories of the photos I took with that camera. They’re still around here somewhere.

The big film SLRs were so heavy that many photographers, carrying all the equipment they needed used to damage their backs on a regular basis. These days cameras have become ever smaller. Now the top picture was taken with a cellphone. The next was taken with an iPad. The iPad camera seems better than the one on my (cheap) cellphone.

Autofocus has definitely improved many photos. There are far less “failures” than there used to be. It’s definitely not perfect

The failure of the cellphone to focus on the flower with the insects on top is an example of the problems of autofocus but to be honest, autofocus gets it right far more often than a human alone would.

But back to the weight of the kit. As many of you know, I went over from using Nikon 35mm using the FM2 and MD12 together with lenses etc to using Canon digital SLRs. Since then I sold all the Canon kit and bought some secondhand Olympus kit. In terms of size, it has been a reduction the whole way.  It has also been a massive reduction in weight.

My old Nikon kit was painful to carry and weight around 30lbs. Having that off one shoulder was a recipe for back problems. My current Olympus combines that 30lb camera kit into one small camera and two small lenses. Even if I add extra memory cards (heaven knows why as a 32GB card is more than ample for a month of photos and videos) and extra batteries then I am adding hardly any extra weight or bulk. Indeed the kit is so small it fits into pockets. There is just no need for a camera bag now.

At one time I stocked up on filters. I had a huge quantity of Colin square filters for my camera. They cost a ton of money but were totally unsalable even though most were never ever used. I still have those somewhere but I have a feeling they’re just going to go into landfill. The cameras I long ago sold. Those filters were heavy and bulky. Now the only filter needed is a polarizing filter. The rest can be done with software.

The evolution of photography has been toward smaller and lighter with better image quality. My cellphone I would put on a par with my110 camera. This is why I do like to have a separate, dedicated camera. For most things a cell phone does more than adequate photos. For holidays I like to have a real camera though these days I don’t bother with extra lenses. It’s so much easier just to walk closer to take a photo. It’s also not the end of the world if I miss out on a photo through not having the right lens. It’s not as though anybody is ever actually going to pay for my photos when the internet is absolutely flooded with freely available images.

Actually, as far as I’m concerned, if somebody claims to be a professional photographer, I wonder whet kind of scam they’re running or where their money is coming from. The income from photography is so pitiful that most photographers have either a spouse making money, are retired from a real job or have a sideline in something else (usually illegal) that pays the bills.

But yes, from 20lbs of kit down to a camera that does the same and more while taking up a fraction of the space and weighs around a pound. I’ll take that! I can live with that! As far as image quality - just about any digital camera will knock the socks off any roll of film. Yes. This progress is just what the doctor ordered.

The death of Flickr

Flickr it seems is dead. They got taken over by somebody. Today I went to access some photos I'd taken some 3 years ago to be greeted with a message that I had to cough up money or lose images. Thank the Lord everything is backed up somewhere. This is just like one of those other image banks that vanished a few years ago so abruptly that people could not save their images and lots of people lost a lot of precious photos.

It goes back to what I've always said about online anything. It could all disappear in the blink of an eye. A server goes down mid backup, corrupting the data files and the backups. Then a fire breaks out in the backup room and takes out all the historical backups leaving everybody with nothing.

An image format might cease to be used. In a few years nobody will support that format. Then you go back to your old photos that you've not seen in 20 years and bang - they're there - you just can't access them.

Where do you go from here? Well, fortunately USB memory sticks are plentiful and cheap. Store all your images on memory sticks. Make multiple copies but crucially - label them. The problem though is that like VHS cassettes, nobody is going to check through VHS cassettes before discarding them. They're not like film or cine film where you can hold them up to the light  to see exactly what's on them. I've seen people throw out huge piles of VHS cassettes with no idea what was on them. There could have been anything from their baby footage to their graduation.

In the old days flash memory was ludicrously expensive. I remember spending a ton on 8MB memory cards. Then I remember spending $100 on a 1GB CF card. Now I can pick up massive memory cards for very little money. It used to make sense to store your photos on a hard drive and recycle the memory card. Now it makes more sense to keep your photos on the memory cards and duplicate them onto memory sticks then store the originals away safely.

As far as this online stuff is concerned, Flickr was free. That should be the first warning that it wasn't kosher. Never rely upon anything free. As far as the pictures I have on Flickr - I couldn't give a rat's arse. That was just a display medium for me. If Google photos went down then I would grumble but I'd still have all my photos. I don't think I bother with iPhoto.

Never store anything online that you don't have a backup of.

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.

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.

RIP Nikon 1 series

It seems the Nikon 1 series has been discontinued. This is a real shame. It was a charming little camera with the emphasis on little. I tried one years ago and would have loved to have had one. As it was, it was way too expensive and even the secondhand first editions have been climbing in value. 

Where Nikon dropped a clanger was in aiming at a non-existent market. Devoid of easily accessed manual controls for essential things like focus, shutter speed, ISO and aperture, it was a chunky, bulky phone camera that wasn’t as nice and flat as a phone camera. It didn’t integrate particularly well with anything having no easy way of getting the images off the camera and onto a tablet.

I have my phone with me all the time. The photograph below was one I took earlier this year when I was parked up for an hour between school runs in the school bus I was driving. The light was poor yet the image is clear. It’s good enough for what I need. That’s a very important phrase that I want you to remember - good enough. 

The Nikon 1 was decried for having a small sensor. Nobody has ever complained about phones having small sensors. Except - people on Internet forums. Give them a hot dinner cooked by a top chef and free. They’ll find something to complain about and the “free” meal will be as disgusting as the slop they imagine is served in prisons. The chef will know nothing about cooking etc. So basically there is a bunch of blabbermouths on the internet flapping their lips or rather fingers typing the kind of venom they would never dare say in public for fear of a justifiable clip around the ear or punch into the middle of next week.

The pictures I saw from the Nikon 1 were excellent. As I’ve said, I wanted one. I actually bought an Olympus because it offered better options though have not taken advantage of any of those options. I have idly considered getting a Nikon 1 as well but that would be a little too bougeous.

Nikon and all the other camera manufacturers have badly misjudged the market. I recently saw a photo of a pop star standing by the crowd. Everybody in the crowd was taking a photo using a cellphone. The point is cellphones have reached the point where they all have cameras and as the photo above can take excellent photos. No doubt somebody will produce a photo taken with their speedy camera and proclaim that the cellphone image pales in comparison. That may well be true but the cellphone image is good enough. The speedy camera image is overkill. In fact expensive overkill.

Comparing a cellphone image with a camera image I can look and say better contrast, better definition, better acutance, better low light performance. These things mean nothing though. It’s like comparing a painting by a popular artist with a classical master artist. If you really look you’ll see the differences. Not everybody wants to sit studying an image through a microscope for hours on end looking for the differences. Yes - real cameras are better at photos. They suck at getting them online or onto a tablet or computer. They’re also big, bulky, heavy and ridiculously expensive.

My cellphone was $29 and I bought it without a contract. A typical camera can cost several hundred and then several hundred more for the lens. Nobody is going to sell their images no matter how good they and everybody else think they are. Look at Flickr - all the free images any user could desire. Why in God’s name with all this free stuff would anybody want to pay for images? I’ve never paid for a photo and I never will. Similarly only a few people have paid for my photos. Not enough for me to want to take photography professionally.

The Nikon 1 failed because it was aimed at the cellphone market and cellphone users just don’t want a bulkier cellphone. It was a success because it was the smallest of the amateur cameras. It could have been so much more had there been some easily accessible controls on the first edition. As it is, I am not surprised Nikon is winding up its 1 series. Canon surely won’t be too far behind in curtailing their smaller camera series.