Losing touch with reality

Amateur photographers have lost touch with reality. Yes, that's right. Read that again - amateur photographers have lost touch with reality. I'm not talking about professional photographers - most of them have already realised that photography is ever less lucrative to the point that most now do not use photography as their sole income.

Some manufacturer comes out with the latest whiz-bang camera that takes photos, makes the tea, pops out slices of ready-buttered toast cut neatly into soldiers and all the amateurs immediately hawk their current cameras on ebay to rush off and buy the latest creation. It's been utterly ridiculous for years. First the madheads rushed off to buy 2 and 3 megapixel digital SLRs - as though they were actually worth paying money for. To cap it all, they paid thousands for them. They broke the unwritten rule that you never buy electronics when they first come out unless you have no money sense whatsoever. As if that wasn't enough, they fell for the advertiser's bullshit about last year's model not being as good as this year's model. They repeated the process!

Judging by the way manufacturers slowly leaked out minor increases in sensor sizes, milking the market each time, enough amateurs fell for that to keep the process going for a good few years. All it takes to keep a scam like that going is enough suckers to fall for it. Let's have a good look at megapixels.

When I started in digital photography, I bought a 3 megapixel compact which I used extensively. It didn't have a long zoom and recorded only 15 second clips of silent video. Most people today would turn their delicate little noses up at 3 megapixels yet a 3 megapixel image will yield a nice 10x8 print and possibly bigger. How many prints are hanging on walls bigger than 10x8? Not many - that's how many. Then a friend gave me a 3 megapixel superzoom which also did video. The compact failed after 6 years use and about 4,000 photos. The superzoom failed at about the same time but failed of a known manufacturing defect so it was sent back for a free repair and still works to this day though it doesn't get used much now. I did not go for multiple upgrades and camera after camera as megapixels crept from 3 to 4 to 5 to 6 to 8 etc. I looked at the advertisers' baloney the first year and recognised it as baloney.

Eventually I got a digital SLR with an 8 megapixel sensor. Sadly, I bought that while it was still quite expensive though not at the brand spanking new prices. I still use that 8 megapixel digital SLR. I checked the other day and the price had fallen from $1,200 when it was newly released to $30 on the secondhand market. That took 7 years. I use cameras that are between 7 and 10 years old or very much out of date.

As far as I am concerned, the photos from my 7 year old digital SLR that is now worth almost nothing are pretty darned good.

There was a time when I thought a lot of stabilised lenses. I'm not such a fan of them any more. They're very nice and I can get some great photos from them but I can also get some absolutely ghastly photos when they go bananas - which they do. I have seen the image jumping about through the viewfinder and had to switch both camera and lens off in order to cure the problem. I was very much a fan of stabilised lenses when I found I could take hand-held photos in low light with them. Now, I'm not so much of a fan because I think I get better photos out of my non-stabilised lenses. The above photo was from a stabilised lens. The below photo was from a non-stabilised lens.

This was taken with a non-stabilised, hand held Tamron 17-35 that I got secondhand for almost nothing. The resolution is great. The problem with stabilised lenses is they tend to want to stabilise already stable images which degrades the images very slightly. They also lull people into a false sense of security as they only stabilise in certain planes.

Amateurs, needless to say have fallen for the stabilised lens baloney and tend to buy only stabilised lenses. I bought one and liked it initially so I bought another. Now I'm not keen on either, hence I put them up for sale.

I enjoyed my photography the most when I used manual focus cameras with manual exposure only. I had to think about what I was doing more than I do with these electronic things. Similarly, with my old manual flash, I used to work out the exposures in my head rather than relying upon some electronic thing to get it right. I miss having control over all the aspects of photography from exposure to flash control etc that I used to have with film. I miss having a depth of field scale on the lens. These electronic calculation apps we can have on our phones just don't give me the quality of information that the scales used to give. With that scale I could ensure everything between two points was in focus. I can't do that with these wretched calculators. I can't even work out where exactly the lens is focussing as there's nothing worthwhile in the way of a distance scale any more.

Amateurs fall for all the "advances" believing that they will make their own photography match that of the professionals. In fact what will advance their photography is getting out and taking better pictures and doing it more often. Amateurs need to forget about all the stupid rules like the rule of thirds. They need to forget about all the "experts" they meet online and in real life. They need to get out and take pictures and to stop worrying if they're breaking some rule or other.

My ideal camera would not have 90% of the fancy features. It would have a shutter speed dial with an aperture priority setting, ISO controls and basic view/review/delete controls for the LCD. It would in effect be a Nikon F3 in digital. 

Digital cameras are just too darned complicated. If I need to carry the manual with me to work out how to operate funky features like second curtain synch etc then the camera is too complicated. I don't want features I'll use maybe once in a blue moon. Amateurs seem crazy on having every damned feature they can think of even though it makes the camera into an unwieldy monstrosity. Most of these digital cameras are monstrosities these days. Amateurs buying into it all is what's driving manufacturers to put all the garbage onto cameras. I don't want a camera that will brew the tea and make sandwiches. I want a camera that I can work with.

Lenses - as I've already said - the image stabilisation feature is interesting but adds to problems. The autofocus thing adds to laziness and problems. Give me a good old manual focus lens with my digital camera and give me back my freznel rings and split screens! Keep the weight of the old film cameras though - I prefer the more modern lightweight systems.

Amateurs have largely forgotten what it is to make a photograph - they let the camera do all the work without any basic understanding of the process. Many cannot understand the relationship between aperture, shutter speed and ISO. Most won't even know what this symbol means  0  on their camera bodies. It is most assuredly on my 7 year old Canon XT. 

Amateurs through the advancement of technology have completely lost touch with the reality of photography. They clamor for ever more crap on their cameras, grade cameras by megapixels, focussing speed and a whole load of irrelevant garbage that actually gets in the way of taking good photos.

Many amateurs laugh at the so-called "MWAC" - mom with a camera who goes out and sells their skills with a camera for money without ever knowing quite why the camera does what it does. Those amateurs are not much behind MWACs for lack of photographic knowledge. It's a sobering thought that the unskilled people of old who were unable to load film into their cameras or to take a photo without their finger in front of the lens now own digital cameras and call themselves amateurs.

Food for thought

I bet you're wondering whether I've gone crackers! No - the point is, this photo was taken with my cellphone camera. It really is quite a decent photo for a camera as casual as a cellphone camera. This was actually my dinner - everything there is healthy down to the beanburger. Actually, one of my friends looked in my fridge one time and exclaimed "there's nothing there I can eat - all this is healthy food!" but that's a story for another time.

How do you define a photograph? At what point do you decide you have got enough photo quality? In the days of film, there were many film formats:

• 110 - this was the smallest. This was made from 16mm cine film
• 35mm - this was the most common and made from 35mm cinema film.
• 120 - this was less common and produced more professional results
• Sheet film - this came in sizes such as 5x7, 10x8 etc and was for ultimate quality.

I have taken great photos with all of these film formats. All it takes is perseverance.

Now we use digital and without a shadow of a doubt I will say that 8 megapixels of any digital camera are far superior to anything I could produce with 35mm. The question now is what size of sensor do you want. They seem to be various sizes.

• Pentax Q is the smallest with a 1/1.7" sensor. 
• Nikon 1 with a CX sensor - bigger
• APS-C - bigger again
• "full frame" - the same size as 35mm

All of these will produce a good photo. The photo above was taken with a 1/4" sensor on my Nexus 4. It's quite good though noise is present in the image. Is this unacceptable though? In my opinion it is not unacceptable. What would be unacceptable would be color bias or blur or any form of distortion. That's not present though.

People argue this way and that for different sensor sizes with the general argument being that bigger is better. Yes I will agree bigger is usually better but at what cost? How much better is a "full frame" sensor over an APS-C sensor? I know it's almost twice the size but is it that much better? To be brutally honest, it is not. The same for differences between all the sensors. Where a difference will be noticeable is in lower light levels where the larger sensors collect more photons than the smaller sensors. That is the sole advantage of the larger sensors. This has a knock-on effect of meaning that higher ISOs will have progressively more digital noise as a side-effect in progressively smaller sensors. My Nexus 4 sensor can be very noisy at times.

So, the question is - does a smaller sensor make an image somehow unacceptable? If you listen to the pundits, only the full frame sensor will do. I have heard so many supporting arguments for full frame sensors that you'll be shocked to realize I think very little of such arguments. The sole argument away from the smallest sensors is that the smaller sensors don't have very wide-angle lenses. Otherwise, there is no reason on earth to follow the baloney about using "full frame" sensors.

The smaller the sensor, the more care needs to be taken to obtain the best image quality. All digital cameras now produce images well in excess of what we could produce with film cameras. Why do we keep moving the goalposts? I think a lot too many people believe the marketing and advertising baloney that we're constantly fed. I challenged somebody to produce good photographs using the Nikon 1 system without a viewfinder and in low light. You know what? They did. I was impressed. Now I need to challenge the Pentax Q people to the same thing!

I don't believe in sensor size superiority. For the average amateur even a Pentax Q sensor should be adequate. What we have to do is to work with what we have rather than to go for bigger and better all the time. If we work around our equipment then we get results. If we get equipment that works around us then we go bankrupt.

My advice is just to go simple. I'm simplifying my camera gear. I was never intended to be a professional photographer. I enjoy my photography. I am heading back to being an amateur. Being an amateur does not mean I cannot sell prints or do photo jobs or write books. It just means that it is not a career or a job. It might sound strange but all I ever wanted to be was an amateur photographer that sold the odd print etc. 

I heard from a professional photographer today. He applauded my decision to go back to being an amateur and agreed with all of my points against doing photography professionally. All his usual work had dried up and he was relegated solely to doing stock photography. That's something that's in its last gasp too since microstock came out. Millions of quite good amateurs produce excellent microstock and are happy to get paid pennies for it so the microstock agencies can charge less. Sounds like a vicious cycle to me. I still believe professional photography is doomed. In fact, even he said photography is "like toilet-paper, cheap and disposable".

Knowing is half the battle

Knowing that Google is going to animate your images is half the battle. I can take as I said a day or two back, a mundane record photo and turn it into something special. Normally I would not get too excited about a side-on photo of an elephant but an elephant that is obviously alive and moving? Now that's something special.

I know they're horribly slow to load but they are fun. Both of these come from a sequence of photos shot hand-held with absolutely no tripod nor any other support at all. They were both shot on a cloudy day at quite high ISO which means that technically they're not as good as I would have liked. Having said that, the uniqueness of the images in motion more than makes up for that.

Technical details? I can't remember what I used to take these photos and there's no exif information in a GIF to help out. I'm not so sure I like the way Google has enhanced the images. I know they were taken at about 3pm - 4pm but the sun doesn't set until about 9pm so they shouldn't have golden hour lighting. Having said that, it's not unpleasant.

I am going to have to say that I really like what Google is doing these days. If you ignore the lack of privacy aspects of some of the Google operations, what they're doing seems to be very good indeed. I particularly like the way I can link my Chrome browser on my Mac to my Nexus 4. I gather a Chromebook would be the next level in linkage. My only criticism of the Chromebook is that they're not made quite as well as my Mac. I've had my Mac for 5 years and upgraded the operating system once. It's still as good as it was when it was new. Had I had a Windows laptop, I'd have had to upgrade twice already.

I did look into Android tablets to display my photos. I was not very impressed by those I saw though. The Apple iPads are very nice indeed and would talk nicely to my Macbook. The Android tablets don't cooperate well with Mac though I'm sure they would with a Chromebook. PC's I'm not so sure about.

What you're buying into with Android or Apple is an ecosystem. All Apple products talk nicely to each other. All Android products talk nicely to each other. PCs have been notorious for not talking nicely to anything, preferring their own protocol instead of industry standard protocols.

I had an Android tablet. It was a Nook Color. That was pretty good in a dry room. South Carolina is a humid place and so unsurprisingly, it went bananas. It was OK most of the time in the house but anywhere there was humidity, it was appalling. I got it for about $90 and struggled, 6 months later to get $30 for it. In the end I was getting so desperate to offload it before it got any more out of date that it went for $30. It was a case of either letting it go for that or taking it up to the shooting range to use it as a target.

One of the things that seems utterly bonkers to me is how a small Android tablet can cost more than a larger Chromebook which has the advantage of having a physical keyboard. I never will figure the genius thinking behind that pricing strategy. I would always rather a keyboard.

Looking at tablets, my other gripe is that they have the wrong screen aspect. Photographs are either 4:3 or 3:2 ratio. The iPad is 4:3 which is perfect for most compact camera users. Most tablets are 16:10 ratio which is not close to a digital SLR, 3:2 or a compact's 4:3. For displaying photographs that means either zooming and hence cropping or wasting screen real-estate. Let's face it, tablet screens are quite small. They're certainly not as big as a 10x8 print.

I have a feeling that there's more development needed in the tablet market yet.