wgerrard
Veteran
I'm not sure it is, either. The net speeds and increases the range of our contacts with others by many orders of magnitude, but we're still the same. If someone is inclined to buy a new lens just to get an ego boost on the net, I suspect they would have done the same things years ago, with the local club or local hangers-on providing the boost. It is interesting, though, that we can attach so much emotional importance to comments on the net from people who are otherwise complete strangers.
Roger Hicks
Veteran
Dear Bill,
I'm sure you're right, but there's always the argument that if a qualitative difference is big enough, it becomes a quantitative difference. Perhaps that's the best explanation of my original post.
Usually when I post things like this, I'm hoping for insights like yours (and others' on this thread too). I reckon that if I'm looking for a explanation of something I don't quite understand, I can't be the only one.
Cheers,
R.
wgerrard
Veteran
In truth, I find that much of the stuff I buy, photographic or otherwise, is unknown territory for the people I know. They'll take my word that something is great, bad, or indifferent. Or, at least politely pretend to take my word.
Sparrow
Veteran
It was a perceived need to “modernise” that got me on this net thing in the first place, when I couldn’t find what I wanted locally I went online, ironically, to search out a digital-rangefinder so as to join the modern world.
What I found online was a whole bunch of anxieties that I didn’t know I needed, taking photos wasn’t where it was at anymore, no, signature, drawing, creamy-bokeh were the thing now. I had neglected for too many years to check my back-focus, infinity and vertical alignment, one puts it off for a decade or two and wonder what happened to the time
Not only that, then there was the stuff I didn’t know I should be worrying about or had forgotten I should be worrying about, burning or noisy shutters, silky-smooth advancing and stealth … CLAing, straps, bags and ballistic nylon (whatever that is)
In the end it all cost me a few years of worry and a few thousand pounds, and I’m back where I started more or less using the old kit that’s “good enough” because it’s … well good enough.
on the plus side I did discover film scanning which has allowed me to take advantage of a local lab’s digital printer/enlargers and that has helped my printing enormously, an area that had always been a real weakness, so on balance, all in all, a good thing probably
What I found online was a whole bunch of anxieties that I didn’t know I needed, taking photos wasn’t where it was at anymore, no, signature, drawing, creamy-bokeh were the thing now. I had neglected for too many years to check my back-focus, infinity and vertical alignment, one puts it off for a decade or two and wonder what happened to the time
Not only that, then there was the stuff I didn’t know I should be worrying about or had forgotten I should be worrying about, burning or noisy shutters, silky-smooth advancing and stealth … CLAing, straps, bags and ballistic nylon (whatever that is)
In the end it all cost me a few years of worry and a few thousand pounds, and I’m back where I started more or less using the old kit that’s “good enough” because it’s … well good enough.
on the plus side I did discover film scanning which has allowed me to take advantage of a local lab’s digital printer/enlargers and that has helped my printing enormously, an area that had always been a real weakness, so on balance, all in all, a good thing probably
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Roger Hicks
Veteran
Sparrow
Veteran
then there was the girl in the Streach Yourself Fuji add …. how none-u is that now 
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David Hughes
David Hughes
Roger's point "and to hell with the pictures" is perfectly true on a lot of other forums (mostly digital) where I'm convinced a lot of people don't actually use the things but strut about with them.
Of course, a long long time ago I was happy just to get an average picture. From time to time I take out the correct period outfit and do I have a struggle at times to get the picture. With hindsight and last week's experience of a camera that's just been repaired* etc I'd say that 30 years ago it was very easy to get the picture right. And if we are talking Olympus 35SP, it was dead easy a while before then.
And the exposure tables and cameras from the same period can be easy. It's the bits in the middle when exposure meters were new and so on that drive me mad.
*Olympus XA - I'd forgotten just how good they can be.
Of course, a long long time ago I was happy just to get an average picture. From time to time I take out the correct period outfit and do I have a struggle at times to get the picture. With hindsight and last week's experience of a camera that's just been repaired* etc I'd say that 30 years ago it was very easy to get the picture right. And if we are talking Olympus 35SP, it was dead easy a while before then.
And the exposure tables and cameras from the same period can be easy. It's the bits in the middle when exposure meters were new and so on that drive me mad.
*Olympus XA - I'd forgotten just how good they can be.
Damaso
Photojournalist
There have always been those who look to others for approval or buy equipment for status rather than usefulness. Not a new trend, perhaps just more apparent on the internet...