When Did It All Go Wrong?

When Did It All Go Wrong?

  • Leica M3, 1954 - Barnack's classic gets overgrown and complex

    Votes: 6 1.5%

  • Nikon F, 1959 - SLRs start to take over

    Votes: 17 4.4%

  • Pentax Spotmatic, 1964 - TTL metering makes it too easy

    Votes: 7 1.8%

  • Konica Autoreflex T, 1968 - TTL autoexposure makes it too easy

    Votes: 17 4.4%

  • Canon AE-1, 1976 - the masses get computer chips and plastics

    Votes: 72 18.5%

  • Minolta Maxxum 7000, 1985 - autofocus makes it too easy

    Votes: 79 20.3%

  • Canon T90, 1986 - serious cameras go plastic

    Votes: 123 31.6%

  • Canon EOS D30, 2000 - Digital SLRs start to become affordable

    Votes: 68 17.5%
  • Total voters
    389
Camera companies have been cranking out idiot-proof cameras for the masses for over 100 years now. There's no real philosophical difference, from the point of view the manufacturer, between a Brownie box camera and the latest digital P&S.
 
It never went wrong. There have always been good and bad cameras. Technology does not make a camera good or bad. It simply comes down to personal choice or bad design.
 
Trius said:
"or bad design" ... I think a lot of people think bad design is far more pervasive than it used to be, hence the question.
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Since more cameras are being made, I guess by number there would be more cameras badly designed. But that is not new. Disk, instimatic, Retinas, Box Brownies. Now matter how far back you go, bad design has always been there. But then there is technology and techniques that have improved cameras. There has never been a golden-age of camera design.

(And nostalgia is not what it used to be.)
 
As a tool, I have no problems with plastic. My mom took lots of family photos with a brownie that are quite viewable as they were 40+ years ago. Camera still works. It was nothing to look at however. But is a wrench beautiful? I like the looks of the Pentax Spotmatic and those who do drooled over the "technical exercise" of the digital Spotmatic. It is a personal choice. I like the Bessa R look, not those that came later. mho, only!
 
pvdhaar said:
I dug up a picture of the FE meter readout.. http://www.mir.com.my/rb/photography/hardwares/classics/nikonfeseries/fe/needleunder.jpg

Green transparent needle is linked to the shutter dial, black needle is linked to meter..
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This meter actually appeared first in the Nikkormat EL, which was the first Nikon camera with an electronically controlled shutter and aperture priority AE. My wife has one and it works great, although she prefers her all-mechanical, manual exposure only, bigger and much heavier Nikkormat FT. And she has small hands! Women are impossible to understand indeed! 😀
 
Sparrow said:
At first I thought coming down from the trees was our big mistake, but I’m beginning to think the perpetual internet poll looks a bigger threat to humanity.
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IS this now the oldest poll in RFF history? I started it; do I win something? (aside from a lifetime of notoriety)?
 
Luddites, all of you. I like my conversation pieces as much as the next fellow, but for professional work in a variety of circumstances we're truly in the golden age.

I got a lot of experience being an office manager for a busy commercial photographer in my city. He did nothing but moan about how little he used his Sinar 4x5 for work and complained endlessly about how terrible the Canon EOS system I talked him into purhcasing was. Turns out, like most people who bemoan change, he was simply unwilling to progress past the ground glass.

It took me literally a full week of explaining in different ways the E-TTL flash system before he *got it*. The Canon *exposure lock-focus-recompose-shutter* shuffle was beyond him for six months. I ended up saving at least a half dozen jobs that he would have blown through gross technical iignorance. You really need to know the *system* when it comes to a modern, pro DSLR system. Is it as uncluttered as an F1, OM-1 or even an M camera? Of course not. Pro news and sports photogs take 20 shots in a couple secinds because they *can* pick the best and throw the rest.

That's what technical innovation is all about: competitive advantage.

I fully endorse cherishing and enjoying vintage hardware; I have a fetish for the stuff too. At the end of the day, my old collection of cameras is for fun. I pay the bills and put food on the table with a Canon Techno-Brick. Such is the way of the market, and we're all slaves to it for survival. Simply put, anything after the Canon EOS-1 series (1-D and up, too) is a tool that's fit for professional use and abuse. That's why they sell: they pay the bills.
 
When did it all go wrong? When I realised that depth of field could radically change the nature of a photograph - and that a lot of modern cameras did not allow me to choose what DoF I wanted, at least readily and without fuss.

I have never liked being ordered what is best by a machine, no matter how well-made or how often it is right. I just it's a control thing, even though I have a techie PhD (or maybe because of it!)

I started with an instamatic 126 then 110 cameras, then a snappy 35mm. But I realised it's limitations - luckily, I was bequeathed a Praktica MTL-3 which needed learning, but let me achieve the results I was looking for. After a few years away from photography, I found my way to rangefinders - a mysterious thing to me given that I started seriously taking pics in the late 1980s - and the picture quality is superb. After using my Fed 4 and I-61 lens and seeing the results, I knew I could never be happy with auto-everything, no matter how convenient. It really is worth the effort to get pictures that I can look at and even astound myself with. But auto-everything cameras cannot reliably provide that for me. I'm content to blame myself for my own mistakes, but I don't want to suffer for the mistakes made by a machine produced by someone who doesn't know what kind of picture I am after.

I really would like a digital cam if it let me do what I wanted (cost being a consideration of course!), but those that do seem to be so expensive. No problem, one day I say...

Maybe I should look into fixing an image sensor, board, batteries and memory card onto the back of a Fed 2. Actually, that's not half a bad idea...
 
I for one am gratified, to have my biases validated by this highly un-scientific poll of my peers.

It's the plastic!!!!

Oh sure, I don't like the autoexposure, and I don't like the electronic shutter, and really hate the autofocus. But if they only built them out of better stuff than polycarbonate, I wouldn't prefer the classic technology as much as I do....
 
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