digital Detox

My outlet for Digital Detox is to use a lens that was designed without the aid of a computer and to convert it to Leica mount myself.
My optical engineers remarked- "But Brian, computers really did make it easier".
 
The basic problem is this: nice, decent people, don't like to boss people around and tell them how to live. Which unfortunately means the world gets run by the worst jerks. It's hard to convince an honest man to get into politics (and even harder to get people to back him) if only to deny that power to some mutated brute who would use it to do evil, but unfortunately that is essentially how it must work, otherwise we see the things we now see happening.

Social media, which specializes in the destruction of nuance, and the development of willful stupidity has certainly pushed things in the wrong direction very quickly. We now live in a factoid and soundbite society, where thinking is evil, compassion is sin, and being stupid and brutish is considered manly.
 
I feel like I've been subjected to so much technological + societal change that I have difficulty making sense of it sometimes. But I'm not just talking about the last few months or years: It feels like it's been happening pretty much my entire life. But having said that, I don't see internet, devices and apps being inherently "toxic".

I've got mechanical wristwatches, windup alarm clocks, fountain pens, phonograph records, vacuum tubes and yes, film cameras. But they're there for my amusement, not as a rejection of all things digital.
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PetPhoto said:
One aspect is that digital, everything is meant to crap out sooner or later. And todays high end, great shooting machine, is going to be the following days newest piece o crap machine that is not worth anything... so buy this new one for 50% more money.

Its easy to understand that concept, take the oldest digital camera you have on hand. And then compare it to the latest camera of the same brand of 2024. Not a whole lot has changed, but the price sure has.

Look at the last few generations of Nikon Mirrorless, some cameras have gained an impressive 3 frames per second shooting ability, with the adition of an extra image processing chip, and a nice price tag boost of 15-2500$. That lowly last gen model sure looks lovely.

But seriously, most people say the newest digital model camera is "a worthy deal" because you can sell it and get alot of the money back when you buy the next generation ...

And as much as some like to mock the cost of film, my d7500 the most expensive memory card costs 60$ for a 512 GB. Shooting jpeg, thats probably 40,000 images. Some of the newer CFe memory cards cost as much as a top of the line Ipad..
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Yes and no. We have an ancient Nikon D90 with 16,000 'actuations' still functioning well tho' now and then it starts washing out all the mid tones and I have to do a few resets to put it back on track. Ditto my D700s, one has 130K+ and the other only 9K (it had <5K when I bought it in 2019). Ditto a Panasonic Lumix GF1 from ca 2009 which I've owned for many years, also my D800s which came with <10,000 clicks each. All bought second hand BTW, excepting the D90 which was a new purchase. A Canon 450D kit I had for a year before the D90 is still used by a friend. Those old digital cameras can last, but I'm not so sure about the latest new 'crop'.

All my Nikons have been checked and CLA'd a few times, usually every 4-5 years. I use them solely for on the go photography (= in my Asia travels). I've never made any use of multi images or for that matter video, which the D700s don't have anyway.

To sum all this up, my Nikons have all been 'babied', which may be the way to keep them working long-term.
 
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The US Air Force still uses the B-52 Stratofortress. It's almost as old as I am, having been built from 1952-1962. Some things just work and work for a very long time. The B-52 gets updated as necessary and I'm sure the electronics on board these things are a lot more complicated than what's inside my cameras. The aircraft started off in an analog world but it's working fine in the digital age.



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