It's Either We Or Them

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ruben

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Either we or them must be out of date. Outdated like outdated film. Or more.

I have just finished to watch through the CNN Obama's inauguration. I guess I was the only one, as I am sure most RFF American fellows supporting him (street average is said to rate by 80%), went to Washington defying the cold like all other millions of folks.

So let me tell you that poitics besides, one of the most comic and interesting features of the ceremony was the presence of those "stupid little cameras".

No I am not refering to the smart crowds, but to all those high throat distinguished senators and poiticians, the same who already started to plan Ceasar's execution and therefore took a seat around their prospected vyctim, they also were pointing their stupid little cameras to Obama at every single moment and were catched by the CNN, infraganti.

And there were two highlight points too. One was when one of Obama's daughter passed her little stupid camera to Vice President Bayden, due to what seemed to be some malfunction. Bayden tryied to fix and then returned the stupid little camera.

The other little stupid camera highlight incindent took place when after the oath, inside the white house, a noticeable fat in toxidised photog with a big digital camera, also took out from his pocket a stupid little camera and started to earn his livelihood.

Now, guess what. Those "stupid little cameras", as a friend photographer once thermed them, that seem to be used by everyone but us, the smarter photographers whom anything below the M-8 is as suspicious as the M-8 itself, are quite quite compact, beyond whatever we have seen with film. Perhaps we too should start pay attention for the best mix of compactness and features, like we do with film cameras.

Cheers,
Ruben
 
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I'm waiting for a micro 4/3rds cellphone. THAT would be unbeatable compactness for something that has professionally acceptable quality.

Sure, lots of people had their "stupid" little cameras. But there were throngs of people with much larger cameras there too.

Maybe I'm missing your point?
 
Since I am at work not traveling around with some false hope that the new messiah will save us since it is only just a few short months ago that Obama, McCain, Bush and the rest of the Washington criminals rewarded theirbuddies in Wall Street with a $700 billion "bailout" that no one can account for; that was stolen from the taxpayers and their children. So I am sour on the whole thing.
 
20081215200723_westside.jpg


Taken w/ my T-Mobile G1 with some processing in CS3. Not bad for a camera phone, in my opinion. I'm patiently waiting for the day when someone smarter than myself releases an app that allows manual control.

ruben said:
Perhaps we too should start pay attention for the best mix of compactness and features, like we do with film cameras.
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Many of us already are.
 
I guess I was the only one, as I am sure most RFF American fellows supporting him (street average is said to rate by 80%), went to Washington defying the cold like all other millions of folks.
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It was history in the making, but I think I got a better view watching the big-screen in the lunch room down the hall. Also, it was much warmer.

Yes, we were watching tomorrow's history books being written today! With all of the goings on and the meaning of the whole thing, I really didn't take note of any stupid little cameras.
 
kshapero said:
Since I am at work not traveling around with some false hope that the new messiah will save us since it is only just a few short months ago that Obama, McCain, Bush and the rest of the Washington criminals rewarded theirbuddies in Wall Street with a $700 billion "bailout" that no one can account for; that was stolen from the taxpayers and their children. So I am sour on the whole thing.
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Same is happening here :mad: with our un-elected dictatorship baling out banks with taxpayers money. This will take longer to pay off than the debt incurred by the second world war.

Anyway, back on topic, some of those "stupid" little cameras are quite smart. You could think of one as a light meter that can take an image.
 
Ruben, you certainly have an interesting way with words!

But seriously, if we are to support PHOTOGRAPHY we certainly have to come to grips with (meaning 'accept') what you call "stupid little cameras". It's not a "us vs them" situation.
 
The widespread use of "stupid little cameras" is a great thing for photography. Many of these new/novice photographers want better shots and advance to better cameras. Even a very few might move on to rangefinders.
 
Small P&S cameras annoy you? Hmmm... My pet peeve were those amateur videographers, carrying their video cameras in museums and acting as if they were some kind of "auteurs."

However, when it comes to these ones, I consider these digital P&S a kind of blessing. The people who use them around me are all young females, and they immortalize all kinds of events all the time (most of their shots wind up on Facebook, but then, who cares?), and by doing so, they're keeping photography alive.

If they later come into film, or never do, it's irrelevant to me. The fact remains that, instead of letting these moments disappear, they're using their cameras, becoming photographers of some type. Who knows? One of them may post here tomorrow! :)
 
I commented on this in my post on photographing the inaugural on TV. The pocket digital camera has certainly changed the world, along with the mobile phone. It has also changed mores and what is acceptable in public. Imagine the new vice-president fiddling with a camera during the concluding prayer of earlier inaugurations. Uh-uh.

/T
 
most people don't understand photography any further than "point and shoot" and so they don't purchase anything more complicated than what they need. why should that bother you?
 
All are not avid photographers - some just want memories. That's why George Eastman brought out the simple camera and said "you push the button and we do the rest". When I was a kid it was box cameras. People took the eight or ten shots on 620 film and dropped it off at the drug store.
It's just us people that are nuts about photography that need all the great equipment, spend hours in a smelly darkroom. Sometimes I just carry my Yashica GSN. While it's not quite a 'stupid little camera', it sure is simple. Having it is better than no camera at all, and I have made some good photos with it.
Just IHMO.
 
Aren't those little digital buggers just the modern day version of the $12 Kodak Brownie. Both capable at times of taking some great photos. i say the more the merrier of all types.
 
It seems perhaps some are missing Ruben's point. I think he's basically saying that the compact digitals which many of us may perceive as being "stupid" or insignificant because of their lack of features, image quality etc. are actually capturing many of the significant moments of our lives these days. So let's not dismiss them out of hand because they may ultimately prove to play a more important role in the world than our "smarter" DSLRs, RFs and so on.
Did I get it right Ruben?
 
This rant was pretty mediocre.

First of all the primitive tribal notion of us and them applied to photography is against the spirit of photography and secondly to disparage people for trying to record a moment just because of the tools that they're using is ludicrous.

... And the repeated usage of 'stupid little camera' was annoying as hell... And why was this posted in the philosophy section?
 
Let me point out a few things.

It was the rise in enthusiasm for happy-snap style family photography that sparked the rise of the amateurs, in the early 1900's and again in the post-WWII era. Thousands and millions of dads snapping madly away photos of their families, cookouts, Christmases and vacations with Kodaks and Polaroids led to thousands of children growing up expecting photography to be part of their lives, and some who decided to take it further.

There have been times when photography in general was seen as fairly boring, and people stopped taking lots of photos, except for the 'most' exciting times. It was no longer as common to see dad in his Bermuda shorts and Hawaiian shirt with a camera around his neck at the family campsite.

And isn't it interesting what brought about the current surge in interest in film photography? No film cameras, no. Instead, it has been young people getting interested in photography because suddenly every freaking thing has a camera lens stuck on it, from laptop computers to cell phones, and some have decided to see if there is something more out there and have discovered the world that you and I live in, but which was an unknown subculture to them.

So before kicking the stupid little cameras to the curb and dismissing them as toys, junk, unworthy, and so on, you might consider that you're biting the hand that feeds you (and yes, I know Ruben is speaking tongue-in-cheek, no worries). You want to attract more people to film photography, and especially to rangefinder photography? Well, cheap little digital cameras are their 'gateway drug', my friends. You ought to be handing the damned things out by the gross to the neighbor kids.

http://gadgetwise.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/01/20/a-new-photographer-in-the-white-house/

Besides, they are capable. I don't know about you, but I sold a photo I took with a Kodak C633 to a textbook author:

http://flickr.com/photos/wigwam/2631192698/

Another was placed in Earth Magazine last month:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/wigwam/2630349031/

You can make fun of those cameras all you like, but let me tell you, boyos, the check cashes just the same - so scoff all you like - I am laughing all the way to the bank.

And they say that citizen photos taken by cell phones helped the police in the UK immensely after the terrorist bombings there. When a police officer recently shot and killed a man on the BART subway station, it was videoed and put on Youtube immediately - not just one video but several. Watching the watchers, holding police accountable for their actions - how can this be bad?

I'd rather see every citizen armed with a camera phone that takes crappy photos - BUT THEY CARRY THEM EVERYWHERE - than go back to the 1990s where single-shot film cameras took crappy photos AND NOBODY CARRIED THEM.

People who complain about tiny little digital cameras are frankly - well, kind of stupid.

IMHO.

And no, I don't mean Ruben. He was speaking in jest, I do believe.
 
photogdave said:
I think he's basically saying that the compact digitals which many of us may perceive as being "stupid" or insignificant because of their lack of features, image quality etc. are actually capturing many of the significant moments of our lives these days. So let's not dismiss them out of hand because they may ultimately prove to play a more important role in the world than our "smarter" DSLRs, RFs and so on.
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If that's not what Ruben meant, he should have.

Case in point - a couple of weeks ago a local transit cop shot a guy in the back, who later died. There might never have been a story except that some guy videoed the incident on his cell phone. (See Bill's reference above.) Not that long ago an incident such as this might have merited a few lines on page 5 of the local paper, but those days are long gone. These mobile imaging devices may be the most subversive technology to hit society since the printing press.

And for us gearheads - Nokia is putting Zeiss lenses in some of their devices. Check out the N95: 5.6mm f2.8 Tessar (35mm equiv. on 35mm) and 5 megapixels - heck, my R-D1 with the 35mm UC Hexanon is only JUST THIS MUCH better (fingers held close together) - and the R-D1 doesn't shoot video, doesn't have GPS and doesn't fit in my pocket - oh, and can't make calls or send texts.

When Nokia releases the N97 I may give up my CrackBerry.
 
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