The definitive guide to digital-age survival

[Mauro]

I am fully agree with Robert Lai: I love film cameras and fountain pens, and I regularly visit post offices for shipping hand written letters to my friends.

 

[jsrockit]

Not if you buy paint in differing media, chalks, pastels, and brushes. Even then the quality of the brushes is different one from the other.

Huh? I thought we were talking about photographs.

 

[Richard G]

1. Don't buy the Monochrom, your M9 will get lonely.
2. Don't order the iPad air engraved with your name and phone number for free.
3. Don't launch the camera in the iPad air.
4. If the camera is crooked and as expected, on your early morning visit to the Genius Bar in the Apple Store, they don't have a replacement with the same size storage, wait till they have. Don't take up their offer to email you a self-addressed mailing label to send from your office the faulty hardware so they can send you a new engraved iPad in the post.
5. Don't take the opportunity to get your car washed at that Westfield shopping centre, or give them your mobile number so they can SMS you when it's ready.
6. Don't buy a coffee with your remaining coins while you wait.
7. Don't return to the Apple Store.
8. If you return to the Apple Store don't buy a new iPhone 5S 64G outright so your son can have your iPhone 4 now his HTC is dying, not quite so soon as expected.
9. When you go to the Telstra store for the nano SIM don't listen to the Telstra people when they tell you their iPhone 5S on your plan is cheaper and also unlocked.
10. Don't let them insert the SIM in the shop and link to your Cloud account, instantly updating your contacts, @mac.com mail, including the email receipt for the iPhone 5S unopened in your bag.
11. Don't hope that the email receipt for the Apple Store bought phone will be on your new phone already, or think that your old phone could display the same email without 3G as they can link it to their WiFi. Don't smile or wish them a nice day as they refund you your money.
12. Don't call AppleCare when your old phone doesn't back up right.
13. Don't call again and let Alvin from the Philippines see your desktop remotely to help you set up the new phone.
14. When you go to meet your wife and children for lunch and you find a metered parking spot next to her car, but of course now have no coins (see 6 above) just risk the ticket.
15. If you didn't do that, go to the 7-11 to buy chewing gum for the change.
16. If you didn't do that, download the app advertised on the sign and pay electronically.
17. DO NOT throw up your hands at your digital Saturday morning and get back in the car and drive three blocks and park for 2 hours for free.
18. Do not take the Monochrom out of the car and take two photos you would otherwise have missed parking so close to the cafe.

I swear, that was not quite all of my Saturday morning yesterday. Later I updated my photographic notebook, mischievously labelled on the spine "Off Photography" with my M800 Pelikan fountain pen. I should have read another chapter of War and Peace (an actual book here.)

19. When you receive an email the following weekend that your iPad has been received at the service centre, and all checks out OK and it has been returned to you by Australia Post (#$%^&!) DO NOT immediately reply by email with a rather terse tone.
20. When you book another Genius Bar appointment for the following Saturday even before receipt of your original iPad in the mail, expect trouble and obstruction.
21. When your call is mysteriously escalated to a sweetly named and sweet sounding young woman who is going to personally monitor the whole matter and offers again to receive the old iPad by post with a forced replacement this time, no tests, go ahead and do it because you must have your name and phone number on the damn thing like you originally intended, on a whim.
22. DO NOT ask her if, by any chance, she might have seen my 'blistering email': don't even refer to it. Don't think to ask her to be sure there is a 128G Wifi cellular iPad available when you go back to the Genius Bar.
23. Try to squeeze in a quick trip to the office early to retrieve your idle SIM and iPad cover before your appointment. You won't be late.
24. Don't bother checking out the new iPad's camera. There couldn't be two that are faulty.
25. When the young lady calls back as promised to check all went well, on the Saturday she herself is going on leave, no need to wish her a pleasant holiday.

Reader, I had complete resolution of the matter - minus my name and phone number engraved on the iPad which was a futile and unnecessary indulgence, covered over anyway by my new iPad case. I now have a great fondness for the first name Chelsea.

 

[noisycheese]

Just use what you want.

I enjoy film cameras, and also I very much like computers. I also like Irn Bru and Lagavulin whisky, but the two don't mix.

All you have to do is stop caring what companies want you to think. Film is not outdated in any other sense than it was what works to sell people things.

120 or 4x5 film is higher resolution than pretty much any digital camera, it's simpler, cheaper technology, but that plays no role in how we are sold things.

Just stop listening to what corporations tell you.

I enjoy my computers, and have owned countless, I use cloud services where it suits, have tablets, laptops and desktops, but I just bought a 2014 diary and a pen to replace my Google synced calendar. It's vastly cheaper, more hardy to damage, does not need a battery, and runs faster (I can flick to a page faster than I can unlock my phone, load calendar app, and go that day).

Technology only sometimes gets replaced with something better, mostly it's because it helps stuff sell.

+1 on what thegman said. Digital is not "superior" to film; it is different, that's all.

"Old" film cameras in concert with the currently available crop of emulsions are more than capable of producing beautiful, exhibit quality images and prints.

 

[Richard G]

Surviving in the digital age sometimes requires 'going hard and going early.' Mike Johnston on the TOP site has a marvellous 'Letter to George' in which he acknowledged George's dissatisfaction with Mike's advice to buy a full frame digital and a couple of fast primes, this advice being far too unrealistic for a man on a limited budget. His Letter then traces the history of the frugal camera buyer, like George, moving from point and shoot to high end compact to DSLR and Zoom and finally a good lens, or two, and then full frame so that finally, after a few years of misery and uncertainty the cautious buyer arrives at what Mike advised at the outset, but with all the added expense and the storage problems of a cupboard full of cameras that just don't quite cut it. He writes very well and the letter is very entertaining.