J'Accuse

[Tony Jay]

I agree with Rob that digital cameras have way too many gizmo type modes etc.
This issue is compounded by the fact that entry level cameras often lack somewhat more important functions such as depth of field preview (Quite useful when allied with live view) forcing one to buy up into enthusisast-level or even pro-level cameras.
Sometimes useful functions are also buried deep inside what can become daunting menu systems.

It is possible that the KISS principle has been well and truly abandoned by the manufacturers.
I do won a Canon 5D3 but feel that the HDR mode is just so much hype.

My $0.02 worth

Tony Jay

[KLaban]

I agree with Rob that digital cameras have way too many gizmo type modes etc.

Depends on the camera.

My MFD is about as simple as cameras come. Optimum results are far easier to achieve than with any of my film cameras, it's so simple to use that it almost feels like cheating.

But yes, I agree, every time I pick up a Nikon/Canon/Sony/whatever DSLR all I want to do is put it down again. Find the camera/cameras that suit and then forget about them and go make images.

[Tony Jay]

I am certainly not a technophobe and I certainly don't let all the gizmo stuff to be found in cameras these days distract me from image making.
If the budget allowed I would almost certainly make the step up to medium format since the way I shoot would be compatible with the advantages that MF offers.
I love the possibility of levering everything I know about optics, digital sensors (in this case), exposure and compositional aspects to achieve the best of both IQ and aesthetics cum artistic value in camera.
The 5D3 (sensor) is different enough on initial testing to tell me that a settling in period will be required to get the best out of this camera.

Nonetheless, as an example, I feel that the HDR mode in its present state is practically useless, barely better than experimental.
I do a lot of HDR, not the grungy type so hated by so many, so have a fair idea.
As mentioned before I am no technophobe and I certainly want to take advantage of options that digital capture and post-processing can provide but I feel that a lot of the "functionality" of even professional level cameras is aimed at the uninitiated on an almost "point-and-shoot" basis that cannot possibly survive actual practice.
The real abilities of these cameras can sometimes be lost in the irrelevant hype.

My $0.02 worth.

Tony Jay

[theguywitha645d]

I have always found it easy to ignore what I don't use.

[BJL]

I agree with Rob that digital cameras have way too many gizmo type modes etc.
This issue is compounded by the fact that entry level cameras often lack somewhat more important functions such as depth of field preview ...

Firstly that is hardly a problem of digital vs film: the profusion of "gizmos", and lack of DOF buttons on some SLRs, goes back to about the dawn of AF in film cameras, as far as I recall.

Secondly, the solution to such problems is just choosing a digital camera that does not insult your intelligence too much; not blanket criticism of them all. There are plenty of affordable digital "system cameras" that pass this test, by having a DOF preview button option and a top dial with PASM modes (maybe along with some cute pictures and a green square, which can easily be ignored if you are not interested) and being perfectly usable the way I use mine, with very little recourse to menus and such, so that the gizmos are at worst irrelevant.


And for DOF preview, live view on a digital camera makes it far more useful for me that it ever was with my film cameras, because with their OVFs, the image was usually too dim to make sense of when more than a couple of stops below wide open.


P. S. Digital cameras also often an addition DOF preview option that is far superior in cases where you can afford a bit more time: taking a test shot and examining it on the LCD, with magnification and panning. In-camera on-screen review and preview is a bit like Polaroid proofs made available to the masses!

[fredjeang]

I think I understand what Rob really means about the "golden age".

Here is an interview of my boss they did for a small retrospective of his work in Madrid: http://vimeo.com/31216410

I wouldn't like to be back on film age. But I'd like to live in the profession what those older guys have been living. I think the interview talks about what Rob is saying. (my boss is shooting digital and likes it, it's not about cameras, it's something else, and in this I agree with Rob, I don't see it now. Maybe it's there but I don't see it)

[Rob C]

I think I understand what Rob really means about the "golden age".

Here is an interview of my boss they did for a small retrospective of his work in Madrid: http://vimeo.com/31216410

I wouldn't like to be back on film age. But I'd like to live in the profession what those older guys have been living. I think the interview talks about what Rob is saying. (my boss is shooting digital and likes it, it's not about cameras, it's something else, and in this I agree with Rob, I don't see it now. Maybe it's there but I don't see it)

Thank you.

Amazing to hear him echo my wail about the feeling at the end of a good shoot or trip. Heartbreaking. I wonder if the costs involved today allow people the luxury to overshoot just because they don't want to lose the moment, the state of grace?

If you read Sarah Moon's Interview in Frank Horvat's site, you find that she, too, just went on and on clicking the moment away.

http://www.horvatland.com

Only thing: I started twenty years before Pep and already it felt as if we were just hanging on; by the 70s it felt like it was slowing down in some ways, but accelerating in others.... I hope he still has it in another twenty!

Was that you rushing through the background at one moment, at 2.13, wearing a dark bandana?

Rob C

[Tony Jay]

not blanket criticism of them all...

I guess one of the weaknesses of posting on forums is the difficulty of completely presenting ones position in a single post.

I wouldn't have thought that my post amounted to a blanket criticism but rather a legitimate concern.

Reading back through my posts on this thread I emphasize that I am not a technophobe.
I have thoroughly embraced the advantages that digital capture do give one.
This would include not only in camera advantages but also those offered in post-processing.
I also found out, on my own, the brilliant advantages of combining DOF preview and live view with magnification to critically evaluate focus.

I shoot with professional level cameras to ensure that certain critical camera functions are present although I stand by my opinion it is ridiculous that not all SLR-type cameras do not have DOF preview, this presented as an example and not an exhaustive list.

It is possible that we are not really at odds over this issue.

Regards

Tony Jay

[BJL]

I wouldn't have thought that my post amounted to a blanket criticism but rather a legitimate concern.

Yes, maybe it was just a matter of wording, and being amidst another debate about the "sins" of digital. If you had changed a couple of words to, say "digital many modern cameras have way too many gizmos ...", I would have objected far less, because indeed some cameras do bury controls expected and appreciated by us enthusiasts and older persons in menus, in order to use precious dial space for "smiling baby mode".

It is possible that we are not really at odds over this issue.

Yes, quite possible!

[KLaban]

I do understand what Rob means by the term The Golden Age of Photography and tend to agree with him when he applies it to that particular era, but not when it is then re-applied to the cameras and the medium of the era.  

[fredjeang]

My thoughts too.

I think that we got incredibly more versatile and exciting recording mediums now. In term of camera design very little has been done but in the area of post-prod the gap is enormous.

Now, the politics associated with those are IMO completly out of control. It's not normal that you buy a camera and it's almost immediatly obsolete. It's to the point that we hardly have time to
learn deeply the tool. In fact what we buy now is already out-of-game. I find this particularly annoying because it obliges to a constant recycling without having really had the time to mastered totally
the previous tool. It goes too fast, it's like drinking 10 beers in 5 minutes. I sort of have an indigestion of upgrades and learning curves in such short periods of time. Without talking about the costs.

Instead of bringing on the market this bombing of tools to keep people in constant unsatisfaction and create the need of buying every 6 months, and as a consequence more and more reach us unfinished or problematics (Michael's article)
I'd rather have less frequency upgrades but much more robust and better designs cameras made to last more with a higher quality control and better service.

But that is not interesting for the big brands.

[KLaban]

Fred, the secret is not to be seduced by marketing.

I'm currently using a lowly 22MP MFD that would be described by many here as like something out of the Triassic period but it suits my Triassic working methodology. It is miles ahead of anything I used with film, has all the technology I currently need but at the same time is simplicity personified. Every time I pick it up I know it's right and I want to use it. I'm researching the equivalent in a more portable package as an additional system but as yet haven't found anything that meets my need. I'll know it when I see it. 

[fredjeang]

I beleive that you're right.

I have a friend here, non pro. I sometimes shoot with him talents in unformal sessions for the fun and practise. The guy had an Olympus E5 with the digital zuikos from the pro line. The image quality with strobes was simply stunning, one of the best output I ever seen from a dslr in controled light. The camera is completly sealed and built like a tank. It's possible to shoot talents under the rain or shower, the pro-line lenses are sealed too. Anyway...the guy was frustrated because it was only 12 MP. He sold it all and bought a Nex 7 with a couple of Leica and Voitlander lenses. First days he was on heaven because he broke the 20MP barrier and could feature the Leica logo, but then...Results? far behind what he could acheived with his former 12MP Olympus (in studio I insist). Yes, marketing brainwashing is quite powerfull. Like nicotine.

 

[Rob C]

I do understand what Rob means by the term The Golden Age of Photography and tend to agree with him when he applies it to that particular era, but not when it is then re-applied to the cameras and the medium of the era.  

Hey, we're closer than some might have been led to believe!

I don't want to discount digital as a receiving medium; I've posted here at some stage or another - or maybe elsewhere when I first bought and was still excited by my D200 - that the colour I was able to get from the digital files was probably the best I'd ever experienced. Period. But now I'd claim that for the D700. I did not feel that happy about digital b/w, though b/w conversions from Kodachrome (with dear old PS6) were beautiful. IMO.

However, that said, I can't make claims of affection for either camera! Neither can I truthfully claim that spending all this time on PS is any huge thrill. Neither was scanning and then spotting, but those are not problems associated with camera design and the stuff that goes on inside it, and how you may or may not get to those bits. Those actual production problems, post capture, are all problems associated with the digital medium per se, whether you start from film or from a sensor.

In my own situation, living in an area where water is at a premium, I had already closed my make-do darkroom because of the sense of wrong that I felt ever time I ran the tap. Digi allowed me a way back into print. For that, at the very least, I owe it a debt of gratitude. But not of love or blind adoration.

;-)

Rob C

[John R Smith]

In my own situation, living in an area where water is at a premium, I had already closed my make-do darkroom because of the sense of wrong that I felt ever time I ran the tap. Digi allowed me a way back into print. For that, at the very least, I owe it a debt of gratitude. But not of love or blind adoration.

That's very interesting. I had forgotten just how profligate film was in its use of water - for washing the films, and then the prints. Gallons and gallons of water, just tipped down the sink. Especially with fibre-based papers, which needed hours of washing every time I printed. Back then, I thought nothing of it, and just turned on the tap. But now it would make me think twice, even though we are not short of water here in Cornwall.

John

[Rob C]

That's very interesting. I had forgotten just how profligate film was in its use of water - for washing the films, and then the prints. Gallons and gallons of water, just tipped down the sink. Especially with fibre-based papers, which needed hours of washing every time I printed. Back then, I thought nothing of it, and just turned on the tap. But now it would make me think twice, even though we are not short of water here in Cornwall.

John

That was the cruncher: I had been using resin-coated papers since coming here, hated them and their look, and decided that it was best to write off the whole thing, since that part of it was personal and not business; for business, for me, Kodachrome was uncrowned king!

Rob C

[MarkL]

I have always found it easy to ignore what I don't use.

Agreed, I don't understand this comment from people. I went from my Nikon FM to D700 and have never read the instruction manual. If you want you can only use it in manual and the only difference you'd notice is the weight, even the lens aperture rings are fully functional.

[Rob C]

Agreed, I don't understand this comment from people. I went from my Nikon FM to D700 and have never read the instruction manual. If you want you can only use it in manual and the only difference you'd notice is the weight, even the lens aperture rings are fully functional.

Let me be the first to congratulate you, if only because you avoided the later version of the FM, the FM2 that disallowed the use of non-AI'd lenses, rendering almost all of my many Nikkors instantly useless with that camera. Fortunately, I only had the FM and FM2 for one use: higher flash synch. The F and F2 were better for everything else, thank goodness.

I went to the D200 from the F4s, F3 and Pentax 67 11, and had I not read the manual first, I'd still  be looking at it in dismay, never mind what I'd have been doing with my D700!

As I've said repeatedly, there are those for whom digital is perfectly okay, and others, such as myself, for whom such cameras are a nightmare. And yes, I have managed to turn both of them into as near to manual as is possible.

Perhaps this might help your problem with understanding that others do have a problem where you do not?

Rob C

[jjj]

As for the multi-ISO of digital, yes, it can be a boon if you go out to shoot in a club or something like that, but it wasn’t my need then, and now, when I have shot musos, I find that auto ISO, indoors, is indeed useful. But it never was part of my pro life. Hell, there is a legacy of wonderful jazz and rock’n’roll photography shot way back when digi wasn’t even a bad dream in the film industry’s mind, and the quality/mood of that stuff is beyond the clinical sterility of digital, even my own.

I remember a similarly daft point of view on LL a few years back about how much more real/better/less sterile film was to digital. I posted a couple of B+W shots and the digital naysayers used them to prove their point as these photos were so much better than digital imagery could be. Except of course they were not only shot digitally, but with a small sensor pocket camera.

The problem with your memories of the 'Good Old Days' Rob, is like most memories is that they are flawed. The perfect example of this is when people go on about how much better music was 'when I were a lad' as they only remember the tunes that they liked and do not recall all the crappy songs they didn't. Despite the fact that rubbish music [i.e. music one does not like] has always been the larger part of the musical canon.
I also used film for many years and was a dab hand in the darkroom, but would never go back to such an inconvenient way of working again. There's nothing I cannot do better and easier with digital capture.
I'm taking about 35mm + MF sizes here. Large format is an entirely different beast with no real digital counterparts.

[jjj]

That's part of the problem: I have PS6, which gives me all of the control any of my pix ever need; to buy newer PS systems and get into 'Bridge etc, costs even more money on top, and I just don't have the financial return on photography since I retired to make that make sense; in fact, there is no real financial return on it, and the thrill of new, technical, photographic discoveries (to me) is far from thrilling. I know how to do what I think I want to do, and I see no reason to throw money at what has turned from job to time-passer.

Nikon's own NX2, which I have, allows something similar to Bridge, too, but these all become steps added to the process, which if that's the part of photography one enjoys, then fine, enjoy. To me it is just more interference with what was of divine simplicity.

I think possibly that if you were to invest in some modern software, you may enjoy that side of things far, far more. LR4 is is simply remarkable in what it can do compared to PS6 and very much cheaper than a newer version PS+Br, not to mention the ease of use and with a lightbox like ability too.