Saturday, August 06, 2005

Photography

I am not a photographer who thinks that newer, better, faster, sexier equipment will make me better at what I do. This is evidenced by the fact that we don't have a digital camera, and no pressing plans to get one, either.

Nevertheless, the idea of getting a digital camera is attractive. We were talking at breakfast this morning about retired people, and how, if they haven't had anything to occupy themselves prior to retiring, their days can be long and tedious. I pointed out that when I work from home, on days when there isn't that much to do I might spend an hour or two just surfing the net. I don't want retirement to be that way. I'd like to 'have a hobby', and as I enjoy photography, it leads me in the direction of digital cameras.

One significant downside, though, is that digital cameras seem to be still evolving. I don't have a Theory about this, but it seems to me that we've moved from the 'Wow, this is cool' phase to the 'Well, its okay, but this would be better' phase. You used to see articles about how a new camera had one point five megapixels, hot damn, and now you see articles about 'Don't assume that more megapixels means better pictures'. They're still a ways from being a commodity, but the lower end is almost there.

Until things flatten out, though, and move into the commodity phase, I think we'll be analog. Could be a while.

3 comments:

Cerulean Bill said...

I have a friend who swears by the midrange Canons. She says they're easy to use, give excellent pictures that can be moderately blown up, and are reasonably priced. Course, her defintition of reasonably priced is a bit higher than mine.

Narie said...

Jaded, I have a Kodak Easy Share Digital CX 7300 model. Cost was around $130 if I recall correctly and frankly, I love it. I've never even opened the instruction manual it's been so easy to use.
I basically do what you said. I take tons of pictures of whatever the heck I want, no worrying about wasting film, then I delete the bad ones. I find I take alot more pictures when I don't have to worry about the expense of film.

When I make a trip to the store I stop off at the Kodak kiosk, print out what I want printed then save the rest to cd. I do this once every couple of months, when my memory card fills up. Takes about ten minutes of my time total every couple of months.

I feel like I am trying to entice you all to the darkside.

Cerulean Bill said...

Dark side? No... perhaps the moderately-grey side, at worst.

Part of my reluctance is that I'm a cheap person. Not squeeze-every-nickel-till-Jefferson-howls cheap, but close enough with money that the thought of spending $100+ dollars for a new camera when I have a perfectly good camera is distressing. Yet I agree with your logic, and the idea of being able to take and store, then ditch the not-good ones with no additional cost, is enormously appealing to me.

So maybe.....