Taking it all for granted?

magicaxeman

magicaxeman

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Do we tend to take our digital camera's for granted?

In order to explain this please let me outline my thinking.

Back in my early days (1970's) camera's where vastly different beasts to those we have today.

Exposure modes - manual/aperture priority - shutter priority on some pro models.

Metering modes - most just had centre weighted, a few had spot metering as well but again mainly pro models.

Exposure compensation - DIY via shooting manual and adjusting your shutter sped or aperture to give what you calculated was the best exposure for the conditions or using a meter to take a reading of the light falling on your chosen subject.

ISO/ASA - determined by the film you had in your camera, no changing the ISO to suit the conditions as they changed unless you had multiple bodies with different speed films.

Manual focus, no auto focus back then and no live view to zoom into to check your focus, you either got it right first time or blew the shot.

That's just scratching the surface, but unless you have spent time shooting film you wont really understand how restrictive it could be, especially for the amateur.

This is all relevant when you consider the average consumer DSLR a lot use these days as they make it so easy for us, no more scratching your head trying to work out the correct exposure for a back lit subject, or trying to ensure you exposed correctly both for the landscape and the sky.

The biggest thing though has to be that we had to wait to review our shots, no instant review and then of course all that processing and printing.
Now we can instantly see our results, instantly print our images and with the right software fine tune our images in minutes instead of the hours hunched over the table in the dark room.

Having said all this there are limitations on our digital equipment that we often forget about, we tend to think in the same terms as we always did, where a camera could last several lifetimes if given a clean and a quick service every few years, but with digital came the fact that our camera's or parts of them have a finite life.
It's something thats all to easy to forget when you're on continuous shooting and rattle off 10 frames to make sure you got the shot you where after, soon you find your shooting 50, 100 or even more a week your only worry being if the batteries will last or the card has enough space, but shutters have a finite life, shorter in consumer models than in pro models, but still finite averaging around 3 years shooting 100 shots a week on something like a canon 500D. (15000 frames)

So it brings me back to my original question, why do we take it all for granted? why do we continue to rattle off all those shots and why do we continue to rely on the technology rather than our skill when it comes to metering and exposure?
Why don't we do as we used to and pick our shots carefully instead of shooting anything that catches our eye.

When I was last able to use my camera (2 months ago now) I had gone back in time and limited myself to 12 or 24 shots per session, I tried to force myself to think a bit before pressing the shutter, think about the subject, the composition and the exposure and believe it or not my photography improved for doing so, my rate of keepers went up markedly from around 20% to over 50% and on one occasion 100% keepers out of 12 shots taken.

Off course there are still times and subjects such as birds in flight etc, where the advantages of rattling off a burst outweighs the single shot approach, but in general I have found the advantages of picking and choosing my shots as well as a more thoughtful approach to exposure and composition have paid dividends at the end of the day.
 
Interesting topic. I wasn't born until 1974 so missed out on some of these restrictions as I didn't get an slr until my about 1986, and that had a meter! That being said, I wonder if back in the 70's people looked back 40 years and marvelled at how technology had made photography easier and more accessible? I guess you become more aware of technological limitations when someone invents a better way of doing things?
 
viewfromthenorth said:
Interesting topic. I wasn't born until 1974 so missed out on some of these restrictions as I didn't get an slr until my about 1986, and that had a meter! That being said, I wonder if back in the 70's people looked back 40 years and marvelled at how technology had made photography easier and more accessible? I guess you become more aware of technological limitations when someone invents a better way of doing things?
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Andy, I'm older than you, and my first SLR was a Zenit something or other in the late 60s. No meter, no instant return mirror and no auto stop down lens coupling, but it was all I could afford and it worked well. My second SLR was an F2. This has everything I want in a camera, and I don't find the lack of automation, multiple metering/focus modes and all the rest of it in any way restricting. Film cameras don't let you change ISO of course, but you can just rewind the film and replace it with a different one, then go back to the original when you want to. Bit of a fuss but simple enough.

I have a 30D and use it quite a bit, but I don't necessarily regard it as a better way of doing things. Different, convenient in many ways, but better? Nope.
 
iancandler said:
Do we tend to take our digital camera's for granted?
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Yes.

But only in same way that we take all other technological advancements for granted. Email instead of paper, banking online instead of going to branch, Google instead of going to library, even cars that actually work pretty much 100% of time (even in winter!) etc, etc,.

Is using a film camera that doesn't automate much for you more involving, yes for me. I am new to photography but bought an OM10 with 50/1.8 6 months ago just because at £20 it is silly not to :)
Granted an OM10 has a meter so I was still taking that for granted I suppose.
But I loved using it and if it was writing to a memory card instead of film I would use it as my only camera, I don't need any other features.

It was the time and cost associated with film that put me off. Nothing to do with my inability to get decent shots without editing on computer, honest.
 
ernesto said:
Granted an OM10 has a meter so I was still taking that for granted I suppose.
But I loved using it and if it was writing to a memory card instead of film I would use it as my only camera, I don't need any other features.
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But from the early days of SLRs, your OM10 has loads of technological advances, not just the meter.
Self cocking shutter
Split/ Micro prism focussing aids
Instant return mirror
High speed flash sync (yes that really was high compared to early SLRs)
Improved max shutter speed
Improved reliability of low shutter speeds
auto exposure
The ability to accept a motor wind

An old fully manual camera with a digital back would be on my shopping list if someone wants to bring one out. (using old lenses on a modern body isn't the same thing or even close to it)

However, my current gears ability to focus when I never could have, to get shots in lighting that film could never match and to control multiple flashguns from the camera position are all things that technology has brought me that I wouldn't happily give away.
 
Everything is taken for granted, why should camera be left out
 
iancandler said:
...
So it brings me back to my original question, why do we take it all for granted? why do we continue to rattle off all those shots and why do we continue to rely on the technology rather than our skill when it comes to metering and exposure?
Why don't we do as we used to and pick our shots carefully instead of shooting anything that catches our eye.
...
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Sometime that is the best bit about photography, I enjoy capturing anything and everything that catches my eye but it doesn't mean that no thought at all goes into the metering and exposure - in all fairness, it's not like factoring in those things takes such a long time.

We are no longer in the film era and to be honest, so what. The years we were born do not make us any less adequate a photographer because the technology has changed. I find it somewhat arrogant of people who assume that others rattle off a hundred frames because it is the only way they will capture the right photograph or that in-camera metering is not an adequate method of metering for a shot at the time.

Most of us have cars outside our homes....
 
this to me is a very interesting post. im probably a bit younger than all you being a child of the late 80's but when i was 15 i worked in a camera shop. there i picked up my first slr. Now while i really wanted a f70 or an f80 i ended up buying a minolta x300 manual focus film camera. it was a great camera and working in the shop i picked up lots of kit for it including 300mm f4 and 50mm f1.8 and dare i say i had every accessory. that camera told me that you need to think about what you shoot. I was lucky to be allowed to develop films for free in the shop but no prints and i had to pay for my own film. i learnt that 24 shots isnt alot and every shot should be timed and selected and thought about.

roll on 10 years later and i now have a d5100. its a lovely camera and my first plunge into SLR photography since I sadly sold my x300 5 years ago.

However I still manage to keep the mindset of as little photos as possible and most stuff i post on here is a straight from camera shot. a friend of mine gets puzzled when i chose to do one shot and he takes 10 but i think that its important to remember that every photo you take is one you have to store or delete.

i certainly dont take my d5100 for granted as i can only afford to do my photography now because i dont have to pay for processing or prints. I can enjoy it with only the initial outlay to worry about (and obviously all the new toys I want)
 
I bet people had this exact strand of conversation when camera shutters/lenses/etcetera became popular. We have to remember our time isn't special and almost anything that happens in our lifetimes had an equivalent in someone else's.

"We didn't have digital to let us take thousands of shots to get the settings right."
"We didn't even have meters to judge what to set our cameras to."
"We didn't even have settings to set, we had to uncover a hole in a box and count using our heads before covering it again."
"We didn't even have film, we had to settle for projecting an image onto a screen."
"We had to paint with our fingers and liquids found in nature."
"We didn't have eyes so we didn't really worry about it."
"We were just single cell organisms so we couldn't worry about it if we wanted to."

Someone with ability and technology has and will always be better than someone who only has the technology, it's just that the line we consider average in the field will shift to account for the capabilities of the technology. At one point getting the exposure "right" (without getting into a conversation about what counts as right, as obviously it's subjective) most of the time would be considered high skill but now there's no excuse to publish (however that may be) an image with the "wrong" exposure because you can fix it using a slider in free software on your PC.

I shoot film for fun (almost always with cameras much older than me) but for anything that remotely matters I'll use the most capable devices I have access to in the same way that I might walk somewhere for the enjoyment of walking but if I really need to be there I'll use the car.

I do think shooting with the film mentality, if not actually film itself, is a very important learning exercise but it's an exercise and the "best" method (if there is such a thing) would be a blend between using the substantial photo-taking capacity of modern technology and the careful, limited approach of older technology.
 
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Comparing to how film was used is really down to cost though isn't it?

If film and developing was completely free (and films were developed in 1 minute by dropping it into a machine at home) do you think everyone would have been so frugal with their shots - of course they wouldn't.
 
iancandler said:
Do we tend to take our digital camera's for granted?
.
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no - just because a lot of things are automatated does not make them infalable. if you don't understand the basics, all the face detection in the world won't make a difference
 
That's why I'm in love with film. You can't afford to take things for granted..

When I use my DSLR I can fire a few off to see if I have a decent exposure, not so with a Yash mat with only 12 exposures :nono:
 
ernesto said:
Comparing to how film was used is really down to cost though isn't it?

If film and developing was completely free (and films were developed in 1 minute by dropping it into a machine at home) do you think everyone would have been so frugal with their shots - of course they wouldn't.
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:clap:

Exactly, when I was a young man in the seventies, I was always skint, so running a roll of film through the Praktica was a luxury. So, this hobby was not always pleasant, because it was very restrictive.
With the advent of DSLR's you can practice as much as you like, and if you are keen, then you will improve.
I should say, that I really like the build quality of old sixties/seventies SLR's though.
 
I remember the golden rule of photography when I was a kid using a film, point and shoot Kodak camera in 1976, always always have the sun behind you. My pictures were always more vivid than my Dad's Yashica D. And the few times I tried his camera, I found it as daunting as my current DLSR. There is a still a huge creative aspect to photography, so it is impossible to take things for granted, while photography is more accessible now, it still requires you to have technical knowledge, creative flair and dedication to be successful and transfer to an image what you really see.
 
I must say that for me the single biggest gain with digital over film has been the ability to instantly review what you have shot effectively for free and therefore be able to take far more pictures than on film and experiment with different techniques which would have been cost prohibitive and time consuming waiting to get film developed and printed.
 
...and writing down what settings you used and tying them up with the images (good for EXIF)
 
well we are all writing in this thread on a computer over the internet and guessing that wasn't given a second thought.
 
I think perhaps this only applies to those of us that actually shot with film, rather than people that grew up in the digital generation as they wouldnt know any different.

I guess I still shoot with a film mentality and it certainly works for me, but there is no right or wrong answer here...
 
Times do change and the leaps in technology have made it so much easier to use various items, including cameras - even leaving a camera in Auto or P mode a camera will get it right "most of the time", its much the same analogy for me that if I use a Prime lens versus a Zoom, rather than being lazy standing in the same spot and zooming in, a Prime lens makes me move about more and think more about the composition................

I sometimes wish I had more of a grounding in "film" as some of the techniques or principles may be lost on people who have only grown up on digital for example I struggle to understand the principles behind using a Tilt n shift lens - the Scheimpflug principle may be easier to understand for a person brought up on a film camera?
 
how about ones if a live before the days of film, im sure they would have said its to easy and so on
 
"Do we tend to take our digital camera's for granted?"

No, I don't think so. The cameras of today are a tool being used to the, hopefully, best of their ability. Some might argue that the removal of the cost restriction of film has encouraged more creativity in photography for the average amateur.

Times change, things move on, I'm very happy to get into my car, turn the key and know it will start first time every time, set the climate control and off I go with the near perfect sound quality coming through the audio system. I don't think I need to have driven around in a Model T Ford to fully appreciate my current car.

Paul.
 
I loved my Fujica st-1. Split prism focussing, a little meter on the side for exposure so you could set everything manually and guess the +-EV correction.

But, my 50D gives me so many opportunities to take much better photo's, edit them the way I want and instant (ish) gratification.
 
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