Last night after Thanksgiving I tuned into the news and caught an ad that really grabbed me. A local retailer was offering a major brand 8 megapixel point and shoot digital camera for $88, that’s $11 a megapixel! That really lowers the bar for anyone who wants a digital camera.
It has always been my nature to find what works for me regardless of whether most everyone else is doing something different. Since 1975 I have purchased and driven Saab cars almost exclusively, and still drive a Saab. When I was a freelancer in the 60's my colleagues used Nikons and I preferred the Topcon 35mm SLR camera system. And if I were not already very invested in another brand I think I'd probably choose and buy a Sigma digital camera. Not just to be different than the herd, but the technology and thinking Sigma employs I believe has positive image quality performance advantages.
Before digital I spent a lot of time in my darkroom often experimenting, trying different kinds of chemistry, modified techniques, something old, something new, and often learning just how limited the silver halide photographic process is. Since Photoshop and image editing I found digital photography to be pliable to an almost boundless extent. Of course the abandon you have to change the values of pixels has a different kind of limit by producing images that have no redeeming qualities what so ever. From that experience of course one should learn just because you can do something does not mean you should.
From the e-mail and forum posts I have read Apple iMac photographer users are having the most difficulty with a too bright screen, and prints too dark. Thanks to one correspondent, Pat Marchitto who alerted me to Phil Corley’s web site
(http://www.philcorley.com/articles_68520.html) a solution has been found to lower the screen brightness to calibrate and profile for better print matching.
onOne software just announced an iPhone application that supports a the operation of a Canon EOS digital camera remotely. This can be accomplished through a computer that has a WiFi internet connection when the Canon dSLR is tethered to the computer.
A well established name in scanners, Microtek will no longer have an independent American Company representing its products in the US. Their offices in California are scheduled to be closed on December 12 of this year. However in compliance with US law warranties, repair and parts will be available for Microtek owners and users through a website portal at: http://support.microtek.com
Each year starts off these times with the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas the city of sad faces. Last year even CES was sad faces feeling the aftermath of recession and no one buying much of anything. But in 2011 after Apple dropped some bombs of super sales of iPhones and their new iPad, the rest of the flock was flapping their wings to catch up. But new 3D and what have you TV’s were still languishing, maybe everyone who can afford a big flat-screen TV already has one, and with TV getting worse every year with dumber and dumber ridicule and more ads....
An article in the Atlanta Journal Constitution about some who cling to film reveals as much about life as it does about photography. One quote in particular caught my attention and got me thinking. “With digital, you’re only as good as your Photoshop technician,” Mark said. “He’ll take heads off bodies and switch them around. It’s a totally different medium.”, followed by another concluding statement regarding those who still cling to film, “-we’re a dying breed.”
A newborn child in Egypt was recently given the name Facebook. In the last few weeks, not to mention last year in Iran, there have been popular expressions of unrest. If there were no cell-phones, no internet , no TV, even radio, would the changes we have read about in the news these last few weeks and months seen on TV have occurred as they have? But the news of the world is not my beat, however what is new and how that technology changes our interest and involvement in photography does concern me and will affect everyone’s interest in photography at least slightly or maybe a lot. Every day I read the technology news of the day and it paints a very different scheme of things compared to what was familiar last year,the year before and would have been unrecognizable and unimagined before the year 2000.
I don’t think my town is all that much different from a lot of places in America today. Not that many years ago there were three locally owned and operated camera stores, and today there are none. The only local selection of camera’s and photo gear is Walmart has to sell. Yet in the current economic situation the pundits and politicians talk about small business as the source of jobs and economic recovery, while I see ever more empty commercial spaces where another locally owned and operated business has disappeared; and the businesses that remain are big-box stores and corporate fast food, drug and office and home supply outlets. Maybe they (McDonalds and Best Buy) are a part of the businesses the media and Congress’ count as being “small”.