Cameras: a different barrier to entry

This is a rehash of a post I originally wrote in a DPReview forum.

The topic of the discussion was whether the camera phones would change how many people would decide what they have is not enough and become interested in getting a more advanced camera. This was my take:

I think the question now is: Will the model of how people get into "serious" (i.e. using dedicated gear) photography be similar to what was in film days? What motivations people had then vs. what will they be in the future?

I don't have much to go on with this but my view is that the motivations will be very different:

Back in film days the path from taking the photo to getting it (in form of a print or slide) was similar for casual photographers and enthusiasts: you put the film in, took the photos, delivered the film at a photo store and got the pictures back a few hours or days later. If you got really serious you could try this at home, too, but for starters the transition was just by buying a different camera.

Nowadays and in the near future the transition path is very different. You start with a connected, app-enabled device that covers the whole workflow from taking the photo to publishing it or even ordering a photo book. If you are unsatisfied with image quality (and that begins to be a big if) and/or if you want to influence the viewing angle (perhaps more likely), depth of field, etc. then you have to compromise. That compromise isn't just on the camera size (which to some extent also happened with film) but right now also on post-take capabilities. Very few cameras offer immediate editing and/or sharing options of any form at the moment.

The above made me realize that the problem really is that the barrier to entry to enthusiast photography is much higher at the moment. That barrier is not related to gear prices, at least not right now. It is in the compromises you have to make. I don't even see them as compromises, I need a desktop computer with big screen to get to the results I want anyway, and it is faster and gives me more control than dropping the roll at Kodak somewhere in town and come back for prints an hour later. New arrivals will be used to tap-tap-slide-tap-push-to-Facebook-right-away and will initially get frustrated by the hassle. That just might be a big showstopper.

So I think even as far more people will be introduced to photography and may take some non-casual interest in it, the percentage of those who even consider the move to dedicated cameras may drop.

Conclusions for the new year

I originally posted this as a reply to a discussion thread on DPR.

I don't have any resolutions in the sense of "I must do that" but I drew a few conclusions from what happened and what I've talked about with others:

1. Go back to raw+JPEG. I prefer the immediacy of JPEG and how my camera processes it. However, on a few occasions raw has been beneficial. My only regret is that then the JPEG is stuck at "fine, large" which to some extent defeats the purpose of having the SOOC JPEG.
2. No need for new gear at the moment. Close to a year ago I sold my previous setup and downsized to just a DSLR with a kit lens. I'm enjoying photography more than I had for the last few years.
3. Use wide angle judiciously. I analyzed my photos to see what I enjoyed and why my oldest stuff often seemed better. Before I got my first DSLR I was limited to 35 mm equivalent focal length. That seems to be my preferred angle of view so when I take my camera out of the bag I set the zoom to that angle and first try to frame this way.
4. Don't overthink the composition. When I'm having a hard time framing and start thinking about rule of thirds, leading lines etc. it just means that there is no photo in that scene. My old stuff was often just basic amateur's "move off-center and keep it straight" and somehow it worked.
5. Analyze which photos get the most likes and why. On average, people do prefer better photos. (That is true even for cat photos, although they have to be judged separately. :) ) If I can figure out what works I might learn something.

On pixel-peeping vs. image resolution

Good photographers don't pixel-peep. They check for sharpness, and know how far is too far.

I'm not a good photographer. Certainly not as good as I'd like to be. Given a good opportunity I will pixel-peep. I realized this recently and I think this is one of the reasons I don't enjoy photography as much as I'd like to.

I have a 24 MP camera. I have intentionally downsized to a kit lens and I refuse to use other lenses unless absolutely necessary. The sensor resolution is overkill for this lens so I use the camera at 13 or 6 MP (yes, I prefer JPEG). I've covered my typical scenes at all resolutions. What I've discovered is that on average I like the photos taken at 6 MP significantly more than the ones at higher resolutions.

Taken at 6 MP and cropped a little. Could you tell?

My theory is that I like 6 MP because there's no room for pixel peeping. Seen at 100% the image isn't much bigger than my monitor so even when zoomed in I'm still basically analyzing the whole photo.

I decided to stay at 6 MP for now but it is a crutch. This will bite me when 4k monitors become mainstream; sometimes it is a problem even now when I have to crop and/or rotate a photo. I'm looking for better ways to stay on course when judging my own photos.

A new life for photo prints?

One of the topics that frequently come up in photographic forums is ensuring that your photos survive in an accessible form. Computer crash, house fire, account owner's death, cloud-based company going out of business. There are many ways you, your relatives or your friends could lose access to the photos you'd want them to have.

A number of solutions are mentioned every time:

• print, print, print;
• backup, backup, backup;
• store multiple copies in many places;
• give your family the credentials to your cloud account.

Each of the above has its pros and cons so you should probably apply more than one solution at the same time. Of all the options prints are the best and the worst at the same time:

• they can be viewed directly without power or special devices;
• they are analog and thus copies will be degraded.

Here's a thought:

What if prints could double as digital backups?

Just think of it. Every time you order a print, some kind of NFC tag with the full copy of the original image file is embedded in the paper. Every time you give a print to your friend or relative they also get the file they can print again, read into their smartphone, etc.

You essentially get:

• an analog, easy to view hardcopy,
• an easy to retrieve copy of the image file,
• a way for others to order more prints without asking you for the file; these new prints could even be bigger and have more resolution!
• gratuitous distributed backup of the most valuable photos; after all people are most likely to want prints of the photos they care the most about.

These are just the most basic, originally intended uses. Off the top of my head I can think of these use cases:

• Photo-capable home printers often accept memory cards and/or USB connection from camera. If they had NFC photo readers you could just touch the print to the printer and get another one (although probably without a chip).
• Cameras could expose this NFC interface. You get into play mode and the photo that is currently displayed can be read off the camera by any reader. No fooling around with PictBridge or DPOF.
• If you can print a photo with the NFC tag, you should be able to print a photo index with all the photos stored in the tag.

We already have some technologies that could lead to this. Flash memory, writable optical storage, RFID, NFC, probably more. The tech may not be ready yet but so wasn't digital photography twenty years ago.

There may be some technical considerations:

• The NFC technology should be something that also has other uses. The more ubiquitous it is the easier it is to incorporate the functionality in devices and the bigger the chance this gets adopted.
• Data storage and transmission must have enough capacity to handle typical photos. 4 MB and larger JPEG files are not unusual today. There is the option of resizing the files to something more manageable but still acceptable for enlargements.
• The electronics embedded in the photo paper must be durable and provide some redundancy. It wouldn't do to discover that the faded print from your honeymoon trip cannot be re-printed fresh from the one you took out of the frame on the mantlepiece.

It's one of those things Kodak should have been working on rather than heading straight for bankruptcy. Oh well.

What is a "perfect camera"?

There is no such thing as a perfect camera. Not in real life, not in theory. You can only tell what you need and what you don't care about.

A lot of lip service is being paid to how the camera doesn't really matter. Pros have repeatedly shown that you can get results with anything. Heck, I sometimes feel nostalgia for the times when I had less gear and took photos I liked more.

Now here comes the kicker:

"The camera's only job is to get out of the way of making photographs."
-- Ken Rockwell

It's ironic that I found this right in the middle of an article about how gear doesn't matter. It does - just not the stuff some people worry about. And not necessarily the same stuff for everybody. The fewer things you have to learn to compensate for with your gear, the better. If what is left is irrelevant to your purpose, you end up with a "perfect camera".

Here's my take for the moment:

• Accurate viewfinder. I don't mean 100% vs. 95% field of view. I mean the same frame format as my target images. I'm a snapshooter. I don't have the patience to learn how to frame for 3:2 prints with a 4:3 camera so I want a camera that can do (and display) 3:2 natively.
• Reliable autofocus. The last time I was able trust visual feedback for everyday use was in a manual SLR with a large viewfinder with split screen and microprism. I want to know that when it blinks "focused", it is.
• Reliable auto white balance. Slightly too cold or too warm is livable but it shouldn't stray into magenta or green tint unless explicitly told so. Not the case with some cameras.
• Good JPEG engine. Raw is fun, no doubt about it. I should know, I've been shooting it a lot recently. The problem is that with my latest camera raw turned out to be nearly a must. I'd rather take "good enough" JPEGs out of the box and only post-process select ones for an extra touch.

It's actually pretty hard to come up with a list like that. You may listen to advice but you won't know what matters to you before you experience it. It's one of those "learn from your own mistakes" things. It took me almost 10 years of using digital cameras to get a clue.

I wonder how this list will change when I buy another camera. :)

Completely random

There was once a poor server from Tulsa
That would give its maintainer an ulcer.
                       With a version of Ruby
                       Only good for a newbie
But regardless he had to make do, sir.

National Geographic documentary MO

* MO - modus operandi

One day some years ago I watched a National Geographic documentary about a meteorite that supposedly had fallen somewhere in the Amazon jungle. The story started with the explorers swimming up the river in boats - and that was pretty much all that the documentary showed. In the last few minutes they finally arrived at the spot, took a look around, noticed all the trees and decided that, indeed, there was a crater but it was now so overgrown that it was no longer possible to investigate anything.

So, basically, in a documentary about a meteorite crater all I really saw was a bunch of guys roughing it in the wild and getting nowhere.

If you think this was a one-off fail, how about this one: In an NG documentary about sequoias - and, again, I wanted to find out something about the subject - there were two storylines. One was about a photographer that was contracted to photograph one of the trees. The other was about two naturalists who were supposed to do some scientific investigation there. The photographer was climbing some ropes to take pictures from the roots to the top. I saw some pretty good close-ups of his brand-new camera. The naturalists, a couple, could have gotten there in a car in a day but they loved trees so much that they decided to go on foot through the forest, which would take them two weeks.

Up to around the second commercial break there was very little about the sequoias themselves beyond how tall and how old they were. But that I already knew - that's why I wanted to know more. I lost my patience and changed the channel, so perhaps there actually was something more relevant later on. I think though that if a documentary doesn't show you something interesting in the first few minutes, it never will.

Third time wasn't the charm either. A documentary about the secrets of cats seemed like a treat. I love cats, in fact I am servant to one (a note to dog people: this is an in-joke). So I watched an American geneticist go to Egypt to find some cats that would be as close as possible to their feral ancestors. Now, I can hardly find any other term to describe it but a show of stupidity. Imagine a lady with PhD going around Egypt's backwater (or is it backsand?) villages and trying to communicate with gestures and slowly-spoken English words what she wanted of the locals. Because finding an English-speaking guide must be hard in Egypt, what with all the tourists and archaeologists and whatnot visiting the country all the time. And because by the time you get your PhD you don't have any brain cells left. Hello?

It was about then that I gave up on NG documentaries, but I still couldn't fathom why they even bothered to produce this crap. I understood this later thanks to my mother's complaints about home-makeover shows. She kept complaining about how they never show any good image of the finished rooms at the end. Instead, they show a few brief flashes, and not even wide-angle ones, but concentrate home owners' reactions.

I got it then: All this stuff is not about what the title says. It's about adventure and emotions. Facts don't sell; emotions sell. Such pity they disguise one thing as something else altogether. And I see more and more shows applying the same MO.

Could I please have some honest-to-goodness documentaries back?