Funny how ideas change

[kiev4a]

Twenty years ago I'm sure I said "why would anybody get power windows or power locks on a car? Just something else to go wrong--an added expense for lazy people."

Today I probably wouldn't even look at a new or used car without power windows and locks (although my pickup still has manual controls).


On several past occasions I'm sure I said, "Why would anybody want a camera with autofocus and/or auto exposure? Real photographers want to control focus, shutter speed and aperture.

I think it was four years ago that I got my Nikon F100.

Within the past year I said "Can't see why anybody would want a DSLR. A model is obsolete before you get it home. It will be a long time before digital is as good as film.

Now I carry a DSLR with me just about every time I leave the house.

Five years ago--or even more recently--I'm sure I said "why does anybody need a riding lawn mower? Walking is good for you. People with riding lawn mowers are just lazy."

They deliver the riding lawn mower tomorrow.

[GeneW]

Wayne, I think most of us are the same. I'm sometimes slow to warm up to 'new-fangled' things. I've been pooh-poohing iPods since they first hit the market. Now I've got an 8Gb Nano and I love the darned thing (not so much for music, though that's nice, but more for podcasts, audio books, and lectures).

The important thing is that we can change our minds in the face of our direct experience with the technology. That, I think, makes us different from 'Luddites' who categorically decry some new technology and never bother to try it first hand. Or they try a 1st-gen bit of technology and declare it 'null and void' of interest, but miss the evolution and development of the technology. I was the last person on the block to get a DVD player. Now I love 'em. We grow, we learn ...

Good post.

Gene

[kiev4a]

Gene:

I try to be open-minded but one has to draw the line somewhere. I can say, without reservation, that I will never be a Hip Hop music fan.

[SidW]

I'm with you all the way Wayne until you get to the riding mower. After that you need a stable for it, then it will need scrubbing down and feeding, and yearn for a stablemate, and ....

[kiev4a]

Sid:

Obviously "Riding mower" is defined differently in Sweden

[herron]

Wayne --
Thank goodness we aren't confined by our earlier prejudices. I don't have the riding mower yet, and used to think it was fine excercise....but two knee surgeries, and a major flare-up of hayfever, has me singing a different tune.

I agree with the other thoughts too...especially Hip Hop. I don't think I'll live long enough to see that become something nostalgic (of course, it took a long time to warm to James Brown and Percy Sledge, too)

[Randy]

My yard isn't big enough for a Lawn Tractor, it's only 46 feet by 181 feet, and all of it has a 6 foot tall stockade fence around it, (installed after we came home from a two week vacation and found the neighbors had been using our gas grill and patio) so I just push the lawn mower. I do have a gas powered weed wacker and hedge trimmer though. Freda and I have made a little oasis in the back with a water fountain and foilage mounted in stone. We also have a big wind mill. As far as music I've been listening to Blue Grass on the XM radio quite a lot lately.

[Just Plain Curt]

Stick in the mud that I am, I'll never own power door locks (they P.O. me royally when someone else locks me in or forgets to unlock my door). Had power windows, wasn't impressed when my driver window stuck at the bottom in October 300 miles from home. Had cruise control but where I live you realistically can only use it for 15-20 minutes at a time before the next speed zone, town etc. My only creature comforts I've become used to are air conditioning (thanks global warming, LOL) and tilt steering. I like to control everything when I drive and find it keeps my mind on the task at hand. (I once entered a hairpin turn on the edge of a cliff at 65 mph with a beer in one hand back when I owned my last car with cruise)
Got a gas push mower, 55 x 125 ft. lot so riding mower would be overkill. Only thing I'd like to add is a gas powered weed trimmer since I refuse to drag the cord behind mine and so my fence edges look ugly.
Hip hop and rap make no sense to me. I don't speak the language, the people come across as unintelligent, and most of the guys at least have $5000 worth of gold teeth, $10,000 worth of gold round their neck, more rings than Liberace, a vintage car or monstrously expensive luxury vehicle, and 5 or more gorgeous goddesses in their video but they're still angry about something. Maybe they need a laxative?? Anywhooo, it's not music, just bad poetry that doesn't rhyme, like Haiku on dope.
Got to admit, for a staunch film buff even I own and sometimes carry my point and shoot digital. Never thought I'd go that route, but I could imagine one day at least trying a Pentax digital SLR. Now what'll I do with 35 years of collecting, an awful lot of shelf queens to dust.
Hate to sound ornery and to each their own, just bothers me to see something I'm passionate about fall by the wayside. Wonder where I can get rid of 1100 boat anchors, LOL?

[kiev4a]

My need for the riding mower is marginal. We're on a half-acre lot. But our current walk behind mower is getting long of tooth and I figure one of these days (hopefully not too soon) mowing twice a week for 8 months out of the year will be a struggle. The other option would be hiring someone. There are a lot of folks making a good living doing that here. But it's not neighbor kids making summer money anymore. A guy down the street told me he pays $100 to $120 a month to have his lawn mowed!! You can pay for a riding mower pretty quickly at that price.

My mate called and said they delivered the mower today. Haven't been home yet. Just my luck--it's raining for the first time in about three weeks!

A larger problem: I plan to keep the mower in a 10x16-foot metal storage shed. Problem is that when I assembled the shed 15 years ago, I got the wooden foundation about an inch too wide and over the years the rain and snow have run down on that edge--then all over the floor inside. It has rotted portions of the floor and probably the wood joists underneath. I have this reoccurring dream of driving the mower into the shed and having it go through the floor.

I'm going to have to put an entire new foundation under the shed. To do that I have to figure out how to slide the 300-lb shed off the rotting foundation. Then replace that with a new floor--THEN get the shed back on the new foundation. If any of you have ever assembled one of those sheds, you understand that taking it apart and reassembling it on the new foundation is not an option. But assembled sheds really aren't structurally strong enough to be picked up and moved. So, I have my challenge for 2007.

[PeterW]

I’m not taking a dig at any members, God forbid I should ever do that, but I think we’re in danger of looking at this from different viewpoints, and your view is coloured by whether you are a camera collector and also user, or a camera user/collector. I regard myself as the first sort. I love the cameras dating from the early 1900s onwards that I have collected, but I didn’t buy most of them to use them, I bought them because I’m interested in the history of cameras and wanted to collect representative examples from over the years. I’m also interested in the history of the companies that made them.

I know very well that a large number of my cameras will never take a picture again, even though many of them are in good working order. But that doesn’t mean I think I should get rid of them any more than I would expect a stamp collector to get rid of all his old unused stamps because they’re no longer valid to post a letter.

Every so seldom I’ll take one of my old cameras down from the shelf and run a roll of film through it just to remind myself what it was like to take pictures when the camera was new and to satisfy myself that I haven’t entirely forgotten the older techniques. At the moment I’ve got film in a 1936 Contax II, a 1937 Leica and a 1934/35 Retina as well as in the Canon T70 (the ‘newest’ film camera I’ve got).

From the other viewpoint I regard a camera user/collector as someone who likes one particular make, or maybe two or three makes, of camera, usually models from the 1980s onwards, and uses most of them fairly regularly.

Most times when I want to take pictures for the sake of the pictures I’ll use either my Canon T70 or my Epson digital. I’ve tried my son’s Pentax ist DL2 DSLR and I love it, both for the way it handles and results it gets.

I also smile sometimes to myself when people talk about SLRs from the 1980s as being for ‘real’ photographers because they haven’t got auto exposure or auto focus. Dammit, when I learned my photography I couldn’t afford even a hand-held meter, exposures had to be guesstimated. Nor could I afford a hand-held rangefinder, let alone one coupled to the lens. Distances also had to be guesstimated, and set on the lens by hand.

When I got my first SLR where I could see a large image in the viewfinder and turn the lens ring till it was sharp, and a selenium exposure meter to help me get the correct exposure, I thought I was in photographer’s heaven. And as for being able to change to different focal length lenses – oh my! These things made it seem all so easy! I still haven’t got an auto focus film camera, though I wouldn’t say no to a nice EOS.

I longed to have every new technical advance as it came in, but until I started taking pictures for a living I couldn’t justify the expense. Now I no longer take pictures for a living I still can’t justify buying new technology much as I’d like to. If I could spare the money I’d go out tomorrow and buy a Pentax ist DL2. I don’t think my ideas have changed all that much, just the equipment I can afford.

I’m still not quite sure how you define a ‘real’ photographer in terms of equipment, only by the content and quality of the pictures they produce. I regard some of our members as being real photographers, and I’m sure they could produce stunning pictures with a Box Brownie.

But if you want to know what it was like to be able to take a good picture at all in the ‘heroic’ era get yourself a good quality non-rangefinder folding 120 roll film camera from the 1920s or 1930s, perhaps a Zeiss Ikon or a Voigtländer, with an f/4.5 Tessar or Xenar front-cell focusing lens in a Compur shutter, or an early Retina if you want 35mm, load it with fairly slow film, leave ‘modern’ technology like an exposure meter and hand-held rangefinder at home and try taking pictures on dull overcast f/4.5 days as well as in nice bright f/16 sunlight ...

Sorry, rambling again. Shut up, Peter you old fogey. Take your memories back to your armchair in the corner and have a nice cup of cocoa.

PeterW

[PeterW]

Wayne, if you've got the space you could possibly do what I did with a very similar problem some years ago.

I borrowed four steel scaffold poles and a few long scaffold boards. I laid the boards along each side of the shed and got a couple of hefty lads to lift up each end of the shed while I poked the poles underneath, resting on the boards.

Then we employed some shoulder-power and pushed the shed along the rollers, swapping them from back to front, till it was clear of the old base. When a new concrete base was ready we rolled the shed back again. The shed twisted a bit and broke a window, but apart from that it was a big success.

PeterW

[kiev4a]

Thanks, Peter:

That's essentiall what I have in mind. The shed is currently about 8 inches above the ground so I'll have to cobble up some sort of ramp so it can descend. I'm going to build the new platform lower. Can't use concrete because of subdivision rules. You can't build a permanent foundation on that part of the yard because it's over about an 8-inch water line that feeds other houses.

[herron]

Peter:
Nice ramble.

I guess I fit in the user/collector bracket, given my emphasis on Mamiya (although I started earlier than the 80s, and have collected more than just Mamiya, back into the turn of the [last] century)...

But I don't see anything wrong with understanding things like exposure, depth-of-field, reciprocity, et al, and not being dependent on the latest whiz-bang to do it for me. I love my Canon 300-D, and have not-so-secret longings for one of its 12mp cousins, but I still prefer to use it in a manual mode.

I still carry a separate Gossen incident meter, to supplement the in-camera type (and get a kick when my "sunny 16" guesstimate gives me a better overall exposure than either one).

I agree wholeheartedly with your assessment that there are some shooters here who could produce stunning images with a box camera. It's the person who is the photographer, after all. Not the equipment.

[mickeyobe]

As Peter says,
"I’m still not quite sure how you define a ‘real’ photographer in terms of equipment, only by the content and quality of the pictures they produce. I regard some of our members as being real photographers, and I’m sure they could produce stunning pictures with a Box Brownie."

I seem to recall that Joseph Karsh's first picture when he arrived in Canada was taken on a box camera borrowed from a drug store.
Of course it sold.

Mickey

[John Parry]

Interesting thread. Yes, I'll hold my hands up and admit I have a lot of cameras that realistically aren't going to get used. I've a number that are just pin-ups - my TLR's and Exactas fall into that category (sorry BobM !!). And most of the rangefinders. If I was taking pictures at an important occasion, and I wanted to be sure of getting something, it would be the Yashica 230AF (or maybe the EOS 1000FN).

But when I want to take pictures for fun - no. I do like to mix and match, and pick one out at random occasionally. I do prefer a dependable light meter - although even there I'll go out with a camera without one - or even without a range finder on occasion, because there's a challenge there. And while I may not get so may keepers per roll - it's fun!

We should hold on to that - it's supposed to be fun!

Regards - John