Cameras are missing ... fun ?!?!?!?!

Solarflare · May 23, 2019

Open Mike: Fun, the Final Frontier

Fun is the missing "feature."

Wait, what ? I dont get it. There are extreme fun cameras out there.

That's too long to read before the camera itself is completely outdated and consigned to the dustbin of history.

I know its not the camera he speaks of, but I use a D700 from 2008. I think I could manage to read a 500 pages manual in 11 years. In fact I'm quite convinced it should take like 3 hours, tops - manual pages dont contain much text and much of the text in manuals can usually be skipped anyway.

A wellmade digital camera such as a D700 can last very long, and will even after all that time still produce as great results as it produced in the beginning.

RVT1K · May 23, 2019

Fun is where you find it.

Derrel · May 23, 2019

Badly written TOP article...lacks depth, reflection,personal angle....skimpy entry...lacks the quality needed for serious consideration and comments...smacks of a curmudgeonly anti-digital rant... not one of Mike's better efforts..I have been reading TOP for many years now, off and on...this one rates as a "miss"...

I left the following comment at his blog:

"Digital cameras are not film cameras, and the criteria they should be judged by differ. Your post smacks of a the-old-days-were-better rant written by a former film shooter. "The new cellular phones have way, way too many features. What was wrong with the old idea? An earpiece and a mouthpiece and a dial are all we need!" Your post reminds me of the example I just gave."

pocketshaver · Jul 5, 2019

Well the thing is, modern cameras are indeed missing the fun component.

They took the spirit away and such like.

You COULD say that the point and shoot cameras WERE a last hurrah at making photography fun and easy. Oh wait, the easy part is whats really missing.

Braineack · Jul 5, 2019

Cell phones and social media has made photography fun and at the same time absolutely awful.

dunfly · Jul 5, 2019

"Fun" is a highly subjective term, therefore, saying something is no longer "fun" is inherently incorrect when applied in general since some may think it is "fun" while others don't. For example, I don't think golf is "fun" but I have a lot of friends who seem to enjoy playing it.

Derrel · Jul 5, 2019

Mike is one of those people who still has a strong connection with the past and that black and white dark room. As a matter fact he was formerly the editor at the magazine Darkroom Techniques,so it is perhaps no surprise that a few years ago he wrote an article about how much one could learn by buying one's self a Leica and a single lens, and shooting nothing else,two rolls of film a week for a year. Very 1970's, if I do say so myself.

Never mind that today a person could shoot 10,20, 30 times as many photographs for 1/10 of the cost,or less, with their iPhone and 28 mm equivalent fixed lens.

Mike Johnston has a lot of insights into traditional film-based photography, but he does not seem to fully grasp that digital pictures have been the standard for about 20 years now, and that digital cameras do not preclude having fun. Perhaps it is Johnston who has lost the fun spirit?

pocketshaver · Jul 5, 2019

cant compare a cell phone to a FTBn at all.

Its actually fun just sitting on a park bench playing with the focus and light meter just so you can maybe or maybe not take a photo of a bird or bush, etc.

cant do that with a phone. Just feel like any other looser sitting on a bench trying to get free wifi

vintagesnaps · Jul 5, 2019

I just skimmed it but - a Holga and a Diana aren't the same camera! OK maybe he misspoke (mis-typed?) and they're similar but if he doesn't know the difference maybe that wasn't the best example to use.

Most digital cameras hold no particular interest for me. I of course bought an oddity, the Ricoh GXR, so I've had fun with that (and I can use vintage rangefinder lenses on it!!). I have lots of fun film cameras, the Agfa Clack which I think was named after the sound of the shutter! the Pop 9, well, just about any vintage or plasticky film camera I can get out and play with I find fun. If it uses flash cubes that's bonus fun!

Derrel · Jul 5, 2019

It's true, you cannot compare the 2019 cell phone with a 1973 canon FTB. The cell phone has a web browser, the camera, a video camera, a music player, and worldwide Internet connectivity, and it allows you to snap a photo, and to instantaneously share that photo through a wide variety of media platforms. The FTB uses a now-defunct type of mercury cell battery, and it only shoots photos.,Which will be developed, and then require scanning to share with others.

In 1973 or so, the FTB was a cutting-edge camera, but now it is tremendously outdated, and the batteries it it was originally designed to use are no longer allowable by law.

Again Johnston is firmly rooted in the past, and was unaware of the shortcut to get his iPhone camera into almost instantaneous action. Several years ago he complained of how slow it was to get his iPhone camera into action. To compound matters, he was using one of those flip open wallet- style cases, so anything he has to say about digital cameras is in my opinion somewhat suspect.

His idea that a Camera introduced in 1953 (The Leica M3) is the ideal learning tool in the second decade of the 21st century is suspect. Imagine if I selected something approximately 70 years behind the times as the ideal way to learn how to operate an iPhone or iPad. I guess one could say that the best tool To learn how to use a modern word processing application would be a 1953 underwood portable manual typewriter?

vintagesnaps · Jul 5, 2019

If you get an old enough camera you don't need a battery at all! But now you get the zinc air etc. and it is what it is. Adapt and live with it.

One advantage to mechanical cameras is no need for an extra battery or charger, you just toss in another roll of film and keep shooting. (I used to be pretty fast rewinding and reloading a camera but I'm out of game shape!)

Who needs word processing? I don't, a manual typewriter would suit me fine (and I've had that in the back of my mind, one of those cool vintage ones, maybe one of these days).

What I see often is people not learning how to get proper exposures, how to frame shots well, or how to see everything in the viewfinder/on the viewscreen. Somehow those skills are being bypassed, and those of us that learned on film or shoot film today seem to get the importance of those skills. A lot of people seem to depend on shooting whatever and fixing it later which seems to be making more work for yourself but so it goes... and this is getting enough OT by now I guess! lol

Braineack · Jul 5, 2019

pocketshaver said:
Its actually fun just sitting on a park bench playing with the focus and light meter just so you can maybe or maybe not take a photo of a bird or bush, etc.

It's fun to press one button on my phone and get an insanely great, sharp, well-exposed, low-depth-of-field, HDR'd, instantly-shareable image without having to then take it home, process for 30min-1hr before resize, exporting, uploading, then finally being able to share...

pocket sized cell phone image SOOC:

00100lPORTRAIT_00100_BURST20190615180701301_COVER by Braineack, on Flickr

Processed shot from a not-fun-to-carry D800 with grip and heavy 24-70 2.8:

DSC_4809 by Braineack, on Flickr

Derrel · Jul 5, 2019

If a person cannot have fun taking pictures with any camera made from 1899 to 2019, then the problem lies not with the camera but with the photographer.

My oldest camera is a 1938 Speed Graphic, which I last used in 2014, But my most commonly used camera on an every day basis is the camera found in my iPhone I bought in 2017

In terms of a camera that is fun and easy to use, the iPhone wins hands down. In terms of a camera that is fun to use because of the challenges it presents,the Speed Graphic is right up there. It is perhaps the most awkward and slow in operation camera I have ever used.

I grew up with film cameras,mostly with most from made in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1970s, and I shot film for about 25 years, but ever since I got my first digital camera I have been enthralled with the ease and simplicity and rewarding nature of shooting digitally.

Today if I want to take just one picture at ISO 1000, or
ISO 1600, no problem. In years past I would have had to put in an expensive roll of fairly uncommon high speed color film into the camera. Today I can shoot at any ISO from 64 to 3200 and still get a reasonably good photo. With film, i remember the very first 1,000 ISO color film,(Kodak Gold 1000) and I also remember the first 3200 ISO color negative film that I ever shot, which was made by Konica in 1985, and everything that was shot on it looks grainy and ethereal. I had a normal amount of fun shooting that stuff in a Nikon FM and a Nikon FE-2.

A few years ago I went back through my archive of color negatives made in the 1980s, and I was less than impressed. During the same time,slides that I had shot on Ektachrome 100 showed a slight bit more more granularity than Nikon FX 400 digital from the mid-2010's( D610 and D800).As far as "new cameras that are no longer fun to use", I would say that the fault lies not with the camera, but with the user.

Derrel · Jul 5, 2019

as I get older I often find myself prone to nostalgia and remembering how good the good old days were. shooting with methods and equipment that were developed in the 1920's and 1930's, 1940's and 1950's and 1960' and 1970's and 1980's.

If we go back to the original post, it's all about Mike Johnson pining for the days of film cameras and the fun that was supposedly designed into these cameras. The idea that a digital camera no longer offers fun is patently absurd. It's kind of like saying "the only fun motorcycle is a Harley Davidson flathead from the 1960's , and all modern motorcycles designed and built in Japan are not fun."

Nostalgia is great, until it begins to affect your objectivity, and I feel that Mike's objectivity is greatly skewed by his nostalgia