| You push the
button, we'll do the rest
That was the Kodak promise for their first roll film
camera. It
took 120 round pictures and was returned to the Kodak
store for developing and printing and reloading. The
right product at the right time, it
alone started photography as the popular part of our
lives that it is today. 100
years later, the
digital camera promise is "You push the button and
then you do the rest". I'm happy with that, just as I'm
happy with my new camera, a Minolta DiMage 7i. While
my Sony CD100 was the right camera at the time I was
traveling to Europe
I've moaned about how it's response is slow, the delay
between pictures is ridiculous and it involved a lot
of anticipated guesswork on moving subjects of where
they'd be in the frame a second after I pressed the
button.
When you look at the ibis above you'll see that
catching peak moment is one less thing I can complain
about (I've got a couple of new ones but I'm convinced
there's no one camera that will ever be ideal. I'm
also developing a theory that splits digital
photography from making photographs digitally. A
snapshot approach vs. the replacement of film by
digital technology.)
The new camera has automatic features on it I'm sure
I'll use, but I'm going manual for a bit to see what
my technique is like without the props. The extra
quality of the 5 megapixel image will allow me to do
some better print reproduction and blowup images, but
the Minolta handles the colour differently to the
Sony, much less saturated and closer to the way my eye
is seeing it. It means that the pictures may be less
'pretty' but those ibis and the grey sky were what I
saw on an afternoon promising rain, in August 2003.
The only thing I miss with my camera, computer and Photoshop
are picking up those packs of prints from the
photofinisher, still warm with sharp cut edges and
their smell of chemicals and dryer. I'll get used to
it, just as I didn't bemoan the change when my hands
stopped smelling of fixer and stop bath when I
was developing my own films, a smell I wore like aftershave
for 10 years. Handing over the printing to a good
photofinisher was worth the money, the frustration
came when I would carefully expose for black or
highlight levels, and have
it 'corrected' by the fast photo printer. I had to
plead with them to 'leave it alone'.
That's why I'm happy now to 'do the rest' as I'm sure
lots more of you sitting at your computers will be as
well. I saw the ads for a disposable (more like a
recyclable) digital camera the other day, the promise
is again - you take the pictures we'll do the rest. Do
you get feelings of Deja vu?
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Roosting ibis at
the Bungendore tip. Winter afternoon 2003.
Sold for $1, from the start George Eastman
planned these cameras to create 'film customers'
recognizing that this was where the profit was. There's a
great
Brownie camera history at the California Museum of
Photography website.
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