Author Topic: Mobile phone cameras killing photography?  (Read 7604 times)

Re: Mobile phone cameras killing photography?
« Reply #25 on: 01 August, 2018, 08:25:04 pm »
I think one of the most affecting uses of 'amateur' photography is in the 'home movie' sequence of Wenders' 'Paris Texas'.

I've got similar 8mm footage from the 1960s, and it archives well, in its metal biscuit tin. There's about 1 hour of it.

I've got 20 Terrabytes of memory attached to this computer. Much of it occupied by video. Just cataloguing it is a nightmare. I do get to refresh my memory of where stuff is when something happens to one of the people featured.

Jaded

  • The Codfather
  • Formerly known as Jaded
Re: Mobile phone cameras killing photography?
« Reply #26 on: 01 August, 2018, 11:03:28 pm »
These days I use a camera with a bit-rate of 50 mb/s and 128Gb of card gives about 10 hours of footage. Editing then becomes a work of sculpture, hacking away the surplus material, rather than building up a picture from the scant images you have.

Taking vast amounts of unnecessary footage, or still images, is entirely optional, an option that was never available to the amateur until recently.

In that respect the title of the thread could read  -"Mobile phones democratising photography?"

Demoncrisising I think.
It is simpler than it looks.

Re: Mobile phone cameras killing photography?
« Reply #27 on: 02 August, 2018, 12:31:51 pm »
Ha!  Thought I'd just check my camera to see how bad the sensor dust spot was again, and it's gone!  Doubled checked with a white sheet of paper using smallest aperture - not there.   :)   Camera must have been getting lonely and decided to take dust spot-action...

May use it in 'monochrome mode'  for a change...

Cycle and recycle.   SS Wilson

LEE

  • "Shut Up Jens" - Legs.
Re: Mobile phone cameras killing photography?
« Reply #28 on: 02 August, 2018, 01:57:53 pm »
Ha!  Thought I'd just check my camera to see how bad the sensor dust spot was again, and it's gone!  Doubled checked with a white sheet of paper using smallest aperture - not there.   :)   Camera must have been getting lonely and decided to take dust spot-action...

May use it in 'monochrome mode'  for a change...

I use my ancient (13 years old is ancient right?) Canon 5D in RAW + Monochrome JPEG format.  Since I almost exclusively use it for street photography, and I tend to convert the images to B&W anyway, it's useful to see what the finished image may look like straight away.  The JPEG is forever monochrome but I have the RAW file if I should manage to take a "keeper".
Some people say I'm self-obsessed but that's enough about them.

Re: Mobile phone cameras killing photography?
« Reply #29 on: 02 August, 2018, 02:04:57 pm »
And film was just as manipulative of the image. Kodachrome anyone? The 60s and 70s didn't really have a lovely warm glow look like that at all.

I liked GAF 500, nice and grainy!
What's this bottom line for anyway?

Jaded

  • The Codfather
  • Formerly known as Jaded
Re: Mobile phone cameras killing photography?
« Reply #30 on: 02 August, 2018, 02:06:18 pm »
Ha!  Thought I'd just check my camera to see how bad the sensor dust spot was again, and it's gone!  Doubled checked with a white sheet of paper using smallest aperture - not there.   :)   Camera must have been getting lonely and decided to take dust spot-action...

May use it in 'monochrome mode'  for a change...

I use my ancient (13 years old is ancient right?) Canon 5D in RAW + Monochrome JPEG format.  Since I almost exclusively use it for street photography, and I tend to convert the images to B&W anyway, it's useful to see what the finished image may look like straight away.  The JPEG is forever monochrome but I have the RAW file if I should manage to take a "keeper".

The Olympus MFTs do that, with the added bonus of having the viewfinder showing that the jpg will be like
It is simpler than it looks.

Samuel D

Re: Mobile phone cameras killing photography?
« Reply #31 on: 02 August, 2018, 02:21:24 pm »
I broadly agree with Wenders. It’s undeniable that photography is both more widespread and yet in important ways less relevant than it has been in the past.

I remember spending hours studying the few, tiny photographs in my CD album liner notes. To a teenager those were a rare gateway to a more interesting and glamorous world. Who does that nowadays? Certainly not teenagers, who have ten thousand social-media images to get through before bedtime in one continuous stream that precludes ever thinking about anything for more than a microsecond.

Clearly a merit of photography is its basic truthfulness, and yet that has been eroded by digital, easy image manipulation, phone apps, cameras in the hands of non-journalists, fake news, and the collapse of journalism generally. Colin Pantall has a few thoughts on that here.

One of my favourite working photographers is Chloe Dewe Mathews, whom I met at Paris Photo while she was building on the success of her Caspian project. Like most art photographers today, she works in ways that are antithetical to the methods of the phone photography that Wenders objects to. You can hear her speak a bit about this here.

Today’s best commentator on these and other matters pertaining to photography is Jörg M Colberg at Conscientious Photography Magazine. Read him!

Re: Mobile phone cameras killing photography?
« Reply #32 on: 02 August, 2018, 02:23:59 pm »
And film was just as manipulative of the image. Kodachrome anyone? The 60s and 70s didn't really have a lovely warm glow look like that at all.

I liked GAF 500, nice and grainy!

Alien Skin Exposure includes a GAF 500 plugin.
I think you'll find it's a bit more complicated than that.

T42

  • Apprentice geezer
Re: Mobile phone cameras killing photography?
« Reply #33 on: 02 August, 2018, 04:13:25 pm »
Was thinking about this in the middle of the night. Didn't reach any conclusions but I sympathize with Wenders, to an extent. Points:

- Mobile phone cameras caused the small-camera market to shrink dramatically.  This gave Nikon at least serious problems for a while. They have seemed to recover but they left a few feathers behind.

- Photojournalism took a whack in the teeth. The Chicago Tribune for one got rid of its photog dept. and gave reporters iPhones.

- The demographic shifted.  Before, not that many people carried a camera as a matter of course. Now, just about everyone has one. Given the combination of camera + Internet connection, everyone is a photojournalist of a sort, and the median standard is pretty dismal. On the other hand, pictures and videos of events round the world have gained immediacy, and some events that would have been passed off as fabrications have been exposed. I'm thinking of cop/black incidents in particular.

I think that the first part of my last point is the one Wenders was making, but I also think that he was missing the second part, which is of immense importance.  Imagine the Kennedy assassination with 500 potential Zapruder films.

So:

- people who want to take good photographs will go on doing so, no matter what kind of camera they use.

- people who want to take bad photos ("this is me blocking off a wonderful view of Yosemite") will go on doing so, but with phones instead of small cameras.

- the latter will also flood social media with them, but does it matter?  It certainly doesn't for serious photographers.

That's about as far as I've got.

I've dusted off all those old bottles and set them up straight

T42

  • Apprentice geezer
Re: Mobile phone cameras killing photography?
« Reply #34 on: 04 August, 2018, 02:14:38 pm »
A propos, or just about:

I've dusted off all those old bottles and set them up straight

Re: Mobile phone cameras killing photography?
« Reply #35 on: 06 August, 2018, 07:14:13 pm »
I've several 110 cameras in my collection none of them have produced a not-shitty image - you are doing the smartphone a grave injustice.
(caveat - I've still not tried the Pentax 110 SLR)
The Pentax did its best with a crap format. 13x17mm film area and a cassette that made it difficult to get the film perfectly flat. Most 110 cameras were terrible, the Pentax being a notable exception. I had a Minolta that didn't do a bad job too.
They weren't as bad as disc though.
That'll be this one.
I've discovered that the Pentax has a jammed shutter (apparently a common problem, and one my fingers are too huge to tackle)

Sent from my Moto E (4) Plus using Tapatalk

Too many angry people - breathe & relax.

LEE

  • "Shut Up Jens" - Legs.
Re: Mobile phone cameras killing photography?
« Reply #36 on: 08 August, 2018, 08:19:40 pm »
I've several 110 cameras in my collection none of them have produced a not-shitty image - you are doing the smartphone a grave injustice.
(caveat - I've still not tried the Pentax 110 SLR)
The Pentax did its best with a crap format. 13x17mm film area and a cassette that made it difficult to get the film perfectly flat. Most 110 cameras were terrible, the Pentax being a notable exception. I had a Minolta that didn't do a bad job too.
They weren't as bad as disc though.
That'll be this one.
I've discovered that the Pentax has a jammed shutter (apparently a common problem, and one my fingers are too huge to tackle)

Sent from my Moto E (4) Plus using Tapatalk

Blimey!! I remember that.

What an incredible concept.  They should have named it the "Turd polisher" given that it was an attempt to extract some quality from 110 film.
Some people say I'm self-obsessed but that's enough about them.

T42

  • Apprentice geezer
Re: Mobile phone cameras killing photography?
« Reply #37 on: 09 August, 2018, 08:22:32 am »
Borderline cameras went through a phase of Star-[Wars,Trek]-gadget mimicry. Pretty good example.
I've dusted off all those old bottles and set them up straight

Kim

  • Timelord
    • Fediverse
Re: Mobile phone cameras killing photography?
« Reply #38 on: 09 August, 2018, 12:15:31 pm »
Borderline cameras went through a phase of Star-[Wars,Trek]-gadget mimicry. Pretty good example.

Much of the modern world is an indirect result of engineers trying to build what they saw on Star Trek when they were kids.

LEE

  • "Shut Up Jens" - Legs.
Re: Mobile phone cameras killing photography?
« Reply #39 on: 09 August, 2018, 05:25:31 pm »
Borderline cameras went through a phase of Star-[Wars,Trek]-gadget mimicry. Pretty good example.

Much of the modern world is an indirect result of engineers trying to build what they saw on Star Trek when they were kids.

Blue Peter once showed us kids how to make some of the weapons and gadgets, from Blake's 7, out old Cola bottles, egg cartons and spiral telephone wire*

*In other words, exactly what the originals were made out of.
Some people say I'm self-obsessed but that's enough about them.