Looking at a lot of the pictures that end up getting uploaded to facebook and other sites, it seems that a lot of the pictures are all taken from cell phone cameras. I like the idea of using whatever camera that you have with you, but so many of the pictures are going to blurry photos with crappy colour. Because people always have something that will take photos with them, they don't take a camera. I love the old family shots that my dad took with his SLR. They look great and it's a great feeling to see them. The shakily held, poor colour, soft focused crap that a lot of the cameras turn out won't create that feeling.
Don't get me wrong, I'm guilty as the next person. I forgot my slr and used my phone at my nephews birthday once. Even with the "wow, your phone did that?" quality the pictures still look like crap. Kids today will have their life documented from before they were born, but I fear the sharpest, clearest picture will be the ultrasound.
Most of the photos of me from when I was a kid consisted of Polaroids and pictures taken with simple fixed focus, no zoom, cameras. My cell phone takes much better pictures that some of that stuff. and if you carry a simple digital camera (not SLR) around, you're about 1000 times better off than the stuff people used to take photos with. Also, the sheer number of photos of my kids means there will be at least something really good in there.
ReplyDeleteThat's too bad some of your older photos aren't very good quality. That sucks. :-(
ReplyDeleteI agree that any non-phone camera these days is awesome, but a lot of the camera phones (blackberries?) I see pretty much suck. I'm glad that you're happy with your phone.
The the "sheer number" issue, I think that is actually working against people these days. With each photo being essentially "free", few people take the extra couple of seconds to compose it well, get everyone to look at the camera, make sure they are not taking a picture into the sun, etc.
In 2005 when Laura and I went to Europe we couldn't take too many digital pictures because we didn't have a lot of memory card space. My pictures near the end of the trip were WAY better than the ones at the start because I had to "make each one count".
Example of "jim isn't happy"
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jim_and_laura/44305510/in/set-973285
Example of "took a minute or 2 to get a better shot"
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jim_and_laura/44436176/in/set-1022867
Having said that, now I try to make a hybrid: try to take a couple more seconds before each photo AND take a crap-load of photos.