Dinosaurs


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Mike Graham
Dorina Graham

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Dinosaurs

I’ve been watching it closely. Progress, they call it. More and more plastic parts on cameras, followed by auto-exposure, then programmed exposure. The first tentative steps into autofocus, then it became mandatory on any new camera. Mirror lock-up buttons gradually disappeared, to be followed by depth of field preview buttons.

LCDs sprouted out on all different places on the camera - inside and out. Lenses morphed the same way - from glass in metal to plastic in plastic. No batteries, no camera. A motor drive, once the privilege of the working professional, became standard and non-detachable, even if you wanted to.  Plastic top and bottom frames progressed to all-plastic bodies. Prices went down. On-board computers, capable of running a small company’s bookkeeping, now govern the camera’s programs; film speed is set automatically.

Enter today’s camera: Autofocus, auto-exposure, all plastic, motorized, all-thinking, all-singing and all-dancing. It has a life expectancy of maybe four or five years, which is no problem, because after two years you’ll be ashamed to be seen with it - the latest replacement puts it in the shade.

In fact, without even the vaguest idea about photography, any trendy Yuppie with a few Dollars, Marks or Pounds in their pockets can pick up the latest plastic technological marvel and take snapshots with it.  And, more important, be seen with it! Because today, to be in is everything, right? Your kids can’t just wear ordinary jeans to school, can they? No, it has to be designer jeans! Or they’ll be laughed at by their comrades for not following the advertising like the rest of society’s lemmings!

And this new autofocus camera is going to make you a better photographer, isn’t it? All you have to do is point, and it’ll zap out exhibition-quality images for you, just like the adverts said! You won’t need talent; you replace talent with technology. You won’t need knowledge, because your new camera does everything for you and knows it all? Right?

Sorry, folks, I draw the line here. This far, and no further. If you want to advance beyond the snapshot stage, you need to learn photography. It’s an art form, it’s a craft, it’s a science, it’s a lot of things to a lot of people, but button pressing it isn’t!

I’ve taught photography to juniors, and I started them off building pinhole cameras. We had a lot of fun, and the learning process was sometimes painful but invariably entertaining. One of those photographers, a young army PFC, went on to be the first President Bush’s personal photographer in the White House. Only when simple cameras are fully understood, and the basic concepts of focal lengths, depth of field and shutter speeds hold no more mysteries, can one begin to call themselves a photographer. Open the brain cavity of a photographer, and you should find an ID-11 developing chart written on it, together with the six-sided colour correction chart! 

This is why I stick with good, solid old-fashioned cameras. I control the camera, not the other way round. I am in command of the situation, not some tiny chip. Cartier-Bresson I'm  not... nor Smith and Company. I'm not that good, nor will I ever be. But at least I can pick up just about any mechanical camera and get satisfactory results without having to read an eight hundred page manual!

My advice to anyone starting out - keep it simple! My advice to you if you have one of these modern masterpieces - make it simple again! You won't regret it!

Batteries

One thing you'll never have to worry about with a DinoFlex is batteries. One of the chief complaints about modern AF SLRs is the simple fact that battery life is measured in minutes of actual use. You'll find whole forums on the web, thousands of AF SLR owners, all with the same gripe: My batteries only last me 2 weeks! But in real life photographic situations, and it doesn't matter how high your experience level is or how "good"  you may be, you'll spend a lot of time "playing" with the view in your finder. Well, great, that's why it's called a viewfinder. Only with the thought at the back of your mind, "Oh, my God! How long can these batteries last me?" you tend to use the camera sparingly at best. Rather like the screen washers on your car during winter, every time you press the button you waste them! And, like those screen washers, when you need them, guess what?

But with your good old DinoFlex, you can spend hours fiddling around with it to your heart's content without using a single millivolt! Experiment with cropping, focus and zoom back and forth as long as you like - no problem! I bet  owners of sophisticated AF cameras must spend a quarter of their salaries on batteries! 

Environmentalists scream blue murder when you mention the button-sized PX625 mercury cell that drove the meters on older cameras for up to ten years at a time. But what about the millions of conventional AA-sized cells that get trashed every day world wide, burned out after a few hours of service in modern AF SLRs? This doesn't seem worth a mention to them.

Talking of batteries, how about that tiny, built-in lithium battery on AF SLRs that holds the memory when you remove the dead main batteries? Most folk don't give this a second thought, but when it dies you can't change it yourself. This means a trip to the workshop - reckon on $80. No such thing on a DinoFlex!

Out Of Date

Forgive me if I'm treading on toes here, but it's a sad fact of life: the computer you bought two years ago is now just a few pounds of recyclable plastic and metal. Buying new software for it is pointless, because it won't be able to keep up with it.  It'll run, yes, and you'll still be able to create three page letters with it. But run the latest version of PhotoShop on a 200 MHz Pentium? Forget it! 

The first generation of AF SLRs, even the better pro-level cameras like the Nikon F4, are now considered too slow.  They were heralded as "Future Technology Today" when they were introduced.  New lens designs improve the speed of the focusing mechanism, but that's no use to you unless you have a camera that can keep up - buy the F5. And when the F6 comes out, the F5 joins the ranks of the retired and unemployed. And so on.

Where does it end? When do we wake up and realize what fools we've been to jump on the technology carousel? The longer we stay on it, the more dizzy we get. It's so good when you stop.

NEW is not automatically BETTER

Remember the bicycle you got for Christmas when you were little? Remember how much punishment it stood up to? Was it your space ship in games? Your jeep on desert patrol? Your F-86 Saber Jet (giving my age away again...) ? Maybe it was your horse as you rode across the prairies, a cap-gun Colt on your belt. And space ships get zapped by laser canons and  jet fighters crash occasionally, don't they? When it was your turn to be an Indian, didn't your horse get shot down from under you? (I hated it when that happened!) All that abuse, all those crashes and scrapes, your trusty old bike carried those scars and dents proudly to the grave. Perhaps its rusting frame and airless tyres can still be found in your parents' garage, under a pile of junk and old deckchairs, forgotten for eons beneath a thick coating of dust. But when it was new, it was built to take all that torture and laugh it off, and still faithfully carry you to school and back.

Now go down to the nearest supermarket and look at those shiny new bikes. Brand, spanking new, and pure junk down to the last bolt or Taiwan-built chromed pedal. Built down to a price, not up to a quality. Appears the same, disappears differently. Wouldn't it be better to clean up your old bike rather than throw away money on that shiny supermarket special offer?

There's a large market for restored classic bicycles, with no shortage of clients. For sheer class, what modern bicycle can compete with this 1957 Schwinn Jaguar MK II, owned by Classic Riders?

   

 

Back in those days, anybody in the Schwinn factory overheard whispering  that it was too well built and should be made flimsier would have been fired on the spot, and quite rightly! But today, that mentality is part of most companies' marketing strategy - "Make it shine and look good, but not for long. The next one's almost ready and the competition won't wait..."

Fortunately this isn't always true. There are some companies willing to stand by their traditional values, companies like the English bicycle saddle-maker Brooks, whose B66 saddle dates back to the mid 1920s and is still immensely popular (I have one on my bike - it made a terrific difference to driving comfort!)

For more information on traditional bicycle saddles, read Sheldon Brown's excellent article here.

And what about our cars?  Like you, I drive a faceless, characterless modern lump of metal and plastic to work every day. Today's cars all look pretty much the same, because Toyota's computers come up with the same results as Volkswagen or Ford... most use the same wind tunnels for design testing. Better?  I have an hour's journey each way, so it's a diesel out of economic necessity. But don't you, like me,  yearn for a just-for-fun car from the 60s, from the days where cars had personalities and form? Come on, hand on heart... how about a 1964 Mustang? A pre-1975 MGB with real chrome?

The bottom line?  I don't really have to write one, do I?