Can You Hear Me Now

The time has come the walrus said, to talk of many things...

Like why you are still using your phone to take pictures.

Yes, it is convenient, but you are crippling your ability to make great images. Do you really want to see tiny little pictures on that three inch screen? Or how bout downloading them. You can do that right? You can't? So all the fantastic images you take are stuck in that brick in your back pocket.

Okay, I'll admit carrying around a DSLR is like the Ancient Mariner with the albatross around his neck, but Coleridge's boy couldn't make pictures with his bird. And why would he , he had other more serious problems but you don't have an albatross around your neck and you aren't stuck at sea for the next three years so why don't you have a decent camera?

Yes, I do know that your pocket picture machine has a forty megapixel sensor. All those teeninesy little pixels jammed up together trying hard to be individuals. And they do a pretty good job. Like when the Jordan Cove Export Terminal blows sky high and you want to get a picture before the blast wave pounds you and your phone into jelly or when tsunami from the earthquake caused by all the fracking sends a forty foot wall of water rushing across the bay or when the cat does something so cute you have to take a picture even though there are a hundred and fifty million cat pictures on the Internet already, (See I wasn't all gloom and doom), so far on the spot snapshots the brick in your back pocket will do just fine.

But what do you do when the shot you want isn't six feet away or the light is fading fast or the critter is moving at the speed of light, (Which all critters seem to do when you want to take a picture), or the whale which has just broken the surface isn't right beside your boat or he sun set is breath-taking in an array of colors so brilliant that it couldn't be reproduced by any artist?

That's when you need a real camera.

You see the phone is really a device designed to carry voice messages, in spite of the fact that they have become the Swiss Army Knife of modern culture, they connect, they Facebook, they fax, they chat, they Instagram, they walk, they talk, they wiggle and squirm, the living, breathing cell phone! And for the most part they do all of those things pretty well, but just pretty well.

A once in a lifetime image is by definition a once in a lifetime deal and do you really want to trust your fate to something you sue to order pizza?

So for real work, you need a real camera. Now in the olden days when the Ole Trawler started taking pictures cameras were heavy, complex, cumbersome things which at film like a Suburban drinks gas and were just ever so slightly smaller. Now that bestest, neatest, most wonderfulness thing you can buy weighs less than three pounds. And don't try to kid me, I've seen you hauling fruit cakes weighing more than that to the post office to send to smelly uncle Fogbound because you don't really know him but if your mother found out that you hadn't sent anything in fifteen years you be on garbage can duty for the rest of your life. So stop whining about the size and weight and admit that what you are really afraid of are all the bells and whistles.

And yes, there are an awful lot of bells and whistles, that's what makes a real camera so useful. But you don't have to use them all at once. Every camera even the baddest Nikon “I am a pro photographer because I have a Nikon see my dust”, has an Auto setting or better still a P setting which stands for Program which gives you a lot more options than Auto but no more heartaches.

And you get all those big fat pixels.

Yes, I have heard Canon has a fifty megapixel camera. That's 5-0 of big fat real, useful sized pixels. They just don't offer to buy a new computer with a two terabyte drive to store all those fifty megapixel shots of the cat.

Sure more pixels better images, but there's a point where better and reasonable meet. Even Canon still offers a first line camera with a twelve megapixel sensor. Why do they do that? Because boys and girls twelve megapixels is just about perfect for us not pro photographers. And the good news is twelve megapixel cameras are obsolete for the most part. Obsolete! Why would I want an obsolete camera?

Because the photfiends and the pros want the newest, latest, brightest thing to come down the pike and they toss their old cameras out when there is mucho life left in them. And that is very good news for the rest of us, cause the price of a twelve megapixel camera is now so low it is shocking. You can put your hands on a nifty, neat and cool Pentax K-r for $119 dollars! That's one step up from my beloved Kx and still a great deal. A Canon XSi can be had for $129 and the high priced spread Nikon for $159. That's cheaper than most point and shoots and you get a better machine for less money.

But the news gets even better because the new cameras have dropped the bottom out of even the best cameras and now you can get a sixteen megapixel camera for what a twelve would cost you just a year ago. So a Canon 2Ti, or a Nikon 5100, or a Pentax K30 are all below two hundred dollars. Just think sixteen fat juicy megapixels and they are all yours.

So start thinking right now. What do you need and what do you want? A twelve megapixel camera with save you a coupla hundred bucks and do almost every job you can ask of it and if you keep it for the next twenty years it is unlikely to break or reveal all of it's secrets.

Or do you want to do poster sized prints and the extra megapixels are a must. It will only cost you about fifty bucks to move up but is it worth it?

Oh yes, I hear know-it-all brother Cecile tch-tching. He is dying to tell you buying a used camera is like throwing money down the drain. It will break in two weeks and you'll be out money you could have spent backing his canned air factory. After all he only needs another two or three million to get it of the ground and then once the IPO comes you will get all of your money back in quadruplicate!

Bad news for brother C, most DSLRs are engineered to stand up to fifty thousand shutter activation's, that's a lot of clicks and Nikons are said to be able to do a hundred thousand although like the second sentence in Moby Dick nobody has ever gone there. My own Kx came with forty-five thousand activations and I have been using it for four years without a single hitch. That includes a clumsy fall which pinned the camera between me and the very hard deck. I am happy to say the Kx never missed a beat and after three weeks of Aspercream and heating pad applications I regained the ability to flag waiters with my right arm.

So sleep on it and we'll talk further later in the season.