Topic: What irks me about digital photography

[hookstrapped]

There a a few things having to do with the process of taking pictures, but that's not what this is about.

This is about the unbridled consumerism of it all. It's all about the gear, improvements in gear, obsolescence so I need to buy new gear.

[02Pilot]

There a a few things having to do with the process of taking pictures, but that's not what this is about.

This is about the unbridled consumerism of it all. It's all about the gear, improvements in gear, obsolescence so I need to buy new gear.

You've been reading other photography forums, haven't you?

You're right, of course, but there's always been an element of gear-centrism in photography, at least among enthusiastic amateurs. The interweb has just exposed us to a lot more of it, and magnified many of the unpleasant characteristics of it as well.

[hookstrapped]

Yes, I have.  And I generally try to avoid for this reason but with the holidays even this one I like is going nuts.  It seems much more rapid and out of control. I mean, bitd cameras had a product life of more than a year.

[Late Developer]

Constant change is here to stay, I'm afraid. 

It's not the gear that frustrates me, it's the marketing and the ease with which those who have never had a history with film adopt the digital evangelist mantra that "film is dead".  It's difficult to blame manufacturers for looking to refresh their products and reinforce their brand in such difficult times, economically.

I won't be a hypocrite; I really enjoy using my digital kit for certain things.  However, just because something new or different comes along, that doesn't mean my kit is obsolete.  If I'm happy with the results I get from it, then I'm happy sticking with it.  However, I enjoy using film more and, so long as that remains the case, I don't ever envisage giving up one for the other - whether it be film or digital.

[02Pilot]

Yeah, it's true, the holidays make it sillier than usual. I generally ignore it (easier on forums with lots of subforums for specific addictions and fetishes), but it creeps in everywhere and eventually gets obnoxious. I usually try to counter it by going out and using the older cameras in my collection.

BTW, a fun game is to post pictures from cameras that are quite old in forums filled with the bleeding edge types. Watching them descend into fits of apoplexy about how unsharp the corners are and how little micro-contrast there is can be quite entertaining. Reminds me of this: http://petapixel.com/2011/07/13/why-you-shouldnt-give-too-much-weight-to-anonymous-online-critics/

[02Pilot]

Constant change is here to stay, I'm afraid. 

It's not the gear that frustrates me, it's the marketing and the ease with which those who have never had a history with film adopt the digital evangelist mantra that "film is dead".  It's difficult to blame manufacturers for looking to refresh their products and reinforce their brand in such difficult times, economically.

I won't be a hypocrite; I really enjoy using my digital kit for certain things.  However, just because something new or different comes along, that doesn't mean my kit is obsolete.  If I'm happy with the results I get from it, then I'm happy sticking with it.  However, I enjoy using film more and, so long as that remains the case, I don't ever envisage giving up one for the other - whether it be film or digital.

I agree completely. I've recently acquired a digital camera that I'm really pleased with (a first for me in that realm) - I will not discuss it further here - and I'm enjoying it a lot. But it's still not the same as shooting with film, and like you, when it comes right down to it, I prefer film.

[jharr]

Yeah, I generally stick to film forums like this one, f295 and LF. Even APUG gets a little frenetic at times though. I love the laid-back pace of FW the most. Now if you are hankering for new gear, there is a nice Yashica up for grabs over on the Share the Love 4 thread!

[limr]

It's true that photography has always attracted its share of gearheads, but I do think digital has made that worse. With film cameras, you could have gotten all the best equipment, and started shooting, but then you might have gotten frustrated with waiting for the pictures to come out, or annoyed that you had all this fabulous equipment but your pictures still suck. Some people would take over more of the process and start developing and printing, but good results took time, effort, and patience, and required a better understanding of and attention to what you were doing. It also required more money, since film and developing weren't free. I imagine a lot of people gave up relatively easily and sold their gear, or, like my brother-in-law, shoved his entire kit into a bag and left it in the garage for 25 years until his sister-in-law wanted it

Digital gives people that instant gratification that people desire. It's easier to spray and pray until you get a good shot, and it's all free. You could take 10 shots or 1000 shots - still costs the same once you buy the camera. And then you put it on the computer and fix it in Photoshop. Suddenly, in a much shorter period of time than with a film camera, you think you are AWE.SOME. You can share you pictures instantly (and now with in-camera wi-fi, you don't even have to use the computer as the middleman!) and you get hundreds of likes. So now you figure, if you can do this good with an entry-level camera, imagine what you can do with a better camera? Yup, time to upgrade. Lather, rinse, repeat.

With photography so much more accessible to so many more people - and so much more easily shared than ever before - it's no wonder camera companies are pushing more and more upgrades, accessories, software... Cell phones took a big hit out of the point-and-shoot market, and so companies push their higher-end stuff harder, to snag all those hobbyists who think a better camera will allow them to take better photos of their kids' soccer games than all the other parents on the sidelines sporting the latest Nikon or huge Sigma lens.

[timor]

This is about the unbridled consumerism of it all. It's all about the gear, improvements in gear, obsolescence so I need to buy new gear.

Before it was for sure less about the gear, but more about "1 Hour Service". LOL Before money for the industry were flowing from sales of the film and processing services, now from camera sales. Elimination of darkroom and developments in computer industry caused, that many more people feel artistic drag towards photography and every salesman knows, how to use it. LOL.

[Indofunk]

I'd like to respectfully disagree with everyone here (I think hope it's everyone, anyways ). No matter what you're talking about, photography, music, football (either one, take your pick ) ... there is one type of person who will be OCD about gear, and another type who will eschew gear obsession and instead concentrate on the results. Either type could be good or bad at the results themselves, but the first type will definitely spend a little more time obsessing over the gear.

Of course, nothing is completely binary like that, and there's a huge range of "in-betweens" there. I consider myself a *bit* of a gearhead when it comes to music and photography (I know the exact bore sizes of all my trumpets, and I am obsessively watching a certain trombone on ebay because it's the same model as my favorite trumpet), but when it comes down to it, I will use whatever piece of equipment it takes to get the right shot/play the gig. Which, in every case without exception, is "the camera [trumpet] you have in your hand at that exact moment"

[hookstrapped]

I'd like to respectfully disagree with everyone here (I think hope it's everyone, anyways ). No matter what you're talking about, photography, music, football (either one, take your pick ) ... there is one type of person who will be OCD about gear, and another type who will eschew gear obsession and instead concentrate on the results. Either type could be good or bad at the results themselves, but the first type will definitely spend a little more time obsessing over the gear.

Of course, nothing is completely binary like that, and there's a huge range of "in-betweens" there. I consider myself a *bit* of a gearhead when it comes to music and photography (I know the exact bore sizes of all my trumpets, and I am obsessively watching a certain trombone on ebay because it's the same model as my favorite trumpet), but when it comes down to it, I will use whatever piece of equipment it takes to get the right shot/play the gig. Which, in every case without exception, is "the camera [trumpet] you have in your hand at that exact moment"

I agree there are always those types of people, but the point with digital photography is that the manner in which products are introduced, their rapid (perceived/promoted) obsolescence, in other words the business model means that people are buying new gear at a tremendous pace without being gearheads.  To me, gearheads appreciate what they believe to be stellar, often old, examples of great gear.  When I just googled "vintage digital cameras" I got back all these links for retro-style new gear and that's all.  In digital photography market value is invariably inversely related to age.  No one is obsessively watching old digital cameras on ebay. People don't buy new gear necessarily because they're into gear, they buy it because of "technological advances" and from being told implicitly and explicitly that what they have is no longer adequate.  That's why I called it consumerism.  Gearheadism plays a part in it, but it's a much larger phenomenon than that.

[timor]

I'd like to respectfully disagree with everyone here (I think hope it's everyone, anyways ). No matter what you're talking about, photography, music, football (either one, take your pick ) ... there is one type of person who will be OCD about gear, and another type who will eschew gear obsession and instead concentrate on the results. Either type could be good or bad at the results themselves, but the first type will definitely spend a little more time obsessing over the gear.

Of course, nothing is completely binary like that, and there's a huge range of "in-betweens" there. I consider myself a *bit* of a gearhead when it comes to music and photography (I know the exact bore sizes of all my trumpets, and I am obsessively watching a certain trombone on ebay because it's the same model as my favorite trumpet), but when it comes down to it, I will use whatever piece of equipment it takes to get the right shot/play the gig. Which, in every case without exception, is "the camera [trumpet] you have in your hand at that exact moment"

I agree there are always those types of people, but the point with digital photography is that the manner in which products are introduced, their rapid (perceived/promoted) obsolescence, in other words the business model means that people are buying new gear at a tremendous pace without being gearheads.  To me, gearheads appreciate what they believe to be stellar, often old, examples of great gear.  When I just googled "vintage digital cameras" I got back all these links for retro-style new gear and that's all.  In digital photography market value is invariably inversely related to age.  No one is obsessively watching old digital cameras on ebay. People don't buy new gear necessarily because they're into gear, they buy it because of "technological advances" and from being told implicitly and explicitly that what they have is no longer adequate.  That's why I called it consumerism.  Gearheadism plays a part in it, but it's a much larger phenomenon than that.

I gonna have to agree with Peter. Pressure exercised by sales stuff in photo stores on unsuspecting customers is unbelievable. It is an amok, people are buying cameras, which they don't really need... but...  "look, what I've got !" Same with cell phones... Let's call it a New Hobby of the world - digital gear. 

[John Robison]

Never considered myself a gearhead, more of a tinkerer. Can't leave anything alone, got to make it "better" (a very loose term). Like to build, modify, etc.
 One of my mods;

Just fooling around I found that the lens head from my 90 f4 Elmar would screw into a series 5 thread, not perfectly, a little loose, but it would screw in and seat firmly. By and by that lead to mounting it on a monorail bellows for my Olympus Pen F. It will focus from infinity to 1:1 and of course can still be used on the Elmar helical for my Leica M.

Now here is the strange thing, I get much more of a kick building things than using them. I think I'm a frustrated camera hacker.

[Indofunk]

I'd like to respectfully disagree with everyone here (I think hope it's everyone, anyways ). No matter what you're talking about, photography, music, football (either one, take your pick ) ... there is one type of person who will be OCD about gear, and another type who will eschew gear obsession and instead concentrate on the results. Either type could be good or bad at the results themselves, but the first type will definitely spend a little more time obsessing over the gear.

Of course, nothing is completely binary like that, and there's a huge range of "in-betweens" there. I consider myself a *bit* of a gearhead when it comes to music and photography (I know the exact bore sizes of all my trumpets, and I am obsessively watching a certain trombone on ebay because it's the same model as my favorite trumpet), but when it comes down to it, I will use whatever piece of equipment it takes to get the right shot/play the gig. Which, in every case without exception, is "the camera [trumpet] you have in your hand at that exact moment"

I agree there are always those types of people, but the point with digital photography is that the manner in which products are introduced, their rapid (perceived/promoted) obsolescence, in other words the business model means that people are buying new gear at a tremendous pace without being gearheads.  To me, gearheads appreciate what they believe to be stellar, often old, examples of great gear.  When I just googled "vintage digital cameras" I got back all these links for retro-style new gear and that's all.  In digital photography market value is invariably inversely related to age.  No one is obsessively watching old digital cameras on ebay. People don't buy new gear necessarily because they're into gear, they buy it because of "technological advances" and from being told implicitly and explicitly that what they have is no longer adequate.  That's why I called it consumerism.  Gearheadism plays a part in it, but it's a much larger phenomenon than that.

I gonna have to agree with Peter. Pressure exercised by sales stuff in photo stores on unsuspecting customers is unbelievable. It is an amok, people are buying cameras, which they don't really need... but...  "look, what I've got !" Same with cell phones... Let's call it a New Hobby of the world - digital gear. 

I'm going to have to disagree again. Modern sales technique is just that ... sales technique. It just so happens that what they're pushing is digital. If we still only had analog photography now, the salespeople would be pushing film in the same way they're pushing "digital" now. "Hey! We've got 6400 film here!! So much better than your Delta 3200! It's what everybody's shooting now!!"

[gsgary]

I bought my last digital camera this year the Sony A7 the only time I seem to use it is when it gets too dark for film or for colour photos, when I got home last night my partner was watching House wives of ? Somewhere in Canada it's that bad I can't remember but I was suddenly cheered up and started to watch because they were having a photo shoot the female photographer was using a Contax 645 I was totally shocked and pleased

[Chalky]

the thing I dislike about current business practice as a whole (may well have read some of it here) is the planned obsolescence, so you have a camera/toaster/dvd player etc that you really like, the new version comes out but you choose not to buy it as you like your current one.

But the problem is that the current one is only built to last a few years, so it doesn't last as long as you want it to, and when it does break, chances are, because it was not planned to last so long, that the parts to fix it are unavailable anyway... so you're forced to upgrade even if the new features (and cost) aren't something you'd need.

Nothing wrong with people wanting to buy all the latest stuff, if they want to, but things with a planned life are wasteful. moan over.

[Late Developer]

One other influencer in the process is the incessant rise and popularity of the internet at roughly the same time as the spread of digital camera usage. Impossible to prove either way but, if digital cameras were only just becoming available right now (but scanning of film and processing using PS and LR etc had been around for the last 10 years) my guess is that there'd be a musch slower and more "considered" move towards digital.  There'd be a lot of people who'd still go for the speed and convenience that digi offers but there'd be a lot of people who'd probably stick with film for aesthetic / artistic reasons - or inertia / no perceivable reason to change.

[Ezzie]

To be honest, I think this is more a general issue. Disposable income (for most) has increased, at the same time as consumer goods prices have gone the other way (quite considerably). We can afford to buy more of everything, and more often. Digital cameras are just one of those things.

Anybody noticed that good lenses however, still are relatively expensive? Most buying into a digital camera system never buy more than the kit lens, or some or other superzoom. Defeating the purpose of  a system camera of course, but what do they care?

[k.hendrik]

I think it has everything to do with respect & happiness; in '66 I bought a Lubitel, one year later a lightmeter 1/4 of my montly income! Last Sunday (after some decades)I put a fresh battery in and UP goes the meter works like a charm. I was as happy as when I was 15. Am I a gearhead? yes I love the tactile of camera's/BMW75/Thorens turntable/torque wrench.

[hookstrapped]

I'd like to respectfully disagree with everyone here (I think hope it's everyone, anyways ). No matter what you're talking about, photography, music, football (either one, take your pick ) ... there is one type of person who will be OCD about gear, and another type who will eschew gear obsession and instead concentrate on the results. Either type could be good or bad at the results themselves, but the first type will definitely spend a little more time obsessing over the gear.

Of course, nothing is completely binary like that, and there's a huge range of "in-betweens" there. I consider myself a *bit* of a gearhead when it comes to music and photography (I know the exact bore sizes of all my trumpets, and I am obsessively watching a certain trombone on ebay because it's the same model as my favorite trumpet), but when it comes down to it, I will use whatever piece of equipment it takes to get the right shot/play the gig. Which, in every case without exception, is "the camera [trumpet] you have in your hand at that exact moment"

I agree there are always those types of people, but the point with digital photography is that the manner in which products are introduced, their rapid (perceived/promoted) obsolescence, in other words the business model means that people are buying new gear at a tremendous pace without being gearheads.  To me, gearheads appreciate what they believe to be stellar, often old, examples of great gear.  When I just googled "vintage digital cameras" I got back all these links for retro-style new gear and that's all.  In digital photography market value is invariably inversely related to age.  No one is obsessively watching old digital cameras on ebay. People don't buy new gear necessarily because they're into gear, they buy it because of "technological advances" and from being told implicitly and explicitly that what they have is no longer adequate.  That's why I called it consumerism.  Gearheadism plays a part in it, but it's a much larger phenomenon than that.

I gonna have to agree with Peter. Pressure exercised by sales stuff in photo stores on unsuspecting customers is unbelievable. It is an amok, people are buying cameras, which they don't really need... but...  "look, what I've got !" Same with cell phones... Let's call it a New Hobby of the world - digital gear. 

I'm going to have to disagree again. Modern sales technique is just that ... sales technique. It just so happens that what they're pushing is digital. If we still only had analog photography now, the salespeople would be pushing film in the same way they're pushing "digital" now. "Hey! We've got 6400 film here!! So much better than your Delta 3200! It's what everybody's shooting now!!"

Maybe it's a matter of scale.  The sheer number of new cameras being introduced dwarfs anything in the days when new analog cameras were being introduced.   Sales people have many more wares to sell, many more "new and improved" wares to sell, and a constant stream of them.  But as others have said, this is something that affects far more than cameras. 

[Verian]

I couldn't care less about what other people do with regards to spending loads on digital kit to be honest. I also rather approve of the huge rise in people using cameras, whether it is on a phone or via an expensive bit of kit, because a percentage of them will want to go further than photographing what they had for dinner and posting it on Instagram/facebook and will look to film. Each one that does helps to prolong the life of films and suchlike that I want, and that’s a good thing.

I’m going to get all Nostradamus here (who, in fairness, was mostly wrong, about everything) and predict that, much like turntables and vinyl, there will be a resurgence of film photography and one of the big manufacturers will make a new film camera to try and cash in on it. I think I mentioned somewhere before, that if digital had never happened, there would be a machine now, much like we use scanners, where you pop your film in and it is developed and scanned, perhaps prints as well. I think the technology is already available to do this but no demand for it so it isn't progressed. Perhaps the technology is already there to do it 'in camera', but perhaps, that would take the fun out of it.

[Late Developer]

I think I mentioned somewhere before, that if digital had never happened, there would be a machine now, much like we use scanners, where you pop your film in and it is developed and scanned, perhaps prints as well. I think the technology is already available to do this but no demand for it so it isn't progressed. Perhaps the technology is already there to do it 'in camera', but perhaps, that would take the fun out of it.

The machine's already there.  The processor my mate has in his shop processes and dries the film (C41 only admittedly) and then scans to disc.  Probably not seamless but I can have my film processed, negs scanned and a set of prints (if I want them) in an hour. 

Many people are probably too lazy or demanding to wait the hour.  Or pros might want the shots they've taken to bounce off a satellite and land on their editor's desk - to be on the front page the same day.  Digi has its uses and I can understand using the income from consumer sales to fund high-end R&D - and then putting some of those features into the consumer market goods.

I hope the predictions of a new fim camera come true but what feature(s) would they include to differentiate it from, say, a Nikon F6 (still in production) or other top-flight models??

[Verian]

The machine's already there.  The processor my mate has in his shop processes and dries the film (C41 only admittedly) and then scans to disc.  Probably not seamless but I can have my film processed, negs scanned and a set of prints (if I want them) in an hour. 

That's exactly the thing, but for home use. If the will were there, and the market for it, it could be done.

I hope the predictions of a new fim camera come true but what feature(s) would they include to differentiate it from, say, a Nikon F6 (still in production) or other top-flight models??

Perhaps a Hybrid, with a viewing screen, maybe one that takes two pictures at once to a digital sensor and to a piece of film so you have a digi suitable for the web but still have a full negative to play around with. I'd quite like that I think.

[SLVR]

yawn...

[Verian]

yawn...

Yawns are infectiou..........yawn..

[Francois]

Wow!
I didn't think everyone had put so much sugar in their coffee this morning!

As they say: the genie's out of the bottle and there's no way to get him back in there.

As for me, I found my solace in Photo Povera. There's something in being "arrière-garde", even retrograde when faced with people who's sole purpose in life is to manually count pixels just to be able to say you are wrong. In those days of austerity, I'd rather be contempt with lower quality gear than in debt with the state of the art. Camera technology has come to a point where I wonder who really needs it all? There's a big difference between wanting and needing.

[limr]

Wow!
I didn't think everyone had put so much sugar in their coffee this morning!

As they say: the genie's out of the bottle and there's no way to get him back in there.

As for me, I found my solace in Photo Povera. There's something in being "arrière-garde", even retrograde when faced with people who's sole purpose in life is to manually count pixels just to be able to say you are wrong. In those days of austerity, I'd rather be contempt with lower quality gear than in debt with the state of the art. Camera technology has come to a point where I wonder who really needs it all? There's a big difference between wanting and needing.

Preach!

Now I want coffee...

[Indofunk]

Now I want coffee...

Save some for your film!! 

[limr]

Now I want coffee...

Save some for your film!! 

No doubt! 

[sapata]

The only problem with digital in my modest opinion, is that the camera becames obsolet really fast. In the past it was all about the evolution of film so as long as your 10 year old camera kit was in good condition, you were on.

[Indofunk]

Sapata has an excellent point. It was the film itself that was evolving and becoming "obsolete", not the entire camera. How quickly did we go from 25ASA film to 400? I'm sure it wasn't a stop a year, but people probably wanted to use the fastest film on the market...

[limr]

That is a good point. In digital cameras, the equivalent would be improvements in the sensor, which have been done, but to get those improvements, you need a whole new camera. And of course, with the upgrades, manufacturers add more and more features to that camera.

I wonder if the trajectory of sensor improvement will level off at some point and things will calm down a little. I mean, it's really not been very long since digital cameras have been around, so there was enormous space for improvement and it came relatively quickly. At the top end of the pro digital world, sensors are already juuuuust squeaking past the dynamic range of the best pro films. Improvements at this point may seem incremental compared to the leaps made earlier in sensor development.

What if digital cameras came with interchangeable sensors? The basic mechanism doesn't really change, but to get better image quality, just as you can change film in a film camera, you'd be able to simply upgrade the sensor and use it in the old body. I wonder how much gear would end up being kept longer.

[Indofunk]

I have this theory (well, more like an observation) about the rate of change of technology. For the first however many thousands of years of mankind, the only technological improvement was the wheel. Then after another few thousand years you had iron, and eventually metallurgy. Tools. Not much really changed until the industrial revolution, but since then things have been changing faster and faster, to the point that within a generation old technology is made obsolete. And the more knowledge we gain, the more we have to build upon, so the rate of change of change is going to keep increasing. In other words, I just don't see any sort of technological improvement slowing down at all...

[limr]

I have this theory (well, more like an observation) about the rate of change of technology. For the first however many thousands of years of mankind, the only technological improvement was the wheel. Then after another few thousand years you had iron, and eventually metallurgy. Tools. Not much really changed until the industrial revolution, but since then things have been changing faster and faster, to the point that within a generation old technology is made obsolete. And the more knowledge we gain, the more we have to build upon, so the rate of change of change is going to keep increasing. In other words, I just don't see any sort of technological improvement slowing down at all...

Are you saying that resistance is futile?

[gsgary]

There is only one old digital that I keep thinking of buying and that is an Epson RD1 based on a Voigtlander R with a Nikon D70 sensor after each shot you have to cock the shutter, it produces wonderful B+W photos and it still fetches around £800 because of its cult following

[Indofunk]

I have this theory (well, more like an observation) about the rate of change of technology. For the first however many thousands of years of mankind, the only technological improvement was the wheel. Then after another few thousand years you had iron, and eventually metallurgy. Tools. Not much really changed until the industrial revolution, but since then things have been changing faster and faster, to the point that within a generation old technology is made obsolete. And the more knowledge we gain, the more we have to build upon, so the rate of change of change is going to keep increasing. In other words, I just don't see any sort of technological improvement slowing down at all...

Are you saying that resistance is futile?

You will be assimilated.

[Bryan]

I hope the predictions of a new fim camera come true but what feature(s) would they include to differentiate it from, say, a Nikon F6 (still in production) or other top-flight models??

There is a new Super 8 film camera coming out soon that has some modern technology added to it. 

http://www.logmar.dk

[Hungry Mike]

There is a new Super 8 film camera coming out soon

Wow, interesting camera especially - most compelling to me is that it has audio recording in "CD Quality" on SD card. I'd been coveting the Braun Nizo 801 Macro but that looks like it has some nice features.

[limr]

I have this theory (well, more like an observation) about the rate of change of technology. For the first however many thousands of years of mankind, the only technological improvement was the wheel. Then after another few thousand years you had iron, and eventually metallurgy. Tools. Not much really changed until the industrial revolution, but since then things have been changing faster and faster, to the point that within a generation old technology is made obsolete. And the more knowledge we gain, the more we have to build upon, so the rate of change of change is going to keep increasing. In other words, I just don't see any sort of technological improvement slowing down at all...

Are you saying that resistance is futile?

You will be assimilated.

From now on, just call me 4 of 12.

[hookstrapped]

I hope the predictions of a new fim camera come true but what feature(s) would they include to differentiate it from, say, a Nikon F6 (still in production) or other top-flight models??

There is a new Super 8 film camera coming out soon that has some modern technology added to it. 

http://www.logmar.dk

I was just googling around about that camera.  It looks amazing!

[Bryan]

There is a new Super 8 film camera coming out soon

Wow, interesting camera especially - most compelling to me is that it has audio recording in "CD Quality" on SD card. I'd been coveting the Braun Nizo 801 Macro but that looks like it has some nice features.

I would like to have a Braun Nizo as well but I'm quite happy with the inexpensive Super 8 cameras I have.  I could never justify the cost of the Logmar.  Most of my investment has gone into Regular 8mm gear.

[Francois]

It's really strange. I'm always amazed by new technology but am just too cheap to fork out money for it.
I was reading Petapixels the other day and they were presenting a patent by Canon for Liquid lenses... It's said to provide much better sharpness than what we're accustomed to. But I have two things that bug me: first, liquid lenses were once made by the Russians to put on their spy satellites so the concept is not really new; second is what happens when your lenses start leaking? It's just a fact of life that any liquid in a container will leak at one point. I don't think I'd be happy if this happened to an expensive lens even if it will last just as long as needed to become obsolete by some new technology...

BTW, I'm not sure this thread would get the Leon seal of approval

[Indofunk]

The Leon seal of approval is obsolete, where have you been?? 

[Francois]

I made one a few years ago just for laughs...

[limr]

Nice!

[Indofunk]

That looks like the Mark I. We're already up to Mark III.

[mcduff]

OK, the masses are crying out. LEON, where the fark are you?