In one sense I suppose the dumbing down is good for those who are not dumb.
If one really wants quality images in difficult (read "impossible to
accomplish with a P&S") situations, I suppose they will have to contract the
services of a professional, or at least someone who knows how to use a
camera that can handle such things....
I should say that I share my existence with one of the most wonderful people
on the planet. My wife is very bright, tri-lingual with a diplomatic native
fluency rating in all three. She is raising two beautiful children and
manages to juggle far more than I on a day-to-day basis. When she was
routinely traveling to Central- and South America, she took a lot of
pictures. At first it was with Kodak Instamatic- types of cameras. Then she
switched to disposable cameras. But she realized that the image quality was
not very good and, wanting something better to record these incredible
trips, (Lake Tititcaca for WORK!?) she decided she wanted a good camera.
In an effort to qualify her needs and capabilities I gave her a little
seminar in the use of my Spotmatics. Nope, not gonna work. She liked the
idea of different lenses but that was about as good as it got. Too fiddly,
and believe it or not, too big. I could see that all she wanted to do was
point the thing, click the clicker, and if the flash was needed, it would go
off. Focus? "Do I have to?" Well yes but...
She's not dumb. She is not particularly prone to seeking instant
gratification. She just would rather record her memories without the burden
of "knowing" about the process, but wanted more than what she was getting.
This led me to buy her one of the early C**** Sure Shot Auto-focus
Zoom-tele, auto-flash, self-loading, self ASA-setting cameras then
available. This was based on my reluctant admission that pictures I had
seen made with these cameras were incredibly sharp, well exposed, and
consistently better than average, even at the hands of people who had no
business taking pictures.
It was hard to swallow until she started returning from these incredible
trips with photos that really did record the memories of a lifetime. The
vast difference between the shoot-n-toss cameras was easy to spot, and she
never had a lick of trouble with the camera until we had to figure out where
the stinking Lithium battery was hidden (behind a panel held on with a screw
- duh). The camera still works to this day and is still her first choice
when she is taking pictures and I am not around or not toting my stuff.
So, yes, I must reluctantly agree that this kind of image-making is
prevalent, even desirable. But I do think that even P&S'ers can handle the
current packaging. I think my wife asked me exactly once what the different
film speeds were for. Now, I see her taking whatever speed out of the
fridge that I would choose for a given outing, drops it into the
DX-autoloader and never looks back.
Paul M. Provencher
(ppro)
-----Original Message-----
From: Isaac Crawford [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Wednesday, May 09, 2001 4:20 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Market segments (was Kodak dumbing down...)
It's no secret that photography is dominated by point and shoots and
disposable cameras. The people who bought these have bought into the
whole "easy use" marketing scheme. There is of course the more advanced
users that buy more advanced cameras, but they (we) are in the minority.
Why is it so shocking then that Kodak would follow suit? Why not cater
to the most successful market segment? Is not knowing about films speed
any worse than not knowing about apertures and shutter speeds? If people
are going to bemoan the "dumbing down" of photographers, they should
look at the camera manufacturers, they are the ones promising that you
don't need to know about photography to make a good picture. The hell of
it is that they are right for many people. We all hate the Rebels and
N65s and ZX-50s, but guess what, they can produce excellent pictures
with the dial set on the smily face! They don't know squat about the
technique of photography, they just need to know which film to put in
the camera, and Kodak will tell them. I'm with William though, I hope
that they make the labels such that there is minimal confusion, it
should be easy enough to do... Of course there will always be the group
that can't figure anything out...
Isaac
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