The Wonders of Digital Photography

A comment on digital photography, from a die-hard film photographer: “...it sucks, it's lame, it's stale, it's cheesy, it's evil, it's crap, it's like socialism, I couldn't be bothered anymore (shot digital for two years), it's boring, boring, boring, it's a farce, it killed the photography industry, it's NOT cheaper but looks so bloody cheap, it's generic, it's buying into some stupid upgrade cycle with you losing out in the end. Should I go on?”

When I was starting to take pictures as a more-or-less serious avocation many years ago, one of the most obnoxious types of people I encountered were the ones who spent more time talking about how much their equipment cost than they did making photographs. People with Hasselblads and Leicas and Nikons, etc. spent more time looking at their cameras than through them. In light of what I was shooting with at the time, you could say I suffered from a touch of Pentax envy.

I thought it was crap then; I think it's crap now.

But here we are in the D I G I T A L Age!! Now the morons sling around these things that look like trench mortars and babble away about megapixels and a mishmash of acronymic poop that no alphabet should be asked to support. The cameras themselves (if you can call them that) produce ... well ... pictures. But then the geniuses can shove all this stuff into their computers and manipulate the images into cheap, plastic imitations of art. If there's any artistry there, I'll show you some pimple-faced kid masturbating away with an XBOX game.

No, I think I see it the same way as the chap I quoted above. Instant gratification is a tempting thing, but learning to sublimate it is part of growing up

OK, digitheads, start taking shots.