Happy New Year all! Playing with those Christmas gifts? Here’s the story of one of mine.
Any hobby that relies on technology will eventually bring you to a point where you need to contact Technical Support. I’m pretty savvy and can solve most technical things on my own. I frankly prefer to do that, as I learn better that way how to avoid the problem next time.
I had a situation recently though that made it necessary to seek help. I purchased a piece of equipment before Christmas through my favourite telescope shop. The item was made by SkyWatcher, a reputable, well-known and trusted brand. Sadly, the item did not work at all out of the box and despite my best efforts, I could not solve the problem. So I contacted technical support, first at the shop where I purchased it, then through SkyWatcher. Here’s what happened…
Earlier this month, I ventured into that den of iniquity – the largest photo and video trade show in Canada, called Profusion Expo. It is hosted by retail vendor Vistek here in Toronto. It brings together vendors of all the major camera and video brands, and includes a myriad of special presentations from their ambassadors along with the opportunity to put hands on their latest equipment.
The retail marketplace has changed big-time for this market since Covid. Products are not refreshed as often, and when they are, the new releases are not available everywhere for customers to see and touch before buying. Anything I’ve bought in the last few years has been online or as a “pre-order”, sight unseen. One reason for my going to the show this year was to see what I could not see elsewhere. It did not disappoint.
I watched a piece recently in which a 20-something YouTuber extoled the virtues of a fixed lens, limited function camera that has been sold out since its release – the Fuji X100VI. His message was a simple one – it makes photography fun again. He is a professional photographer and it seems none of his other higher end Canon mirrorless cameras were fun any longer.
I saw something similar in my recent short career working in a camera store – young people in their teens or twenties with old film cameras they had found in the attic or purchased at a thrift store. They wanted to buy film and/or get a quick lesson on how to use them. In those cases, they often did not know anything about photography, but wanted to learn using these cameras, not something more advanced. When asked about the appeal of these devices to them, the answer was – I’m told they are fun.
Spoiler alert: I prepared this a few months ago, as you can tell from the images and clips (we are in winter here in Canada). Things have changed a bit in terms of the equipment used since this was prepared but the message is the same. Read on to the end to find out…
One of the things I have always found a bit ironic in photography is that as you become more and more proficient in the craft, you might seek out better equipment typically, and then, also typically, you TURN OFF all of the advanced automatic features of that better equipment and go “full manual”. I’ve never really understood that. Why would anyone do that?
I decided to try a totally different approach with an area of activity that is growing for me: vlogging. Instead of turning everything off, I’ve put together a basic but decent rig and turned ON all of the automatic functions I could find. I’m doing nothing manually. I think it’s working really well so far. Read on to see what I’ve done. I’ve included a few video clips as well for your entertainment.
I live near Toronto, Canada. On April 8 of 2024, my city will be just on the fringes of a total solar eclipse, with 99.8% of the sun plunged into temporary darkness. Niagara Falls, Buffalo and Rochester, New York, will be in the direct path of the eclipse. Might be doing a drive across the border. 
The eclipse is expected to last almost 2-1/2 hours, with “totality” lasting about 4 minutes from 3:18 to 3:22 p.m. local time. NASA has a full web page dedicated to the eclipse at: https://science.nasa.gov/eclipses/.
Photographers and astrophotographers everywhere are making preparations to capture the eclipse. Some have elaborate plans to drive to, fly to and/or camp out in areas where they “know” there will be no clouds. They have multiple setups with long lenses, wide lenses, telescopes, video and still photography planned. There are whole collections of people from astronomy clubs, photography clubs and those just out for an adventure that are planning to camp out. Regardless of how you plan to experience the eclipse, if you do plan to capture it, there are some things you need to know.
A very Happy New Year, everyone! Hope that you all have the best year ever in 2024!
I had an interesting experience recently. Many of the YouTube channels I follow have a tradition of publishing their predictions for the coming year, as well as their assessment of the best and worst products of the past year.
In one such review (and I won’t name the channel), the reviewer put out a poll to their viewers and asked them to weigh in on the best and worst cameras of 2023.
I’ll just analyse one of the results: the worst camera. The camera voted as the worst camera of the year by that crowd of several hundred (wonder what statisticians would say about that response rate with a subscriber base of 50K…), with 54% agreeing, was the Canon EOS R100. So just above break even. And that was deemed worthy of a dedicated video. Ok, then.
The Canon R100 was released in July 2023 for a retail price of $799.99 CDN, with the included RF-S 18-45 f/4 kit lens. The camera was marketed as an entry level, first interchangeable lens camera, for new content creators and those moving from their cellphones to their first real camera. It was marketed as the replacement for the T-series of DSLR’s and the M-series of early mirrorless cameras (which have since been discontinued). It provides a low cost entry point with some, in my view, admirable features taken from its higher end brothers and sisters.
But the complaints of this particular group included: no flippy screen and no touch screen and no high speed burst rates or high megapixel count. So obviously a piece of crap. Seriously?
This made me wonder about the standards generally used by these reviewers to assess best and worst. At the end of the day, it takes a lot of skill to offer an objective view of a product, particularly when you yourself are an advanced user of typically much more sophisticated products. Tony Northrup, long regarded as one of those with a lot of this skill, called the EOS R100 a “capable” camera. So why such a difference in views?
In this case, I think it boils down to the simple task of crowdsourcing an opinion. The channel in question is known for mining the opinions and research of other people and makes its name by packaging those for delivery and saving you the time of going out to do your own research. It doesn’t really offer unique perspectives – only those published by others. So it’s not surprising that an opinion on best and worst of the year would be sourced the same way.
Apart from that, I wondered why there was this chasm of divergence in views between Northrup and this other channel. I guess it comes down to what you personally mean by best and worst. The biases that you apply to an opinion are the foundation for debate in a democratic society and we relish those. I certainly do. But I also expect to see a factual basis for a particular viewpoint. And maybe even an agreed standard way of assessing something that purports to provide a ranking at the end of the day. That didn’t happen here in the case of the poll. No standard questions were provided, no guidance on what to consider and what to leave out.
Separately, another channel I very much respect (and which also will not be mentioned) conducted a poll of viewers as well to determine the best cameras and lenses for the current year. Not surprisingly, the cameras and lenses that won top prize just happened to be the ones used by the channel owner and the majority of its viewers.
Manufacturers are partly to blame for this divergence in views as well, shaping expectations of the next great thing by plugging speed, capacity, automation and the quality of the results. At the highest price points, that makes sense. But those same expectations now seem to be applied to more budget friendly options, and is the source of most of the “indignation” and complaints found online when a budget product does not deliver what Joe Public feels it should. In this case, it’s a ridiculous list of expectations in a camera that costs less than 10% (with lens) of the highest price models in the same family (without lens). 
In fact, Tony Northrup, in one of his most recent videos, made the case that its time to stop pumping out more megapixels and more speed, and instead make the gear more usable, with things like built-in face recognition security to help prevent thefts, LCD screens you can see in the sunshine, internal storage and reliable wireless transfer of files.
And I guess as a final comment, those same manufacturers (and channels like the one mentioned) are creating an even bigger problem, convincing us (or trying to) that we need those extra features and capabilities just to be functional. In 2015, I purchased a Canon EOS 5D Mark III, which at the time was regarded as one of the best DSLR cameras on the market. It has 20 megapixels, no flippy screen, no touch screen, no high speed burst rate and no tracking of human, animal or insect. I still own the camera and still use it regularly. It gives me the same great quality images I expect from any Canon pro camera. It’s still listed on Canon’s website. But I guess against the standards of the aforementioned channel, it wouldn’t even make the list of has-beens. 
That said, in all fairness, I also own two of the EOS R series cameras: the R5 and the R6 Mark II. Both serve very specific purposes and fill very specific needs. It was NOT the hype that lead me to these purchases.
The bottom line: take reviews and gear rankings with a grain of salt. Understand the basis of the opinion and judge if the person giving the opinion is worth listening to. It wasn’t in this case.
It’s that time of year when we stress out about getting gifts for the people in our lives that already have everything. Seniors (and I am one) are particularly hard to buy for because of three main things:
They already have pretty much every possession they need. Buying more stuff isn’t really a priority for them.
New technology while fascinating, isn’t always useful to a senior. It becomes about convenience and ease of use, not more complicated and sophisticated functions. The stuff that offers “more” is often the stuff that is worth “less” to us.
And I guess there is a third driver too. Cost. New technology is becoming outrageously more expensive. You used to be able to buy a high end DSLR camera for under $1000. Now you are lucky to find new tech under $2500. Even I’m getting to the point where I say no bloody way.
So, what do you get for the senior photographer in your life? Family, take note:
YouTube video content creators often refer to themselves as “hybrid shooters” because they use cameras that combine still photography and videography in the same equipment. The term has been mis-used for a long time, and I feel it necessary to set the record straight.
This is especially true today because in this age of multi-channel content creation, I feel that a hybrid shooter is really someone who uses multiple devices to create content, not just one device built with multiple capabilities that is repurposed strictly for video. But first, let’s explore a bit of history.
One of my goals as a retired senior citizen is to indulge all of the interests I’ve developed over the years, now that I have the time and frankly also the money to do so.
I’ve had a long standing love affair with all things in space and space-related. By that, I mean all things off our own planet. From the early days of the Gemini and Apollo programs in the US, I’ve been gripped by a fascination around what and who could be out there. And of course, Star Trek and its offshoots only served to romanticize the idea that strange, wonderful adventures and discoveries could lie beyond our atmosphere.
I had some good fortune when younger to connect with people that worked on these challenges, at least from the point of view of humans living in space. But I’ve come to realize that humans in space is more of a challenge than we know how to solve right now, and I will never live to see permanent residence of any human anywhere other than on the Earth. But there are other ways to explore beyond our tiny speck of a planet, and I have settled on astrophotography as that method for me.
There were a couple of articles recently about the growing role of technology in cameras, specifically along the lines of how technology is making photography easy – too easy to be truly artistically challenging, it seems. I’ve written about something similar before, in terms of artificial intelligence and post-processing. This is a bit different. It’s about how much work your camera should do vs. what you should do as the photographer.
I’ll link to one of those articles below, in which the author opens up that argument and concludes the opposite – that technology in fact makes photography more challenging, focusing the artist’s attention on the things that are meaningful and not on the things that are mundane. I agree with that view, with some limitations.
oldgirlphotography.ca 