RIP Popular Photography

[bykfixer]

I don't wish they go under, not by any means. But figure if they don't adapt they'll fail and deservedly so.
Time stands still for no one. And in todays here now gone in 8.9 days world of technology the changes Nikon, Canon, Pop Photo and others either adapt or die.

Panasonic teaming up with Leica a while back was a great idea. Nikon, Canon, and Pentax could learn from that. Nikon for example with their lineup of looking glass items or prescription glasses is what I mean and Pentax could team up with folks who make drones or those upcoming smart helmets.

Edit:
Boy I got hit broad side this evening with just how drastic the changes are. My wife and I shoot photos for a local school play group and I had taken about a 2 year break. Frankly just a couple of years ago out of the 200 or so audience members there were several point n shoots and a few DSLR's using tripods and monopods.
Tonight I roled up in the joint with a D7000 clamped to a monopod draped over my shoulder. Nothing unusual I thought. The drama teacher approached my wife and said "oh good somebody is going to take pictures"... my first thought was yeah me and 22 other parents. Nope.

I had the only SLR in the place and zero point n shoots were being used. Heck no tablets either. WOW! I had picked a 55-300 lens figuring no big deal taking more pics of the wifes boy and a few of his friends and had only a pair of 4 gig cards in the slots.

Instead of shooting a couple of dozen pix I needed to shoot hundreds tonight in order to get at least a couple of good ones for each cast members parents, whether they be stars or extras. Luckily I had recently been using the D7000 in some low light scenarios and had tweaked the iso to give me quick shutter speeds while still hiding noise pretty well on my 18" laptop screen. Thinking 8x10 prints I used that settings bank tonight and think it turned out pretty good. By dialing back the capture from 16 bit RAW to 12 bit fine jpegs (with saturation dialed back a smidge for slightly smaller file sizing)I was able to get about 350 picks from those cards and still have a wee bit of memory for the celebration after.

I'll donate the photos to that teacher who probably didn't think before tonight that anything other than some crappy iphone pix would be available. Tonight was the third showing. After the show I was greeted like a conquering hero for "bringing a real camera" lol

 

[RedLED]

Don't worry about the collapse of the camera companies, sports optics and a ton of industrial optical applications will ensure they will be around for a while.

The camera divisions have a slight problem where I feel they have fallen behind in some areas, however, they could surprise us. I thought by now professional cameras would look drastically different from what we still see as the SLR/DSLR.

We we will have to wait and see. One thing to consider is lenses are still an important key to all photography. They are what a photographer will use to decide how his image is to look as he sees it beforehand. The specific look, the telescopic compression, the overall composition, the contrast, sharpness regardless of pixels, and so on, even the color the lens puts out in a photo is important. This is knowledge of the medium. Also, knowing your equipment.

The problem with the pointandshootcrowdofsocalledphonephotographers, is they have no sense of style, no artistic talent, no real ideas, except to show off themselves for other fools on social media to get a one second chuckle and the goof viewer will move on to the next dumb and meaningless selfie, goofy photo.

They are all so self centered they have to produce something to post daily, and how it looks does not matter, it is all about their huge egos and posing themselves in front of anything. Let me ask you this: when was the last time you have heard the term 'Self Portrait?' You don't anymore, and selfie in my scope of the medium counts for zero. A self portrait took some thought, ideas and creativity which the phone shooters lack. I wager 90% never took a high school art class, and have no idea of how a photographer would shoot a portrait. You know, some of the poratrits and direction of a good portrait, even today we still use the standards set by the great master portarait painters form 500 years ago? Look up Rembrandt lighting, for one, all you have to do is look at how they used light. If you open a book, you learn this.

I am am all for fun quick snapshots but, don't tell me this is all that is left, even even worse an art form. The pointandshootcrowdofsocalledphonephotographers should try for something better. And, this why the magazines who tried to teach the non readers something which involved good taste and discipline in the art have gone out of business.

I only hope hope this is not what we are stuck with.

 

[StarHalo]

By dialing back the capture from 16 bit RAW to 12 bit fine jpegs

Heresy.

After the show I was greeted like a conquering hero for "bringing a real camera" lol

.."and prints will be $20"..

 

[KITROBASKIN]

...except to show off themselves...

They are all so self centered...all about their huge egos and posing...

Perhaps we could all benefit from taking a 'self portrait' once in a while, and refrain from making almost every thread we post in, about our selves and our glory days; boasting about knowing people in high places, and how many homes we have.

What else can be said about a promotional magazine for cameras and photographic accessories, going under?

 

[bykfixer]

Heresy.



.."and prints will be $20"..

Trust me, I didn't like doing the res reduction.

The wife handles any money that gets exchanged. I don't print as a rule even though my setup is calibrated for the rare 'den wall' print. She buys the ink, so she gets to keep any money folks want to pay her for prints. I'm happy enough when some kid smiles upon see-ing him/herself on the computer screen.


Kitro,
I like Red's stories. He lived it and was/is part of the big picture (pun intened? Not really)

 

[Bdm82]

Again,

An early prediction of mine in my notes from 1999, was that many historical photos will be lost for the very reasons you mention, and that includes news outlets. They will just disappear, while you had to throw away Negs. And that required some thinking. I have an archive in the multi-millions of both film negatives from the various formats of film As well as digital. I have in my archives, stored in a special facility that holds every photo and image I have taken from the 5th grade until a few minutes ago.

...

Maybe the magazine folded due to the fact that this generation is obsessed with taking photos of themselves, over and over and over, and their thinking was they will never reach any of them with any kind of real photography. While it was a good magazine, it was geared toward the hobby-enthusiast, and not professionals.

The flip side of this is with the new software and algorithms combined with exif data, finding the pictures is easier. "Bridge in San Francisco with Susan" can be found quickly. And the software, facial recognotion, and the like will only get better. Finding a certain negative is not as fast, especially for most people.

As a millenial, early end of it (I prefer the former gen y designation but I digress), I don't do a lot of selfies. I invest in decent point and shoot cameras that allow for a lot of manual adjustment. But 20 years ago, there were photography classes in school. Because to take good photos, you had to know what you were doing.
With current technology, it is just not necessary. Cell phones and basic point and shoot cameras take "good enough" (as someone else said) pictures 9 of 10 times. And so much more conveniently so than lugging around a big camera and rolls of film. Around the world, exponentially more pictures are being taken each day.
And no magazine is necessary to enable that.

On the dslr front, there's actually a cultural backlash to some degree.
I have several friends who bought dslr cameras and thought they were instantly great photographers, and started advertising photo shoots. Pictures are unsurprisingly unspectacular. This has happened many times over and not just where I'm at... so if I see a millenial with a dslr, I generally want to slap them. Unless they REALLY know what they're doing, have multiple lenses, and etc.
I'll never get one, as I don't have the time to get that good - and the costs are too high when I get "good enough" pictures for less cost and weight.

 

[RedLED]

Fixer, thanks.

Best,

RL

 

[ssanasisredna]

Millennials don't do magazines.

Big sales of compact cameras were what made the limited-production SLR cameras possible, now that those compact cameras are gone, you may very well get your wish for camera companies to go away..

You need area to gather light, and you need light for signal to noise ratio. Software can't replace or mimic that completely. For the foreseeable future, there will be more than enough interest and hence volume to maintain several DSLR companies. You may see some contraction, but I think you will have 3 solid DSLR companies. The rate of new models has already drastically reduced both due to reduced volumes and resources, but also because the technology is not improving nearly as fast as it was. We could see reduced feature sets in custom asics, being relegated to specialty I/O with most processing in a general purpose processor, but that is not a bad thing. I would also expect connectivity to become a given ... the DSLR being an extension of your phone essentially ... again not a bad thing.

The art of photography is still there ... it's better in fact. It is now more accessible than ever. The most basic inexpensive SLR can take amazing pictures. These are the good old days ... we just have to embrace that they are NOT the "old" days.

 

[ssanasisredna]

I'll never get one, as I don't have the time to get that good - and the costs are too high when I get "good enough" pictures for less cost and weight.

If you take pictures of "everything", then cell phones and point and shoot cameras probably do take "good enough" pictures 9 out of 10 times .... cause probably 8 out of 10 pictures are not memorable. Most (not all), of the memorable pictures I have taken were taken with a DSLR ... and yes my cell phone has a good camera and I own several point and shoots.

Becoming an artist takes time. Learning enough about your DSLR so that you can capture that "unique to you" image that you will cherish, takes very little time ... but the results as they say are priceless.

 

[ssanasisredna]

.... and had only a pair of 4 gig cards in the slots.

You can still buy 4 gig cards? ;-)

 

[bykfixer]

I bought a bunch of raw steel cards when 8 gig was the biggest available by them. I bought 4 gig size incase the card fails I won't lose as many as if I filled the larger cards and they failed.
I used 2 gig cards until hoodman started making raw steel in 4 or 8 size... but back then 10mp was the norm.

I have 32 gig cards now but don't use larger than 4 for photgraphy.

Hey Red,
I thought of you while sorting and digital dark-room-ing through about 500 photos I shot at a school play in about an hour. I was asked on the fly as I entered the auditorium armed only with 1 lens a monopod and 2 small memory cards. The idea before that was to take a few pictures of my step son for a photo album.

I had never seen the play so had no idea of where, when or how to take pix. It took about 10 shots to dial it in based on harsh contrasts of lights and darks with shadows in the darndest places at the darndest times. And of course no flash allowed.

Oh, and everybody was dashing about in quick movements so shutter speed vs background noise was a tricky balance. I don't know that my current lenses would've done the trick with a film camera. 3.5 was the left end of aperature sizes on the kit lens I had. After the first 20 or so I was having fun and had kinda figured out the pace of the players and had a style of photos in mind. For printing 8" x 10" they turned out pretty good.

Now, knowing drama teachers are a different 'breed' of editor, as I sorted keepers from no keepers I tried to guess what the teacher may like. Figuring my favs would probably be met with yawns while ones I considered boring may be the ones she uses for her promos I showed my wife the entire "roll" of about 350 keepers. As expected the ones that made me think to myself "dam that's a goody" were quickly passed over by the bride who marveled at ones I had considered so-so.

I felt like the old days of nature photography with only seconds to prepare had played a large role in a spur of the moment situation that was in large part very successful. My basic philosophy was to have a pretty good photo of every kid in the play for them to laugh at in 25 years.

I really don't think a point n shoot or a cel-cam would've been able to handle the pace due to focus lag and zoom speed requirements. I've shot plenty of awards ceremonies successfully with point n shoot gear and/or a cel-cam using built in setting to keep the aperature wide open, but the need for focus to change rapidly was handled by the marvelous Nikon system that didn't care if it was a face or a chair.

I really think the absence of publications like Pop Photo leaves a void for up n comers trying to learn the basics, so that even though no trophy is at stake, nor any money is lost they can enter a challenging situation and come out with a bunch of winners on their memory card due to some tips they read each month.

Saturday night really opened my eyes to just how much things have changed since W was in the white house. Part of me thinks that leaves a huge no longer saturated market for those who are serious about photography, and want to use it to feed their family. Maybe change is a good thing.... at least for the novice photographer who wants to be the next Ansel...

 

[StarHalo]

Observations from an air show: I shot one of the largest air shows in SoCal this weekend, a two-day only event where it rained the day before so it was pretty busy. As is traditionally my custom, I walk way down to the far end of the crowd area where it's nice and sparse, so I can stand right on the fence and pick my background as needed; of the ~40 other folks who joined me out there, maybe half were using their cell phones, and about 4 had SLRs. Walking the crowd, lots and lots of phone users, people very carefully holding out their phones and panning along with the aircraft, taking selfies with the war re-enactors, and every once in a while, I'd say 1 out of 20, would be someone with an SLR. Saw one Sony micro four-thirds, no other compact cameras for the entire event.

I reminded myself to keep the shot count conservative and still got 522 pics; in roll-of-24-exposures terms that's 22 rolls of film. It started raining in the last hour of the show, and thanks to Pentax's weather sealing and a good boonie hat, I stood out in the middle of it and continued shooting without issue. See the highlights here.

 

[bykfixer]

If I hadn't been into Nikon lenses a couple grand I woulda gone with the Pentax system when I upgraded from the D80 halo. I was really intrigued by the pancake lenses.
My dad used Pentax and my oldest brother when he was shooting weddings (both back in the 70's and 80's).
I still have some of my dads gear including some pancake macro lenses he had. Somewhere in my house is his old automatic (forget the model#) with about a half roll of Fuji 800 film remaining. (Certainly no good now more than likely). I used to use it with a Canon Rebel G for fun and a Canon AE1 when it mattered. One day a coworker gave me a Hewlett Packard point n shoot with a view finder and from that day forward my film stuff got used less and less.

I chuckled at the guy in your pic having a ginormous lens on that Canon hanging off his shoulder and what appears to be a celphone (cam) stuffed in his back pocket.

 

[bykfixer]

Went to an arts n crafts show my wife participates in every year thinking of this thread. I had my D7000 with a 55-300 kits lens and nothing else. No extra cards, no steady stick and no spare battery.

Taking photos of people's expressions as they bumped into aunt Ruth or some high school chum was fun. So was shooting the vast array of displays and ideas. I bumped to photographer friends who had the latest gadgetry and to my surprise one of my photographer heroes was snapping pix with an iPhone. WUT-THUH?!.... Now he had his normal cameras strapped over his shoulder but boy was I surprised.
Not only that but he now has the HDR bug too. UGH!! When he saw me he shamefully slid his iPhone into his trouser pocket. I quipped "no need buddy I got you on film" which is a phrase we used years ago when we'd catch someone off guard.

To my surprise few were doing selfies, lots of folks had digi-cams and a slew of Nikons. Photography was alive and well at the arts n crafts show.

 

[bykfixer]

Now this may be a viable alternative to my big camera...
Replace it? Oh Heavens no. But it certainly will be useful at times.

I bought a Moto Z for this little dude at some point. A Hassleblad phone cam? C'mooooon Santa Claus.

 

[StarHalo]

Now this may be a viable alternative to my big camera...

I bought a Moto Z for this little dude at some point. A Hassleblad phone cam? C'mooooon Santa Claus.

It's a 1/2.3" sensor, which produces images that have the same detail and color as a current smartphone cam; the 10x zoom and xenon flash are pluses, but if you don't use those, you won't be able to tell which pictures came from this add-on or just the phone itself. The ~$400 for the phone plus ~$300 for the camera back would be enough to buy a used Sony RX100 series camera, which has a 20MP 1" sensor behind f/1.8 Zeiss glass.

 

[martinaee]

my friend is a "pro" photographer, he works in restaurants in Brooklyn, while he still has customers, their number drops all the time, back in the days people that had party at a restaurant, had photographer take their pics, than he would bring 8x10 printed pictures hour or so latter, now everyone has a smartphone, his services no longer needed as much, people take their own pics, and post it right away. however phones have not replaced wedding photographer, yet.

I don't think phones can ever replace a good wedding photographer (or other specific-type event or other photographer). The point of a wedding photographer is to document most parts of an event artistically while also setting up certain shots. Just having better and better cameras in smart-phones that still often aren't as good as many dedicated point-and-shoots from several years ago isn't going to get those results.

Maybe I'm just naive though as a photographer who would hate to see different types of photography as businesses devolve due to other technology.