tdekany Loc: Oregon

Lol! What a comedian. I guess astronauts are also superior to the rest of us little people?

https://www.dpreview.com/news/0687559256/ten-nikon-d5-dslrs-will-arrive-at-the-international-space-station-tomorrow

Bobspez Loc: Southern NJ, USA

I greatly admire what NASA and the astronauts accomplished in going to the moon. One of the spin offs of that techlogy was the miniaturization of computers which gave me a great job that I loved working with computers and computer peripherals and networking devices and software and displays that didn't even exist when I graduated from college in 1968.

But I think you're missing a photographic point with that pic of the earth taken from the moon in the vacuum of space with a Hassalblad medium format camera and Kodak film back in July of 1969.

Here's a handheld pic I took of the the moon, which has a diameter a bit more than 1/4 the diameter of the earth, from my front yard, in the polluted atmosphere of earth, with my 20 ounce, mostly plastic, $400 consumer Coolpix B700 in January of 2018.

History and space travel aside, which one is the better photo?

Super Moon - 010218 - Nikon Coolpix B700 at 1440mm equivalent focal length.

(Download)

Harry0 Loc: Gardena, Cal

People are weird.
You could get 10 of us, buying the same thing for the same reasons, and we'd disagree about something.
My last camera I was pretty good at was my D80. The newer ones are kinda similar but different; but I don't consider myself as expert on them. Yet. I am resisting any urge to further upgrade because of this.
And yes I too have bought lenses based on perceived probabilities of as yet future possibilities.
I get reminded of that TV show about crap my dad said: the kid comes in bursting with news about his new phone, and some of the things it does. Dad interrupts: You only bought that. You had nothing to do with the research, design, fabrication- nada. All you did was pay a lot of money for a thing that does things, most of which you don't understand. And you're proud of that!
Like my relative who decided to buy a Chinese GoPro kinda clone. He's proud of the deal, the cheap price. He;s proud of researching Ali to find and purchase it. He's very proud of himself for doing this. He has no idea how it works, hasn't used it yet, and Christmas is coming. And if I can't spout enough small words in 5 minutes to make him understand, I'm the dummy. *sigh*
And "artistic"? It's either the caricaturist at the local fair, the swirls of paint on the museum walls his wife drags him too, or something to do with a handfull of $1s and a brass pole.
Ya don't know what you don't know sometimes.

GED Loc: North central Pa

I like your pups Linda, nice shot!

BlueMorel Loc: Southwest Michigan

I am a technophile. I have no use whatsoever for the biggest, fastest drone, whatever the latest version is, but if I could afford it I'd love to crash it in my field. I never bought a Segue, nor ever tried one, but I still want one, even though out here in the country they're pretty useless. And I've wanted a Range Rover ever since I saw Hatari, but I have more sense than to ever get one.
Basically, as with jewelry, clothes, cars, vacations, if you can afford it, why not? You just have to be realistic about what your results and experience would be. Hiking the Appalachian Trail from beginning to end used to be on my bucket list. Now that I can afford the trip, I know that the end result would not be happy, but I still can dream. It's just not on my bucket list anymore, nor is canoeing the Boundary Waters nor summiting Mount Rainier.

JD750 Loc: SoCal

Well they kinda are. The early ones were leaders, highly intelligent, and the best of the best ,had been through arduous training that weeded out
many before them.

You think you have the right stuff? Sign up and see if you do.

PH CIB

I am not the best driver, but I buy a New Car every 200,000 miles or every Ten Years or so....

dumbo

Yeah But.... I have had the good fortune to have emigrated from a Box Camera, to an Argus C3, to a superb Nikkormat, to a Leica, to a Canon C9, to a series of Nikon DSLR's.
And yet, never before have I had the pleasure of using my SONY a6000. It's smaller, lighter, much more flexible in character, and more sophisticated
that I ever have had the pleasure of employing before. I now spend much more time waiting for the right light conditions, composing carefully, using my Carbon Tripod,
trying out different settings, different lenses I added, and enjoying my photography more than ever. You're right Sir. It ain't just the technology but the wisdom to
spend more time with an up-to-date Camera and take better photographs. I am not sure I have anywhere near the professional knowledge of so many of our Ugly Hedgehog members but I most certainly sympathize with those who need the technical advice in these days of too much "Attention & Information" overkill. Thanks for your wise comments.

Bipod

Please don't paint me as a Luddite. I am a technologist .

You guess wrong: I prefer CDs. But don't take that as a blanket endoresement of
unrestircted digital sampling.

I prefer analog guitar effects pedals. Why? Because sampling once at 44.1 kHz sound fine,
but sampling repeatedly -- converting back and forth from analog to digital to
analog to digital... -- degrades the signal very much.

So its not a matter of "sampling is good" or "sampling is bad". It's all in how a particular
industry uses a particular technology. That's very much the case with digital cameras.

(But some technologies are bad: e,g. asbestos, thalidomide, ActiveX, cigarettes,
MS Windows, electronic voting machines, radium water patent medicines, dirigibles,
"the Cloud", and Roman dinner plates made of lead.)

The first NRO spy satillites did use film -- very sucessfully. So did major astronomical
observatories. The Hubble uses a large format array of digitial sensors -- something
you cannot buy from Sony, Nikon, Canon, Olympus, etc. So an 8" x 10" film camera is
closer in capability to the Hubble camera than any digitial camera you can buy.

To use any technology successfully, one has to understand it -- it's strengths and it's
limitations. Belief is no substitute for knowledge--and the public can all be wrong
(as we saw with all those "NINJA" mortgages that went into default in 2007).

Also, one has to be able to control one use of the technology--not some giant
corporation like Microsoft, Amazon, Google, or Sony. If you allow yourself to become
locked-in or dependent, you will be exploited. Officers of public companies have a duty
to their stockhoders to maximize earnings--if they can legally squeeze another buck from
their customers, they have no choice but to do it.

The naive and trusting will be victimized, as will those who use technologies they do
not understand. Their privacy, security and even their cherished images may vanish.

"Perilous to us all are the devices of an art deeper than we possess ourselves." —J. R. R. Tolkien

tdekany Loc: Oregon

Paranoia

larryepage Loc: North Texas area

Interesting observations in the past couple of posts, including Bipod's. Real, I think, not imagined or feared.

I occasionally compare the incremental real boost to productivity provided by my very first personal computer running the two-dimensional MultiPlan spreadsheet program under CP/M on a Z80 (8 bit) processor with 640k of Random Access Memory and saving results on a very advanced two-sided 8 inch floppy disk drive with 360k capacity to the boost provided by my upgrade to ExCel 2016 running under Windows 10 on an 8th generation I7 with 32 GB of RAM saving results to a 1 TB solid state drive. The incremental value of the new machine is only a small fraction of that provided by that first machine, which revolutionized the way I did my work and drastically improved my ability to be confident in the accuracy of my calculations. And...the technology of that first machine survives...it still runs today, along with that software. What desktop or laptop purchased today would likely still be running 39 years later?

I also am a technologist, not a Luddite. And I like and appreciate new models of things. But the truth is that as we work to keep up with advances in technology, we have to come to the point where we are paying more and more money for proportionally smaller and smaller steps forward in technology. Just randomly choosing a couple of models, a person who purchases a $1,900 D500 today in no way received the incremental benefit or increased capability that he received when he bought the $1,900 D200 that it is replacing and retired his faithful F? film camera.

And yes...we have become at least somewhat enslaved by the technology and (perhaps more importantly) by the progression of the technology. In most cases, the latest hardware requires at least most of the latest software, and a lot of the the latest software requires the latest hardware (or close to it). One need to look no farther than this forum on almost any day to see that this is the case. The worst part of this is that we did not just allow it to happen. No one asked us, nor were we really given a choice. It was pushed upon us. And while there is a way off the merry-go-round, getting off requires making choices that many of us are unwilling to make.

Will any of this cause the world to end? Probably not. But it does seem to be real, and it does appear to be at least something of a problem.

E.L.. Shapiro Loc: Ottawa, Ontario Canada

Why are there only such extremes? A person needn't be either a Luddite or totally consumed by technology. Is there not a happy medium. I sometimes prefer to do things in a more old fashioned ways, especially in photography,but you won't find me running around, wielding a sledgehammer and destroying computers, digital cameras and automated equipment. I don't deny the utility of automation and artificial intelligence. I just prefer REAL intelligence as a primary resource. Technology, for me, are conveniences and resources that facilitates getting things done more efficiently. Too much dependence on technology gets us lazy and may cause are brains to atrophy.

Nobody is forcing us to buy or use anythg that our intrinsic common sense tells us is bad for us, frivolous or that robs us of our own creativity or individuality. I am not reactionary but there are words that have entered the vocabulary that I have come to dislike. One such "buzzword" in "trending". It is not always wise to blindly follow every trend. I don't see technology turning us all in to a pack of automatons any time soon but it is causing an imbalance and lethargy in many folks.

Bipod

No, actually, there isn't. That's why so few great photographers or artists were also CEOs,
politicians or secret policemen.

Either you believe in truth, or you "go along to get along".
And as soon as you one starts compromising, then one compromise leads to another.

Either one accepts kickback and bribes, or one doesn't. One either becomes a Party flunky,
or one doesn't. Not much middle ground.

Americans have had it easy (in the past): not so easy for Anna Akmatova, Osip Mandalstam,
Alexanander Solzhenitsyn or the contemprorary photographer Mogutin.

Could you have taken these photos?
https://www.rferl.org/a/prisoners-gulag-stalin-soviet/24903236.html

JD750 Loc: SoCal

catchlight.. Loc: Wisconsin USA- Halden Norway

Analog Man in a digital world...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=il1Byvn_vMA