DirtFarmer Loc: Escaped from the NYC area, back to MA

Because as I get older I have more gas.

DJ Mills Loc: Idaho

Best answer yet. 👍👍👍

DaveO Loc: Northeast CT

Man, you're old!

DJ Mills Loc: Idaho

That's what the grandkids tell me.

DaveO Loc: Northeast CT

You're not related to these guys...one of my favorites.

I'm a young 69, but grew up with this stuff.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hlx-CAYjf4U

cr1218

Why do they upgrade? Because they have a tendency to BLOAT!

(buy lots of atmospheric technology)

DaveO Loc: Northeast CT

Gee, perhaps borderline jealous.

Bipod

It's a question of photography markets. When she took her most famous photographs, Dorothea Lange was a salaried employee of
the Farm Security Administration, an agency of he federal goverment. She did not depend on selling prints to galleries (which is a
good thing--it was during the Great Depression.)

Nor was Annie Liebovitz in her heyday: as I said, she was primarily publishing her works (in *Rolling Stone* magazine, etc.)

Sure, Ansel Adams published some color photos in *Arizona Highways*. But his main business--and Edward Weston's, by the 1940s--
was selling prints in galleries. That always was a tough business, but today it's tougher than ever.

You do not know whether or not those works are permanent. You will find out in about 150 years. :-) Time will tell.

Good point. But procedures for making archival silver prints are well-known and proven by time.
We have a 190-year-old silver prints to guide us. We don't have 190-year-old injet prints or laser prints.

The experience of painting is relevant here: most new pigments that have been introduced over the centuries
--and often claimed to be permanent--have turn out to be fugitive. So permanent painting now restricts itself to
the ones that have been *proven* permanent by time.

True. But there are many more optical photographic processes there are computer printer processes.
Basically, there are only two: inkjet and laser.

And there is another huge difference: *who controls* the technology and decides what's available.
One wishes the answer to be "photographers and artists", not "industrialists and the stock market".

I make all my own B&W darkroom chemicals: film developer, stop, film fixer, print developer, print fixer.
Anybody who wants to can do the same.

The ingredients, which are either household items (e.g., distilled vinegar) or industrial chemicals with many uses.
I could make photo paper if I had to. So I really only dependent on film. Fortunatley, Ilford's sales of B&W film
keep setting new records for the company.

I'm guessing you could build a box film camera. Could you build a digital camera?
Can you alter the secret firmware in your digital camera (e.g., to fix a bug)?
I'm guessing you could build an enlarger if you had to. Could you build a inkjet or laser printer?
Can you alter the secret firmware in your printer (e.g., to fix a bug)?

I used to work in the computer industry, and own a lot of test equipment. But this would not
enable me to build a digital camera, let alone a printer. So I do chemistry instead.

If Nikon and Canon -- or even Kodak -- were building all the digital camera technology, I'd have no
problem with it. But they aren't. They have to buy digital sensors, microprocessors and many other
parts. Image sensors for cameras are specialized parts. Ultimately, it is semiconductor companies
that decide what cameras are possible to produce.

And the investment required to build a new foundry for microprocessors or image sensor chips?
Over $1 bn. No one is going to invest that kind of money unless the market for the chip is enormous.

Case in point: IR photography. Semiconductor manufacturers don't care about IR photography, so currently
every image sensor being made has an IR-blocking filter on it. Currently, it is possible for somone to remove this filter.
This may or may not be true next month or next year.

By contrast, an oil painter who dosen't like the paints Winsor & Newton is selling can simply
grind his own. Some do. There are even a few watercolorists who make their own paper.

Don't get me wrong: I am not a fan of DYI -- a specialized firm can always do it better--
provided one exists. But camera companies are now really consumper electronics companies.
(Sony always was, and computer printer companies always were.)

It is not prudent to be totally dependent on consumer electronics companies for fine art
photography. Escpecially not when the camera industry is shrinking.

Finally, media are *not* neutral. It may turn out that carving wood or stone is more artistic
than 3D printing in orange plastic. :-) Michangelo said he saw he figures inside the
stone -- it's certainly hard to imagine him designing *David* in AutoCAD 3D.

Photographers used to be very close to their materials. Edward Westons's finger were
always stained black by Amidol. And he did "development by inspection": peeking
at the half-developed film under dim green light, to see if it had enough. He
developed in his living room in Carmel, and only did contact prints--ouside, using
he sun as his light source. Can't get much more basic than that.

Technology has changed, and today there is a new paradigm: select AF and AE mode,
snap lots of images, cull the best one, fix it in Photo Slop, then post it on-line.

I put it to you that this paradigm is not conducive to producing fine art.
And it didn't just happen--it was fostered by by industry. Nothing has a
lower unit cost than software. Number two is mass-produced is mass-produced
electronics. Optical or mechanical solutions are much more costly to build.
There is an agenda here--one not set by photographers.

And just wait until cell phone cameras dominate photography--it's already started.
German film director and still photographer Wim Wenders has spoken eloquently
about "this activity that looks like photography, but isn't photography".

blackest Loc: Ireland

There is a third beside inkjet and laser, although it's really a subset of laser and getting rarer, the fuji frontier labs can use a traditional film negative or a digital negative to expose photographic paper using a laser. The print is still a traditional print, its just the process of creating a negative that is different. Maybe i'm missing something but it sure seems to be the same paper print process using the same chemistry.

Peterff Loc: O'er The Hills and Far Away, in Themyscira.

We seem to be on a digression here. I understand (I think) why you don't trust digital, although I do not agree, but the use of quality processes and materials seems to be paramount. No medium lasts forever, negatives and prints certainly don't in the event of a catastrophe such as a fire or a flood. Digital, if curated properly, can be reproduced more easily than many other media.

The original question was about why upgrade? The reason is that technology changes, and some advances deliver significantly better capabilities or results, whether digital, chemical, or other. The pace of development has increased, so improving the tools and techniques makes sense. It produces better art or science, but the content or result is the important thing. The timing of upgrades is simply a personal choice. Myself I'm a laggard until technology or versions of it, is/are proven, then I keep things while they are still useful.

Perhaps that's why I still have a few Roman coins. They're certainly no longer negotiable currency but are holding their value better than cryptocurrencies!

tdekany Loc: Oregon

Only technically better. For tracking birds for example, a better will get you more keepers.

BUT, a camera, no matter how great, can’t help you with composition, light, or subject matter.

Those 3 things are what will make a great capture.

In your opinion, how does a better camera help you take better photos?

blackest Loc: Ireland

I would like to address this, while your correct in that the 3 basics are the same in all cameras, there are several contributing factors.

My K1 is better in low light than my previous cameras due to the full frame sensor, I also have greater control over depth of field. More useable iso values an improved f-stop range.

The viewfinder now is a transparent LCD screen which has different overlays showing focus points in focus, guides for crop an aspect ratio, an electronic level. Its much easier than previous models to compose and focus with and brighter too with better coverage. It really is an improvement over the previous ground glass screen. The colors are accurately displayed and the view is in realtime, everything i need to know and more is in the viewfinder.

The rear screen can be flipped up and viewed from a wide range of angles liveview includes focus peaking and the display has a night vision mode which helps keep my eyes working well at night. The rear screen has made it much easier to use vintage lenses and the ability to change its position now allows me to use low focus positions that previously would have me lying in the dirt in order to compose and focus.

built in GPS allows me to record where i am, in astro tracer mode it tracks the stars moving the sensor allowing me to photograph stars without turning them into streaks.

Tethered capture wired and wireless now helps me photograph remotely putting the camera where i couldn't be before.

Composition - options, are a massive improvement, especially on a tripod, how often is the height used more to do with the photographers eye level and back than the subject being photographed?

Light - improved low light performance allows for captures that just were not possible to get without overly intrusive noise.

Subject Matter - now my camera doesn't have to be next to me, which allows my camera in closer and animals will behave differently feeling more secure that i'm too far away to be able to put them in danger.

Granted non of this makes me a better photographer I can still take poorly conceived photographs, I can also take better ones too.

tdekany Loc: Oregon

I only see improvements on the technical side.

Bipod

"No drug is perfect, threfore take untested drugs". "No building lasts forever, therefore throw out the building code."
It does not follow.

Some media are *proven* to last for hundred if not thousands of years. Bronze castings from the Shang Dynasty look great.
So do Old Kingdom pyramid texts. So do Giotto's frescos. And a lot of Civil War photos are in fine shape (particularly the
sulphid-toned ones).

The test of time is the standard adopted by serious artists and art conservators world-wide. Either they are incorrect or you are incorrect.

Progress keeps making things better! It's the power of innovation: cigarettes, asbestos, thalidomide, novachok.
Hop on the bandwagon now and *consume*! (The words "new and improved" are said to be th most pursuasive
in marketing. Artists take a different view.

All artist's materials are "obsolete". Charcoal is one of the most expressive drawing mediums, and is commony used to
teach drawing. How long has it been since picking up a piece of charcoal and drawing with it was the latest, hot new technology?
Early Paleolithic, maybe?

Other than artists, nobody paints with just pigment, linseed oil and turpentine anymore. But that formulation is proven to be
permanent. It is also slow drying, which is important to artists.

It takes hundreds of years of development to truly explore a medium and learn how to use it. It took Edward Weston
many decades of using view cameras before he really got good.

How, exactly, would have have benefitted from a Nikon D850? Are any digital prints selling for $1.6 mn?

The timing of upgrades is usually *not* up to the user. When the manufacturer decides to drop support for a piece of complex digial
hardware or software, on one else can support it. Upgrades and bug fixes are no longer availalbe. Technical questions cannot
be answered. Above all, if it breaks, no one can fix it.

That was not true with mechanical and electro-mechanical cameras. Even today, there are lots of peole who completely understand
them and can fix them. There is no secret firmware.

When a digital sensor or microprocessor goes out of production (as frequently happens), if there is no second source (as there often
isn't), then Nikon or Canon may have to cancel a succesful camera model --even if it is selling well. Nikon and Canon do not make
digital sensors or microprocessors -- they buy them. They are tiny players in the microprocesor market. The camera is out of production,
so no more money will be spent supporting it. Whether or not a camera will continue to manufactured is not up to the customer or
the manufacturer.

This did not happen with mechanical or electromechanical cameras. All parts either had mutliple sources or if necessary, could be
manufactured by the camera company. It's just like a old car: I can still get parts for my 1969 Bronco -- because it doesn't have
any computers in it. And if for some reason I couldn't find a part, a machinist can fabricate one for me. But to make a single
microprocessor chip requires at least a $1 bn investment.

A PC or Mac is now part of your work flow. You do not decide when to upgrade Windows or Mac OS/X, Microsoft and Apple do.
Everytime they find yet another security bug, you are forced to upgrade or be vulnerable to Russian hackers.
Russian hackers weren't a big problem on optical enlargers. :-)

Look at what is happening right now with lens mounts. Does anybody here want Sony alpha, Nikon AF, or
Canon EF to go away? There are very successful, top-of the-line mounts

Then along came digital, and because som digital cameras had dinky sensors, they had to introduce variants
lenses such as Nikon DX and Canon EF-S, that would mount but not work on full frame or film cameras.
But they still only each had *one* top-of-the-line lens mount.

There was a time that Nikon and Canon would have shunned building a miniature format camera,
let alone a sub-minature format one. They never made a 110 cartridge film camera. But they make
APS-C sensor cameras.

But each company has added a second mirrorless top-of-the-line mount: Sony E, Nikon Z, and Canon EOS-M.
The camera market is less than a quarter the size it was in 2008. Does anyone really think these companies are
going to continue to support *two* different top-of-the-line lens mounts?

Prepare to throw away all your lenses. Won't happen this year or next: but it will happen. They simply cannot
afford to support two different top-of-the-line lens mounts.

Remember what happened with Konica Minolta? Its digital camera line was sold to Sony, and it's film camera
line was ophaned. You can expect the same thing to happen again with at least one of the major camera
manufacturers: the mirrorless line will get sold to Philips or whoever, and the DSLRs will be orphaned.

And lo-and-behold, in a few more years, the MILCs will be in just as much of a decline as the DLSRs are now!
We are seeing the DLSR morph into a cell phone camera one step at a time: first the mirror goes,
next the shutter, next the full frame sensor,....

What Joe Consumer wants is a subminiature format digital Brownie that he can also use to Tweet and play
Angry Birds. Unless photographers push to educate the public about our art form, this is the probable
future of photography.

That's for sure! Which brings up a good point, that people tend to forget:
There are two kinds of innovation: good and bad.

"Great new innovations" and "mircles of modern technology" often turn out to be not-so-great: dirgibiles (Hinderberg),
unsinkable ocean liners (SS Titanic), explicitly parallel instruction set processor (Itanium, a.k.a. iTannic),
Each was introduced with great fanfare, each exited this world accompanied by wailing and gnashing of teeth.

With technology as with art media, time will tell. Unfortuantely, innocent people are often hurt when a coporate
pipedream collapses. (Wonder what a used Telsa will sell for after Tesla goes out of business and you can't buy a
new battery bank for your $109,000 car? But Elon Musk, hell get millions is severance pay if he's fired -- and
walk away as an even bigger billionaire. That how things are done in "high tech". Perhaps it should be called
"low ethics" instead?)

George Eastman merely sold simple, cheap cameras: you could still see all their defficiencies in the print.
Kodak cameras were honest: they did what they did and made no bones about not being the best cameras.
The evidence was there in the print for all to see. (Save for a time int he 1950s when Kodak folders were
made in Germany.)

The brilliant modern innovation was to eliminate the print! You can't see most of the defects in an image
on a dinky LCD screen oreven on a typical computer monitor. Especially not in a color image (often in
gawdy saturated color).

So today a totally automated, subminature camera *can* take perfect images -- you just have to change your
definition of "perfect". It's all a matter of OldSpeak vs. NewSpeak:
"minature format" --> "full frame"
"electronic display" --> "photograph"
"fuzzy and pixellated" --> "sharp"

Yes, you *can* take perfect photographs every time with no knowledge and no effort---all you have to do have
*believe* in technology! And buy the latest gizmo -- now on sale for only $999 for a limited time only!

Peterff Loc: O'er The Hills and Far Away, in Themyscira.

I consider myself to be a Luddite, especially where technology is concerned, but I am not in your extraordinary league of gentlemen, Sir.