Curmudgeon wrote:
Being old and not sleeping as well as I used to, I woke up about 4AM a couple mornings ago with this simple thought running through my mind: The trouble with digital photography is there is no analog output.
No, stop, wait a minute! Before you go off on a rant, let me set the ground rules. This post is aimed a specific group: Over 65 years of age, grew up with parents, grandparents and if you were lucky great grandparents, owned a box camera of some kind and worked up from there, you took snapshots because that's what you did with a Brownie Hawkeye, your parents took snapshots with a Brownie Junior Six-20 or equivalent.
Now, it is holiday season 1954. The family gets together for a three generation dinner. After dinner everyone is in a mellow mood, a little wine, a drink or two for the adults and a sugar buzz for the kids. The oldsters start to tell stories about the good old days and suddenly grandma's eyes light up and she leaves the room. Two minutes later she's back with a stack of photo albums, grandpa is right behind with his arms full of shoe boxes, it's picture time. Ten minutes later there are pictures and photo albums scattered all over the room. The stories are more animated now, more wine. The kids who are still up start to learn what it was really like in the "Good old days".
Now we fast forward to 1963. Great grand parents are gone now and parents host the annual family dinner. Same scenario. Drinks, wine and dinner albums and shoe boxes come out again and we watch another generation grow up. This time though some of the pictures are Polaroid. Still everything is a snapshot.
Fast forward again 2018 we are the grand parents, maybe great grand parents. If we are lucky we still have the family dinner, we have too many drinks and too much wine. After dinner we sit around with our family and the topic drifts to the "Good old days". Suddenly my wife's eyes light up and she disappears down the hall and returns a few minutes later with a lap top computer and a stack of SD cards.
Probably just an old man's nostalgia but it doesn't seem to project the same warm feelings as passing pictures around and trying to remember where and when they were taken and telling stories about what the mean and not what they show.
That's what I mean about no analog output. There is something important being lost. To me, reading a book is preferable to reading a book on an electronic device. I hold a picture in my hand, the paper is stiff and crinkly, the picture is probably a little faded and brown but it is somehow more real than an image on a screen. The very fact of holding it makes the memory more real somehow. Again all of this could be the fantasy of a nostalgic old Curmudgeon, but...
Being old and not sleeping as well as I used to, I... (
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Hmmm. I'm right on the cusp there. I was born in August 1954 so I am still 64 years old. Growing up was not so warm and cuddly for me. Cuddly today are my two large hounds. I never met my Great grand parents and in fact only knew one Grand parent. Both my Parents were the youngest in their families. And unfortunately many of my relatives were obnoxious FMs. I will not indicate which here. It seems both sides of my family when growing up were relatively poor and it seems took few photos. I've seen very few prints of my parents generation of relatives. My parents moved from NY State to CA around 1950 so I grew up with few cousins or aunts and uncles around. As noted before, many I was better off not knowing better.
6x6cm (620 film) TTL camera. Really basic. I still have the camera to this day. Once I was old enough I more or less became my immediate family's photographer. First with the Argus and latter with my own Kodak Instamatic 104 (126 format) camera. My parents used it too I found.
I too prefer paper books to reading screens. My wife (60) actually likes pod-casts and the like a lot. And reads "books" on her SmartPhone or Tab. I like collecting and listening to CDs, LPs, and CSs. Only use the PC for finding and compilating OOP music I can't otherwise find or "try" a new artist to see if I like it enough to buy. I like the physical items. Along with that I do print photographs I've taken that I really like. Viewing on the monitor is just an intermediate step to me.
But, yes, for the most part the "kids" today are happy with a virtual digital life. And of minimal Quality it seems. They probably have no idea what 12" woofers are. Let a lone a 4x5" camera!