The 2008 Canon 450D DSLR, the Sacred Mirror, & the Baryta Paper

(1/16) I needed yet another snooty hobby for my golden years, and what could be better than taking arty pictures, printing on expen$ive “baryta” paper, and bludgeoning friends and relatives into breathless admiration — all with an exquisite DSLR camera with its ever-so-svelte and completely pointless SLR mirror?!?!!? ... I’ve already beaten-up on my poor beyond-mirrorless Kodak “zoomer” point ’n’ shoot with its three-minute battery life, apparently a universal feature of modern enthusiast LCD cameras ... and my DSLR definition expounds hurtfully on the absolute wondrous utter utility of a little mechanical mirror-based viewfinder in a computery gadget where an EVF is obviously superior.

... But the murmuring years were too much even for the poor bumbling boomer geezer foto fans + they’re dying off — and of course the phones beat the cameras into obsolescence / silliness — so there’re sad indications that the mirror-flipping DSLR’s days of faith may be numbered. ... So I figured I’d get one while they’re still going, and around 1/16 I bought a beautiful <$200 used gadget (at used-camera-central amazon) of 2008 vintage — perhaps the zenith of the mirror-flipping cult, before the dark mirrorless heresies rose from the swamp in the fœtid night and stalked the land. ... 2008 was also the dismal dawn of the battery-annihilating LCD live view, which my precious 450D DSLR implements but, blessedly, doesn’t encourage, and a definite forerunner of the end times as the cowering antique technology was forced to compete with the swarming point ’n’ shoots surrounding it. ... There are still camera departments @ Walmarts et al, but often sadly tattered / understocked, soon to be obliterated without recall — like the pitiful home organs still puffed even today on the odd music store sign, without a remaining shred of physical incarnation....

But a true flipping-mirror adept in those golden days of yore would’ve spent at least $500 for my 450D kiddie-wheels “starter” DSLR, which category has degenerated to today’s pitiful ≤$400 for a Canon or Nikon DSLR. At least one web puff derided the Canon T5 as a super how-low-can-they-go entry-level spit spit crummy cheapo camera — it’s fun to watch the parasites assault their food source as it so-poignantly contracts. ... My <$200 used artifact with its measly 12mp was significantly cheaper than my $280 (!) Kodak zoomer, which is of the same vintage and megapixels, although I foolishly bought the Kodak new.

... And then I learned the utterly most up-to-date “flagship” Canon EOS-1D X DSLR (p 42 PhotoPlus 12/15), a mere $4,600 (body only @ Amazon), has only a minuscule 18 megapixels! ... My mouth is agape in stunned amazement! ... And, naturally, now I won’t feel so cheap ’n’ crummy, with my 450d’s not-so-shoddy 12mp.

The Ecstatic Hobbyist & Déjà Vu

So when my ~2008 antique Canon 450D DSLR turned-up, a life of aching hobbyist ecstasy could begin at once, at last. ... I could hardly wait to peer through that optical viewfinder, and hear the mirror thump!

... But wait! — I did all that before, in the ’80s with a low-rent Vivitar SLR still lurking in the garage somewhere, and worth about $20 not counting sentiment, or maybe even. ... We could call them ASLRs, for “Analog” Single Lens Reflex, but tragically the FLA is already taken, although I have seen the term “analog camera” used. ... And lamentably Seattle Filmworks is no more, so I bought some real film for my Vivitar from Fuji (@ amazon of course), with infinite pixels. ... And in the ever-spiraling rush to pretension, a few of today’s photographic super-adepts actually use chemical film cameras, develop prints or perhaps just negatives, digitally scan them, and are ecstatically proud of their incredibly subtle and expen$ive æsthetic.

... And my beautiful DSLR came and was a lesson in packaging: the Amazon pre-owned Canon 450D / XSi, nothing; the usual expensive toy, lots. ... I would say about equally frustrating: in both cases I feel compelled to test a minimal set of features, but in the low-rent rendition there’s much less debris to fight through, although the fear-of-brokenness is obviously higher — so it about evens-out.

... And then, because it is so beautiful, and to make-up for its empty box syndrome — actually, there was the essential battery + charger — but I bought it some treats: AC power, extra batteries/charger, lens cap/filter kit — all of my preferred low-rent brandX flavor, which will doubtless provide the missing infuriation of the new product box. ... The ridiculous full-color “Your Canon 450D/Rebel XSi” books were also cheap used — the Dummies book was just 41¢ + $3 S&H! They aren’t as reliable as the Canon pdf manual, and certainly not as succinct, endlessly blathering on the Beautiful Wonders of Photography — albeit with lovely color pictures + strangely-esoteric suggestions about the millions of camera settings.

The REBEL XSi™

Thus at last have I so belatedly entered the age of the DSLR for a precious little while. ... And it is lovely. I can unscrew the lens and see the silly mirror, which is ravishing of course. ... But as everyone knows by now, the camera in your phone is almost as good if not better since it’s ridiculously more convenient/easier — hence my unlikely baryta aspirations, supposed to conjure-up a modern-day incarnation of the 35mm slide ritual torture practiced assiduously in ancient times by elderly tourists upon their innocent whimpering home-bound relatives. ... And finally, tragically, I must note that my Canon does not have the classy European “450D” designation but instead the embarrassing murican low-caste “Rebel XSi” sobriquet — which, naturally, I will consider an adornment of its religious excellence. ... Although in Japan it was supposedly named “Kiss X2” which is even sillier.

... But I realized after all these years I hadn’t figured-out its “T” number! There’s a Canon EOS T3 , a T4, and T5 — it might be the T3, at least that’s a ~12mp flavor — but the amazon picture of the back didn’t look like mine! ... So my pitiful hobbyist relic is “T”-less, alone in the great Canon history....

The Case

Another hideous flaw in the fading fallen latter-day DSLR world: the ridiculously-expensive cute camera cases are AWOL! ... In my day, they were form-fittingish, leather-like or better. They just vanished. Instead there are lumpy clothish cases that are probably actually useful. ... No sense of tradition there. ... Well I see I lie; there are leather cases — but they’re not nearly as plentiful as they once were, vastly outnumbered by the lumpish flavor. They used to be a standard part of the fraudulent “kit” our beloved low-life camera vendors would try to stick the whimpering hobbyist with. ... The kit lives on, but not, poignantly, the leatherlike case....

But when I googled-enough, I found such a case for my antique DSLR, only $50! ... But I think I’ll stick with the cunning bubble-wrap bag I contrived for protective storage. The cute cases were always mostly annoying: I’d struggle to get the camera in/out of it to do something like change film, and they were always in the way while trying to actually photograph anything. ... The excuse was the amateur enthusiast needed the beautiful leather case to protect his sacred instrument in dangerous foreign lands, so he could take beautiful pictures for the sacred relative torture rites. ... Which brings us to ...

The Thieves

How could I forget!? Another major contributor to fancy camera bag extinction was theft! ... My goodness as in so many things I was ahead of the curve generations ago, switching to a cruddy canvas bag in preference to the tarty leather “steal me” thing — which I probably still have around somewhere, crammed with camera junk far more antique than the beloved DSLR. ... Well, actually, it was empty....

And it turned-out there were lots of steal-me form-fitting cases; just not leather. ... And after all, they are stupid; just like the beautiful mirror itself! ... I could get a $15 neoprene case and put it in my genuine leather camera bag ... like Eeyore used to do. ... But the form-fitting leather cases of yore used to at least pretend you could take pictures without removing them, although they’d always thwart some essential movement so you couldn’t really, but the neoprene makes no such pretence and you have to remove it to do anything. So the bubble-wrap bag probably still is more functional, or at least easier to get off ... but not as cute! ... And then I discovered my adorable neoprene case also fits my zoomer ... at least as good as the bubble-wrap....

Batteries?

My beautiful Rebel XSi presumably shares the modern super-camera’s legendary LCD battery life — but only if I should pathologically set the beautiful LCD to always on (aka “Live View”). Of this edifying phenomena I lament in my zoomer obsequies, where I mention the “battery grip” accessory my beloved Kodak doesn’t have. ... But the treasured antique DSLR XSi does, and my preferred cheapo Neewer variety was only $30! ... Sadly, the result won’t fit the steal-me form-fitting case, but such are the sacrifices we make for art.

... But the battery grip is complicated! ... Who knew? ... I had to read the tiny translated-from- pamphlet, which I regard as a tyrannical imposition on the freeform flipping-mirror fan. ... Some hints for the wandering aficionado (& of course my future forgetful self):

• The canon camera battery door comes off — which it must, to insert the grip — via its tiny spring-loaded hinges; and the battery door is then cunningly stored in the battery grip!

• The trays for the grip are removed/installed via the little bar over the “open” legend molded in the plastic tray, and then turning the little handle that springs out....

And one of the two supplied trays is for AA batteries — so I’ll be able to revisit my Z990 NiMH recharging adventures! The second tray supports two standard Canon rechargeable batteries. ... Sadly, the DSLR does not attain added beauty with the battery lump, which is just another poignant testament to the legendary battery life of today’s enthusiast cameras. ... The lump, incidentally, is a kind-of sentimental “ghost” of the film camera motor drive, a $uper-pro aspirational accoutrement ideal of antique camera hobbyists....

Canon XSi Defaults to Battery-draining LCD Off

I must emphasize that unlike my infuriating zoomer, my beloved Canon DSLR does not default to battery-annihilating LCD halogen-bright illumination — I would have to stalk through the menus to enable its “live view” which I have no intention of doing, so conceivably the batteries’ll last weeks or even months! ... And indeed, even the zoomer’s been copacetic since I suppressed its LCD in favor of the EVF. ... If only these manuals could speak....

Video!?!?!

Again, my mouth is agape in stunned amazement: my precious relic DSLR is so ancient, it can’t take video! (although dubious web enthusiasts murmur of laptop-tethering thaumaturgies). ... My approximately contemporaneous zoomer does take video, so everything’s OK. Not to mention my broken A540. And a shelf of adorable obsolete flip movie cameras. ... And there’s always my phone; & many other antique silly cameras....

Viewfinder Obscura

The DSLR’s mechanical mechanism is so authentic that if you take a picture where light can sneak into the viewfinder — i.e., not obscuring the viewfinder with your eye by peering through it, which’d be the case maybe on a tripod, and/or using the battery-annihilating LCD “live” view — it can screw-up the automatic exposure! So in such cases you’re supposed to stuff a plastic thing over the viewfinder, which device came attached to the original camera strap. ... My empty box didn’t come with a strap, much less a plastic thingey, and the idea is apparently so silly that none of the numerous aftermarket vendors offer a replacement. Given the astonishing “live view” battery life you have to peer through the viewfinder anyway, or use an AC adapter. ... But, wait, I get it; the solemn cover-the-viewfinder warning/gadget was for the innocéntes, who bought their beautiful “enthusiast” Canon and, with considerable effort, always used it with the LCD “live view” — requiring significant sacrifice since it apparently doesn’t work in the EZ “basic” zones — and then were indignant that pictures came out bad! Aside from the battery draining in 3 minutes.

... Of course even without the battery-extinguishing live view, any tripod use will probably expose the viewfinder, and the foto fan might well rely on the apparently easily-upset automatic exposure — I certainly do, with the DSLR and all my beloved silly cameras and even my beloved 35mm — ah, the vicissitudes of the enthusiast’s sacred way, & yet another demonstration of the marvelous utility and ridiculous value of the DSLR flipping mirror camera. ... In the unlikely event the need should ever arise, I plan to contrive a viewfinder light-shield out of a spare XSi eyecup I have carefully secreted for the purpose, + the usual random shreds of cardboard. Although that would be annoying — as would the thing-on-the-strap for that matter — and maybe I’ll figure-out some easier more-informal mechanism. Just sticking-in a piece of appropriately-shaped cardboard looks like it’d work pretty good; a piece of thicker stuff might work better, stuck into the rubber eye-relief cup. ... And of course I’d really have to use the thing for any of this to be useful, which never turned-out to be particularly likely, the obsolete silly super-zoomers like my beloved sx20 being so much better for the laboratory’s typical photographic preoccupations....

Lenses?

But then I realized I could resurrect my real-SLR Vivitar 250/SL “M42” mount (?) lens herd with some kind of adapter thingey! Cheap! It might even work good, what with the crop factor, although apparently there’s many a slip twixt the lens and the lens mount. ... But imagine! — my cheapo telephoto & “kit” hobbyist lenses of yore, attached to an antique Canon DSLR! ... Oh rapture. ... When I got around to checking things out, two of my antique lenses were actually wide-angle “add-on” atrocities for a beautiful Minolta super-8 movie camera still in the garage & not likely to be resurrected anytime soon (although apparently Kodak might try). And an adorable little box of closeup adapters was for it also. I believe I used both of these in my glorious cinéma vérité days.

One of my Vivitar lenses turned-out to be some kind of lash-up with numerous elements stacked together and a note from myself describing how I used it to make a “blow-up” of my name in typewriter type for obscure primitive computery résumé purposes, before $100 scanners and wondrous paint programs. So I took it apart to liberate a pitiful f2.8 55mm “kit” lens, which’d be equivalent to the 3x optical zoom on the XSi kit f3.5-5.6 18-55mm lens. ... So that’s the 55mm, + a derelict wide-angle f2.8 thing on the Vivitar (what’d be wide no more with the Canon APS-C crop factor), another (wide-angle-no-more) f2.8 35mm, and a 200mm (crop-factored to 320mm!) with which in ancient times I was stunned to discover I couldn’t take telephoto pictures without a tripod. But apparently autofocus doesn’t work so great with long lenses or high fstops or something anyway, so that’s OK.

Prime?

And then in a pitiful fit of foto-fannery I bought for my precious DSLR a cheap but brand-new $55 prime brandx 50mm/f1.8 “portrait” lens @ Amazon. ... So I did get to change a lens, justifying the beauty & wonder of the DSLR — but only if you believe the occasional fraudulent claims that interchangable lenses require a DSLR. Sadly, the picture-taking experience was a lot like the zoom that came with the camera — flash, auto-focus and all, without the zoom of course. I had a vague feeling that perhaps it should’ve used less flash — because of the fabulous 1.8 f-stop? ... But then again, inspecting the pictures on the computer, perhaps there was a bit less flash? One of these subtle æsthetic things which I am so crudely incapable of appreciating? ... A youtube review was predictably snooty, but with an amusing brit/chinese accent and surprisingly uncondemnatory. ... But it is just a scam, like the amazing DSLR itself; the pictures look different from the kit zoom only with a pure innocent faith, but I am sadly faithless, and can only scurrilously mock — and treasure a precious souvenir of my exciting adventure in lens lust — and I’m all set for a ridiculous macro-bellows reverse lens extravaganza in the beautiful imaginary hobbyist days to come....

Sensor Cleaning

In the DSLR’s golden age (<~2010) you were advised to take your precious device into the “shop” to get its sensor cleaned if blots showed-up on your baryta prints. Which’d happen after you foolishly changed your wonderful interchangeable lens in a mud storm or something. And you were warned you should never clean the sensor yourself, unless you were super-DIY-competent. ... With the beloved chemical film of another age, the “sensor” would be cleaned every time you rotated the film advance, although the SLR mirror could still get dirty in the proverbial mud storm, but in the astonishing digital age the film never changes and you’re stuck. ... On the other hand, the wretched beneath-contempt digital point ’n’ shoot cameras like my dubious/beloved A540 et al don’t have removable lenses and you can’t clean or dirty the sensor — or to put it another way, if it gets dirty you throw the camera away. But the glorious interchangeable lenses allow dirt to get into the camera, and when next the mirror flips, it can get on the sensor. ... Of course there are no camera stores anymore (well, few). In the past, manufacturers provided mail-away services and perhaps this is Canon’s, and there are 3rd parties; my first hit was $60 — the Canon site, as far as I got, was priceless.

New Age Sensor Cleaning

But in our new age it turns-out it’s perfectly safe to clean your own sensor, and to do it you can buy “kits” and gadgets at any price you desire. ... I of course bought some cheap junk for my beloved DSLR, and will keep it with the other sacred objects. ... And now Brit mag Digital Photo explains in their 10/16 issue on page 155 that “regularly cleaning your camera’s sensor” is a great idea, as they fulsomely puff a sensor-cleaning product advertiser....

The Subtle Beauty of the Invisible Infrared

A particularly charming icon of the beautiful DSLR’s whim & whimsy is the infrared filter which, to the naked eye, appears totally opaque — because, of course, we can’t see infrared light. But the camera can, maybe, a little, but, to be sure, must be exposed for minutes and minutes on a tripod of course to see anything and then one has to fiddle with the image in your Photoshop magical abattoir to get any kind of picture. Of course you could just skip the infrared step and go straight from any picture to the abattoir — the pictures look like weird-color effects easily achieved even with PSPX, and indeed some squalid photo mag had a free free photoshop magical infrared plugin that did just that. ... The propaganda tripe on the web mostly observes omerta on actual exposure times, but this fellow tells how he did it with his very own 450d in ancient days practically beyond recall, and suggests mere 15-second exposures. And also mentions his previous camera, the beautiful Canon S2! ... So my cheapo infrared filter was a mere $12!

Cheapness

And now I will joyously celebrate the internet/Amazon epoch of cheap camera junk. ... One brand “Neewer” stands out for the weird name and most inspiring bits of debris. ... A photoflash wireless gadget — so you can set off your Neewer flash over in the corner from the “hot shoe” of your beloved DSLR — for $20!?!? ... <geezer accent> I can tell you sonny it warn’t like that back in the day nosiree. Why, “$20” — it’d just get you snickered-at at Willoughby’s; guys’d likely roll in the aisles. </geezer accent> And that was when $20 was worth something! ... I should note that my beloved XSi 450D Canon DSLR was apparently quite popular, which is probably why cheap accessories for it are so plentiful. Although I’ve discovered that the non-proprietary flash accessories, at least, can be used by many of the snootier silly cameras.

The way this entrancing odyssey goes is I will read about some astounding photo accessory in a brit enthusiast magazine with a “round-up” review of so many possibilities usually starting at $199.95, or there’s also the odd gushing DSLR book, and then I go buy the cheap-junk Neewer equivalent @ amazon. ... The flash guns for instance can be got in endless proprietary/customized models that’ll work automagically with your very own DSLR but poking around the web it seems all the in-the-know savants use their external flash in manual mode anyway. And the $35 Neewer flash (manual & 2 slave modes) is the highest priced accessory my beloved empty-box-syndrome DSLR has gathered around itself yet! ... Well, until I splurged on a lens....

And no, the point is not to be cheap — not that there’s anything wrong with that — no, the point is to amuse ourselves with minimal penalty. ... An amazon commenter complained his Neewer trigger receiver failed after a few weeks; but he apparently knew how these things were supposed to work, actually used it, and used this one because it was cheap. And got his money back too, because it’s Amazon. Which is the way I like it too, and I have little clue of how it’s supposed to work, and would really object to finding-out with some expen$ive gadget like the ~≥$100 “Pocketwizard” brand — I had to google a bit to even find a non-cheap product!

The magazine puffs/articles are typically sterilized of any useful information — the better to gull you into buying stuff, their prime directive; they’re paid to mystify the pitiful fan and make him buy more stuff! ... It’s the innermost secret of the cult! ... Although the camera manuals & enthusiast books sometimes let a little useful info slip through. ... So these are truly marvelous times for the irresponsible cheap hobbyist....

The Collapsible Reflector!

And then a foto mag mentioned a collapsible reflector for $30, what I got at amazon for $12, and I finally discovered the real distinction between the tough professional versus the pitiful foto fan amateur such as myself: the pro is able to collapse the collapsible reflector back into its case without hurting itself! ... I can’t; not with ease anyway. Of course when I take it out it’ll try to snap at me. ... This is real pro-level stuff....

The Macro Bellows!

It’s all so beautiful; you stick it on your camera and then you can focus your macro ever-so-carefully to extract beautiful significant beauty from some bug or flower. ... And then there’s the reversing ring, what you can stick one of your lenses on backwards which will produce wondrous macro effects without duct tape.

Meaninglessness

I note with deep sorrow that “XSi” apparently doesn’t mean anything, nor does the previous model’s “XTi”. I consider this at least a shocking violation of the lower-case “i” “internet” significance, as in ipod, imac (1998!), iphone, etc....

One More Thing ...

It’s true it’s new — actually it’s pitifully ancient: I can see through my DSLR viewfinder even when the Rebel XSi is turned off! ... Oh the wonder the transformative ecstasy! I can even adjust the lens, and the focus. ... Can’t take pictures — unlike a real SLR (after you wind the film / shutter, probably). And I can also see through the power-off optical viewfinder of my tiny antique broken Canon PowerShot A540 and many of its little friends....

Shameless plug: Dpreview.com (RIP?)

I must recommend this camera-fanatic web resource; it is endlessly-amusing, for cameras, almost as good as my beloved SOS magazine for ridiculou$ audio junk. Dpreview googles-up whenever I search for some silly topic like “450D video”. ... Like all such resources in our wicked mortal world, never is heard a discouraging word — but they do have lots of ’em. ... In my onrushing golden years, I find a perverse kind of pleasure in reading their relentless puffery even as the promoted cameras’ prices rise to the stratosphere. And the comments are so harsh — they even comment about how harsh they are. That’s probably something to do with the years of high-minded retailing....

Their best feature was “Throwback Thursday”, but it’s been doing poorly recently (11/17), skipping weeks and then the last rendition @ 10/19/17 puffed a 3-year old camera! Which still cost a mint! I suspect they realized the feature blew the gaffe a bit too much — which it certainly did for me, at least a number of my silly cameras were acquired for small sums after a Throwback meditation. But I could still see ’em all @ https://www.dpreview.com/tag/throwback-thursday. ... The 11/23/17 Thowback Thursday returned with a heart-rending tale of one man’s photo web site, its glory days and sad demise. ... But nothing about cheap golden-age cameras....

Sic transit gloria

Sun 4/2/23 10:20 am. And now its time is done — at least at April 10th, they promise. ... Their relentless puffery will be put-away forever, fading so quickly into the internet twilight, followed at a distance by the ridiculous cameras they puffed.

... But it is immortal! Somebody rescued it from obivion, and Dpreview rides into the sunset....

The Mortality of DSLRs

A particularly moving dpreview story, at 11/12/17, timed no doubt for the all-important xmas buying spree, was about When Your Camera Will Die — actually a foreign site linked-to by dpreview, wherein you are informed about how to tell when your beautiful professional flipping-mirror mechanical-shutter DSLR will keel over, by reading the runes of the shutter count for your marvelous machine, and perhaps checking them with web rumors of mechanical shutter longevity for your model.

Of course, cameras without mechanical shutters, including billions of phones, are immune to this unspeakable menace, so they have to be offed by Apple updating the OS. Which will never happen with my beloved silly cameras: they still require normal physical degeneration to meet their ends. ... And my precious dslr is supposedly shutter-count middle-aged and, if I keep using it at my current rate, will live forever. ... And some evil DSLRs don’t report their shutter counts, leaving the worshipper in stygian darkness....

The camera biz religious often seem to believe the bilge that’s flogged, but then those saucer-cultists actually offed themselves on the basis of arguably more-foolish notions, and they didn’t even have the financial motivations so obvious to the camera acolytes. ... I shrug in reverent amazement....

— the æsthete-nevertheless programmer
11/17

& see the beautiful silly cameras stories....      

What is Raw?

At their most sophisticated settings the very finest digital cameras (and some of the lesser breeds outside the law) can take raw pictures, a term of art expressing a savage close-to-the-metal realness — hordes of all but overwhelming screaming pixels. ... But when the world was young & gay, the pictures my crummy casio cameras took were tiny and I’d get hold of them in (≤half-meg) TIF files, a standardized “non-lossy” graphics format which still litters my hard drives. Then of course the pictures got bigger and huge and the foto fans’ computers didn’t, so the JPEG was born and the foto fans were at peace, or at least pacified.

JPGs compress so well because they’re lossy, so if I want to edit my pictures in a paint program I’m stuffed, since every time I save a JPG image it degrades, because of the lossy compression, so you shouldn’t do that. ... I set the read-only attribute (in windows only of course) on all my jpg files, but some heroic programs’ll just ignore that (including the usually-blameless irfanview). ... So the fancy cameras, in my case my beloved DSLR and even the sometimes-unloved zoomer, have an alternate/additional/huge “raw” capability, where the term is supposed to sound sexier than “un-lossy proprietary format”. The proprietary part didn’t go so good, and nobody’s screwed the customers for raw support in a while. ... No, they’re just left dangling in the wind — well, Kodak did that, with their repulsive useless “share” junk. And I expect even today the introduction of a new raw format could still be the occasion for exciting adventures in con$piracies-in-restraint of trade....

Raw Software

But Canon’s free “Digital Photo Professional” works OK with my XSi’s raw CR2 files. PSP X8 can open both my Kodak KDC and Canon CR2 raw files, albeit with occasional minutes furiously running the desktop’s fan. ... Included with PSP X8 Ultimate was “AfterShot” version 2 which seems considerably less pathological, but won’t open my precious ridiculous Kodak Z990’s KDC files — or even Adobe’s DNG things! Aftershot 3 is similarly afflicted. ... A PC Magazine review explains PSPX’s “Raw Lab” is supposed to look like the equivalent photoshop window; of course. Although really more like the limited Elements raw thing....

RAWTHERAPEE?

The free FOSS “Rawtherapee” also opens both Canon CR2 and my ridiculous Kodak KDC files, although its typical FOSS documentation is elusive — well, this is the online manual. And the glorious software has typical FOSS shortcomings, little minor details like it doesn’t show the filename unless invoked from its browser, and the browser doesn’t work so good, and I can’t get to the program preferences/options unless I open the browser, and at least one Rawtherapee browser version had the magic-file crashing syndrome on one of my herd — an unknown offending file in one of my vast picture directories confounds it, but I use XN anyway except of course for the things that don’t work right unless I use the rawtherapee browser — which still, 5.5 version, seems to check-out forever in my 1,316 file directory — no, wait, behavior’s improved, didn’t crash, now it’s just leaving-out all but about 20 or 30 files. ... And I poked-around in version 5.6 and found that it wasn’t really not-showing all the pictures in my giant directory; it’s actually showing them, but in a small size and I have to center the browser display with the horizontal scroll bar to see ’em. So I deleted the c:\b\MyPix\AdobeTests\options file — and it did the same thing. ... Oh, see, the tiny-centered-pix-problem is just because my giant directory has a few wide images which, instead of scaling, RT just tries to show in some nominal stupid who knows format, but scrolling down the selection flashes the wide images by and it’s all so simple & broken. ... At least the browser doesn’t seem to hang-up anymore — although it’s still pretty-much useless. ... Why lookee-here! It’s a revered ancient not-a-bug.

The rawtherapee guy doesn’t like complainers, so I’d have to surgically implant git in my forehead to report its obvious defects and he probably wouldn’t notice anyway. On the other hand, it was very difficult to donate to the project, so I guess that evens it out. (But then some intrepid fellow asked at the forum, and apparently paypal.me/rawtherapee’ll do it....

... And of course the $0 price is right, and the adjustments are obviously splendiferous and varied — although I did have some problems selecting the right lens correction — it didn’t find it automagically like some other suspects, even ’though the camera/lens name are part of the raw & jpg “metadata”.

... But then I crawled onto the forum and begged and, after considerable ritual abuse of the usual trollful kind, some kindly fellow pointed-out the “Info” button which will show the filename among other bits of stuff, as shown in the beautiful illustration . My green square marks the button, and the effect persists through rawtherapee invocations, so all really is well....

OTHERS?

And there are other wondrous possibilities — including my beloved & free irfanview which at least pretends to view CR2s — thumbnails only I suppose. And let’s not forget the Olympus viewer. ... And then again, my beautiful Lumix F27 has TIF “raw” files and don’t need no stinking special software — almost any paint program’ll do....

Why?

So what do we want to do with these precious giant raw files in our ridiculously complicated and slow raw paint programs? ... Why, we want to edit them! We will make the colors glisten, the details glint. And we want to do it in the raw format because ... ? Well, actually, I’m not real clear on why we want to edit raw files. I can just “save-as” the JPG file from the camera’s SD card in the non-lossy proprietary format of my beloved paint program, and then adjust the resulting gigantic file out the kazoo without image degradation — other than intentional.

But the raw file will have so much more image information in it, it is whimpered, and that’s why we pay the big bucks for the raw-capable camera, see? ... A few minutes of googling raw vs jpeg produced supposedly “bad” jpegs which looked like something that could easily be fixed in a paint program, which is exactly what some of the savants advocate doing with the raw image. ... That, + a good deal of enthusiastic hand-waving. And under-dressed women in the images (actually, google seems to have cooled-off there). ... Well I did do something useful with a Canon CR2 image in the Aftershot 2 program what came with my PSPX8: when I checked “Enable vignette correction” the edges of the image brightened noticeably. Not that I had noticed before. Kuel! ... Of course in PSP X8 (and presumably elsewhere) there’s “adjust / lens correction / vignette” thing that has the same effect on lower-rent images....

& .DNG?

In my rush to snootery, I’d overlooked an entire raw format! ... “DNG” is supposed to mean something like “Digital NeGative” and is apparently some kind of Adobe super-TIFF lossless thing what bubbled-up years ago, supported by numerous programs probably and a free Adobe converter, which is in itself suspicious coming from the eternal slavery folks. The program converts CR2 & KDC files to DNG, but it still takes forever to read the DNG file, Aftershot doesn’t see ’em, and why bother. ... Well in the brit Digital Photo magazine (6/16 p32) it’s pointed-out that “if your camera’s RAW files can’t be read by your software” the Adobe converter probably can convert them to DNGs your software will be able to read. By “your software” is presumably meant Photoshop version #6, the last non-slavery rendition. The rest of the “Get it right with RAW” article is the usual hodge-podge of pointless incitements.

... And I must admit I must’ve never actually tried the Adobe converter, since it puzzled me when I did, but the way it works is you’re in a directory, and you tell it some things — but not the name(s) of the files you wish to convert to DNG — it will convert ’em all, if it feels like it, and that’s apparently your only choice. ... No onesies. So if you don’t know about directories so you can isolate some pix in one, you probably need not apply...

Raw == Ugly?

Yes it does. They admit it! ... In the foto fan puffery, the occasional tip/trick relates how your raw files might look a little “flat” compared to the wonderful wildly-vivid jpegs, but that’s only so you can use your wonderful eternal-slavery photo editor to fix ’em. ... Because the camera manufacturers tart-up the camera’s jpegs — don’t want a camera B pic looking hotter than A’s! ... The magazine puffs actually review these effects, allowing as how some ridiculously-expen$ive camera’s jpgs have such vivid reds, or such delusional drivel — ’cause after all, we’re spending $Ks on these silly toys because of the flat raw and the wonderful slavery we can apply, to produce our own delusional hot effects....

Adjustment Fraud

Then there are the foto fraudsters who complain in various fora — well, usually dpreview — how they took a picture what had bad white balance or something, but unfortunately they didn’t take it in raw, so they were sunk. Which is fraud intended to convince pitiful ignorant foto fans they can’t use a paint program to fix jpgs just like raw — which of course they can.

Blown Highlights

One of the RAW cult’s articles of faith is that one can recover from clipped highlights or shadow — “blown” highlights are supposedly particularly tragic. This D80 image — on the right the Rawtherapee rendering of the clipped highlights — shows how the tragedy is irrefutably appalling & tragic.

However those of little faith might think it looks a lot like a picture of sunlight & shadow, and who cares. ... That would make you apostate, and you will be forbidden communion at sacred real-photographer gatherings, and stripped of all your knowledgable-enthusiast rights & privileges....

Raw Pixels?

And in my ceaseless quest for truth & the American way, I noticed my Canon and now Nikon raw pictures have only variously-colored pixels! — i.e., when I blow ’em up like 5000%. ... Numerous sources relate that a camera’s megapixel resolution indicates how many photosites there are in the camera’s sensors, which sites are divided-up into three different colors — because the gadgets can’t see color. Nor can we, at least not at the same high resolution that we can see black & white, so it all works out and everyone’s happy happy joy joy. ... All the wizards & savants say the raw picture is a digital negative, which is of course obviously ridiculous, so I suspect it’s just like my original scurrilous suspicion: raw is a proprietary successor to the unlossy TIF format of yore, so idiots can imagine they have something so much better than a wretched low-caste jpg. Although apparently the Nikon D80 .NEF raw files are lossy in some mysterious way.

... And then in a 4/18/18 DPReview article about a built-in defect in a $2K Sony camera, a “ProfHankD” who concocted a program that’ll process-out the defect, admits that his “fix” doesn’t really fix anything, it indeed processes the raw file to remove the defect — but, “at a level comparable to things many (most?) cameras do when they create raw files in the first place.” ... Oh?!?! ... Now you tell us? ... And really!?!? — these machines have these wonderful little ICs in them what sense different colored light, and out comes a picture, even a raw picture — the relative gain of the different-colored photo sensors is undoubtedly jiggered along the way, and complicated sensitivity curves applied, and who knows what-all, and we think it’s just like a chemical film negative? ... In the Age of Film that was all done by super brilliant chemists and the vast complicated color-developing processes, but today it’s done in our cameras, with software mostly. ... Or more likely, our phones.

... And the DPReview Sony puff astonishingly doesn’t feature the defect they just documented! It may be hiding in there, but browsing through the image quality section, nary a peep. ... Inspiring technical journalism AKA puffery AKA paid-for-advertising at its best, and a useful summary of what one can expect in the way of truth on our beloved internet — or, indeed, in any technical publication that takes advertising. ... Certainly, the ads can be amusing ... as opposed to the usual editorial content, certainly....

Raw Pixels At Last

Rawtherapee does ’em good! As per their forum, I just click the raw tab (@ the right on my screen), and in the dropdown “Demosaicing” thing select “none” — and voila! The default demosaicing setting is “AMaZE,” presumably some wondrous algorithm, but the point is, you gotta do it or your picture looks like a computer virus . The cameras, of course, do it to produce the lovely jpgs which, typically, even if you’re taking RAW they provide also anyway, so the gullible enthusiast won’t whimper. ... But I was, astonishingly, wrong about the camera always doing the magic; your paint program does it to the beautiful RAW image — or not, if you so choose and you’re using the free rawtherapee, although presumably other paint programs can do it (?). ’Though not my beloved PSPX it seems. And I’ve got a funny feeling neither does the Holy Photoshop either. ... And of course nevertheless the camera does do tons of processing anyway. To make your beautiful picture good....

Darkness

Poignantly, my older Canons take darker pictures — the A540s, the A610/A650, i.e., in their “auto” modes. They knew it, too, ’cause the LCD “view” renditions are obviously tarted-up to look bright. But the histogram doesn’t lie. The 2011 modérne a1200’s pictures, however, are brighter and cheerier, perhaps light metering improvements, or mindless æsthetic shift. (And be sure to check-out further conspiracy-minded conjecture.)

... But I will not despair; a moment in a paint program, and they are as bright as the sky! ... Or of course I could use my phone. Or exposure compensation, now that I’ve studied its ways....

And I was fooled when I took a picture with one of the beloved antiquities and the LCD showed it too bright — washed-out! But the actual image proved to be fine, at least by my pitiful amateur geezer standards, so a happy ending for all....

The Beauties & Wonders of Low Light

One day I went and set my beloved antique DSLR to the “extended” ISO of 1600 and took two pictures (i.e. in “P” program mode), and they weren’t ravishing magic suitable for framing in foto fan magazine hagiography — well actually nothing I take is ever like that — however they were usable pictures, and I deliberately made no effort to hold the camera steady or of course use a tripod.

... So then I moved on to my ridiculous Canon A650 which also has image stabilization and 1600 ISO! The combination of my naturally low standards and the adequate ~2008-quality images will provide me an endless new repertoire of pointless amusement. ... Well heck my battery-draining Z990 zoomer’s got 6400 ISO! ... Murk on! ... The DSLR’s high-ISO images were, predictably, the best, but the Z990’s and even the A650’s were usable — and I haven’t even begun to tinker! — for instance, the A650 was undoubtedly improved after I disabled the -1 stop exposure compensation I acidentally left on, which induced entirely too much murk. So now it’s just about equivalent to the sacred dslr.

... To be sure, they’re all kind of cruddy, but still much better than the “automatic” out-of-focus default — that is, they are focused more-or-less, but pointillist-level graininess to various objectionable degrees. ... The insider super-technical reason they aren’t blurry is that the high ISO makes for shorter exposures: my A650 picture of a dark bookshelf, for instance, was 1/10“ @ f2.8; a more normally-lit room came in at 1/60” @ f3.5.

The Ignorance of the Geeky Foto Fan

I will confess: I was certain the automatic camera shots, with the flash turned off, would force long shutter speeds and, therefore, blurry pictures. But not so — in my vast collection of silly cameras, not one answered to that description! ... I’m almost certain I remember this happening, and it may be one of those things that someday I’ll figure-out how to reproduce it — just when it will be most annoying no doubt — but in fact at least 3 or four of the herd, at worst, took too dark pictures. Which, with the magic of our beautiful paint programs, can easily be adjusted to acceptable brightness/contrast, and still look better then my high ISO renditions. ... So, although wrong wrong wrong, at least I’ve reintroduced myself to the wonderful world of available light photos, from which I was exiled in delusion & ignorance. ... Well, it was probably my iphone 5 I’m thinking of, which even with flash set to automatic is aesthetically inclined to fairly dark & blurry natural light, along with the granola and bizarre lifestyles of the rich & ridiculous....

But I’m still not buying the latest $10,000 camera until I can experience — before taking-out the mortage — superior pictures in dim light without a tripod and no flash — and I note that all the new ~$1K point ’n’ shoots still have built-in flash.

Movies?

Amongst the 35mm slides of my tattered history there are “home” movies, the early ones with a beautiful minolta xl-400 super8 which apparently used Kodak Ektachrome ISO 160 (actually ASA) — not that fast and there was no flash unless one trucked-around one of those giant AC lights, which I never did, but nevertheless movies taken indoors were often acceptable. Like the later videos, they gained in focus via the multiple frames, at least some of which would be in focus if only by accident, and if it wasn’t anything like cinemascope it didn’t look just silly. ... Well, fairly silly; I mean well qualified for the silly camera collection, but still not dark unfocused gunk — of which, to be sure, there was a plentiful supply also. ... As far as I can ascertain in careful tests, Kodak’s resurrected Super 8 camera — well that page doesn’t exist anymore, but googling satisfying non-existent product puffery. ... Anyway it didn’t include the ASA 160 flavor, but the more arty/stupid 50 ISO for supernova / nuclear fusion lighting. ... Although they were coy about admitting it; that may explain the apparent hitch in the project, since someone might’ve discovered that only super-experts can use the 50 ASA film; ASA 12 with the indoor incandescent tungsten filter nobody got, and there are very few supernova / nuclear fusion indoor lights — oh wait they have a “high speed film” with an indoor tungsten 500 ASA — but it almost certainly wouldn’t work with my old minolta and all the other antiques....

Available Light

... And I can remember “available light” photography — before wikipedia, in the distant 35mm past, in which I indeed lived, although there was always color film in my times but often too expensive / restrictive — right, because you had to take it in bright sunlight or with annoying flash bulbs or ridiculously expensive pro lights ... until the golden age of 400 ISO seattle filmworks. ... But artistic progressives would take arty dark b&w urban pictures, or rural ecological beauty, with just the light the Great Nullity gave us. The camera cults used to worship natural light. ... But no más — seemingly replaced by the cult of off-camera flash, which couldn’t have anything to do with the vast amounts of money the manufacturers make with proprietary super-automatic flash acce$$ories. ... So I went and bought some 400 Fuji 35mm film for my beloved antique SLR. And resurrected my vivitar flash.

Focus

The snootier digital cameras have clouds of focus points, miniscule electronic gadgets that make our pictures perfectly in focus, except if they don’t. The lower-rent cameras have no points, but automagically focus without saying why, although there is a skittery green box that occasionally wanders around the LCD/EFV of my Kodak zoomer....

But I took my wretched chemical slides for years without bothering much about focus. Like most people I’d leave the lens set to infinity and chances are the picture’d be OK. Some lenses’d have foot/meter numbers on the side, and a helpful scale with fstops showing how much depth-of-field leeway you’d get, but I never used those, and of course I would look through the SLR viewfinder so if it was really out of focus I might notice. But most of my shelf of slides are, in the technical argot, focused-enough — well, 50% at least. ... Indeed, many point ’n’ shoot and phone cameras of that age were “self-focusing”, a term of haught scammery signifying fixed infinite focus aka no focus, living-on even today for cheap binoculars....

And I don’t think I’ve ever taken an out-of-focus picture with the automatic cameras, either! Or the iphone of course. ... Well, really, there are occasional disappointing exceptions, even with my beloved zoomers. And when I left the DSLR manual focus switch on by accident. ... But no, it is the vast digital-camera book / magazine / internet industry who are so anxious about focus, compassionately on our behalf.

Focus Points?

The foto industry is so concerned about focus that the cameras have developed hundreds of focus points in the usual mindless competitive frenzy which, it should be made clear, has nothing to do with an in-focus picture. The normal way to focus something which isn’t obvious to the camera’s magic brain is something like (1.) centering the desired focus point in the viewfinder, (2.) press the shutter button the sacred halfway down, then (3.) move the camera to frame the picture the way you want, and (4.) take it.

As far as I know, that’s how it works, and I’ve never seen an explanation of why the 5 million focus points will improve this process, since it will inevitably involve fooling-around with buttons etc to select one of them — or, be still my heart, with an incredibly-convenient touch screen — and what it means to select a group of them is beyond the ken of this mortal foto fan — but what I know is it won’t make all of them in focus (unless they were already), not in this tawdry mortal physical universe. ... Unless of course you use the wondrous A-DEP mode, what my beloved DSLR’s got (i.e. a larger depth of field will focus better than a short one). ... When I google for “dslr focus points”, it’s striking how few actual short informative descriptions there are — I have never found one — and how many profe$$ional enthu$ia$t lengthy mumbo-jumbo “discussions”.

The Sacred Halfway-Down Shutter

One of the central technical enchantments of the beloved digital cameras is pressing the shutter halfway-down: one is supposed to press the shutter just a bit to get it in a good mood (and focus), and then press it all the way to take the picture. ... My good old analog vivitar never put up with such nonsense, but presumably the prehistoric autofocus film cameras invented it — my astonishing 1990s 35mm Olympus does it. The procedure smells like one of those ad-hoc don’t-have-enough-buttons/fake-it-in-software stupidities like the mouse double-click of such fabled renown — i.e., something 90% of the population cannot execute properly and/or comprehend, and therefore a cornerstone of an exalted hermetic technology, so the smart insiders can snoot at the proles....

But it’s Just More Scammery?

After a harrowing experience with my Sony DSC-H2 halfway-less shutter button, I have come to the life-changing realization that the halfway-down ritual is, like so much of the beauty & wonder of the silly cameras, a good part scammery — to disguise the focus/exposure delay at some point in the distant past, but mostly in modern times (since around ~2000 anyway) to convince the bumbling SLR geezer hordes that the new-fangled automatic digital cameras were indeed actually focusing and calculating exposure and it wasn’t just scammery — an aggressive pose presumably required to deal with the existing widespread photo industry “self-focusing” scam.

In my innocent youth, taking a picture with my real 35mm SLR was instantaneous: press the shutter and with no delay the single-lens-reflex kerthunk occurred. Days or years later when I got the developed slide back, it might be horribly out-of-focus and/or badly exposed, but it took no discernible time to take the picture. The time it took was not a competitive feature in those golden days. But the super-better digital cameras had to be automatic, so they had to have automatic exposure and automatic focus, as indeed did numerous automatic 35mm cameras before them, like my ridiculous Olympus IS-3DLX.

Typically the primitive 35mm photographer — i.e., me — taking outdoors pictures, would focus on infinity and use the built-in light meter which, after one set the F-stop and shutter time appropriately — the ASA was of course fixed by the film — one could take numerous pictures as quickly as one wanted pretty much, and faster than a digital camera, at least if one honors the sacred gesture path. Outdoors the 35mm shutter time was usually fast-enough and the F-stop high-enough so camera shake & focus wasn’t a problem. ... Indoors was different: longer shutter times & larger F-stops & one would have to focus intentionally at distances far short of infinity. Which to be sure I often got wrong.

But the “trick” is, even idiots like myself would get savvy-enough about how to set-up shutter time, F-stop, and focus, and then take a picture. It could take an annoying interval to set it up, but then I could take more than one picture, and/or I could wait for some physical thing to happen and take it, usually just the natural normal movement of the occasional person whose image I might slip-in amongst the acres of snowy landscapes of upstate New York.

Manual Mode?

Digital manual mode is worse. On my Canons (at least my 2006 s3 and 2009 sx20 which I just tried), I can press the shutter so it clicks, and it takes a picture — without halfway-down rites. Just like my over-exciting Sony DSC-H2. And it’s a half-second or less and produces pictures in-focus/properly-exposed. I’d have to hold down a button to focus manually, which is almost as much trouble as the sacred gesture. ... The DSLR’s worse: unlike my beloved 35mm, there are no distance indicators on my 450D kit lens, and I can’t even easily focus it to infinity. At least the s3 and sx20 produce a screem graphic with rough distance indicators when one holds down the stupid focus button, and I can set it to infinity easily, and there’s some optional gimmick so it’ll magnify the focus area or something so one can inspect it better. ... I.e., boring....

Beneficial Defect?

Like an idiot I have been trying to do the halfway down sacred gesture for years and, to my occasional surprise at being mortal, sometimes failing. And I suspect the zoomers are not always copacetic either; they’re stodgy when they just wake up and, like the defective H2, just take the picture. But the H2’s defect taught me to deliberately just press the button, so I can stop worrying and take the pic — almost as fast as my golden 35mm days, and of course with far superior tech, what with approximately free film and automatic everything. I.e., like your phone.

... But it does kind-of take the bloom off the antiquated rose — I enjoy the occasional skittering green box in the EVF. And to be sure, there are occasions for the sacred gesture: when I want to take a foreground thing in shadow against a sunlit background, it is obligatory to “focus” — mostly to adjust exposure actually — on the dark thing before moving the camera with the magical halfway button still engaged to the desired composition, and then take the picture. And it’s not easy to do that, so I can still revel in my snooty skill. And in darkness the camera will not focus quick-enough or at all, and perhaps the sacred gesture will still have a place....

Treif?

But still, I am unsure if abandoning the halfway gesture is ever right. ... My beloved precious silly cameras and I have gone through such joyous adventures together, that using the treif picture-taking style feels inadequate. Even ’though it seems to work perfectly with many pix. I feel as if I’ll regret it someday, for obscure reasons I can’t understand now or perhaps ever. ... Not unlike many of life’s never-perfect choices. Although in this case the regret is largely-induced by the beloved digital camera scammery ... to which I am hardly immune. ... I still worry I’m missing something transcendently lovely by mocking the RAW cult, or not binding myself to the obviously-sacred Photoshop Slavery....

And then again....

Some of my silly herd definitely require the delay. A few crummier canons have produced fuzzy pix, seemingly ’cause I pressed the shutter too soon. These are cameras with non-EVF optical “tunnel” viewfinders, but a little green LED’s supposed to appear when it’s ready. ... Another variable is a setting like “continuous focus” or something which would use more battery power, but presumably focus faster/better. ... I believe the better digital cameras require the delay, implementing it automatically if the pitiful geezer photofan forgets. ... But some of the cheap ones definitely don’t....

Megapixel Madness

It bothered me that higher megapixel cameras did not seem to deliver commensurately bigger pictures — and they don’t: to get actually twice as big, you’d have to double both height & width, so a picture perceptibly twice as big as a 6 mp image’d be 24mp or so — four times the pixels! ... For twice as big as 12mp — 48mp!

... And actual pictures indeed show that. Which is of course the only reason I noticed, but it’s all really simple arithmetic, and a 12mp picture isn’t twice as big as a 6mp in my paint program on my “HD” 1920x1080 screen, although they’re both so huge they never actually fit on the monitor screen anyway, so I’m comparing comparably reduced renderings , usually 1/4 or smaller. Such esoteric topics are never discussed in official photo puffery because it’d make it all the more obvious how silly the escalated megapixels are.

And this fellow used to have strenuous gobbledygook explaining the “Airy Disc” vs. megapixels and why Apple’s iphone 6 had only eight of ’em — but the puffery police got him, and he’s sadly subsided into sedulous suckuppery. ... But the story is, basically, if the pixels are too small, they’re no good — kind of duh. ... He derided a Sony 20mp phone as having “16 MegaPixels and 4 MarketingPixels”. ... And Apple has evolved in the marketing pixel field with the 12-megapixel iphone 7 (here’s an ecstatic puff). ... But I’m sure all my silly camera pixels are big enough....

High Art$

Throughout these learned pages, I scorn the digerati who so moan of the subtleties of the work, which cannot be discerned without the most $uper-$ubtle perception$. ... My subtle perceptions can be summed-up as “once the digital picture’s bigger than the screen you’re looking at, that’s all she wrote.” Which exalted level my beloved 1mp 9/00 Kodak reached in 2001. Which of course is why the digerati have been so exercised over printing.

But it’s all a scam of course. One of the pre-eminent charms I find in the silly cameras is the brilliant ornate colorful scamery, the pitiful & embarrassing efforts of the digerati to mask their naked lust for ca$h as high art. But the world looks at pictures on their phones which, to be sure, get bigger and bigger, but not bigger than the humdrum screen I’m typing this deathless prose at, a ridiculously-outdated 24’’ 1920x1080 ”HD“ viewsonic. Attempts to con the pipul into buying bigger / higher-rez screens haven’t gone really well, just like the cameras, and just like the desperate efforts to make anyone think MP3 files are so trashy my dear how can you listen to that noise!?!?!? ... Nope, the tech is all right. It’s the ever-ebullient scamsters who are whacked....

Pixel Size

The party line used to be bigger sensor pixels, i.e. that’d show-up in larger $ensor cameras, were always better — they weren’t so noisy as those cheap crummy little pixels. But the wind has shifted @ 4/19 when dpreview said no. While I’m sure there’s settled science lurking around somewhere, I note that as the camera market “mature$”, the price differential between lesser/more pixels has become unpredictable, so that hasty puffery about pixel size could backfire, for instance regarding higher-pixel-count really expen$ive cameras....

Changes?

Something else what isn’t what it used to be is the glorious interchangeable lenses that are “available” for every respectable SLR, DSLR, and whatever the rest of them are called this week, compact interchangeable mirrorless something whatever. ... Naturally “available” means “ridiculously expen$ive” and back in the days of chemical film, at least the colorful kind, it was pretty-much a mandatory way of getting hold of different-sized beautiful pictures.

Today, changeable lenses are quaint — although even more ridiculously expensive to be sure. But the modern paint program + our monstrous megapixel images + a typical “kit” zoom like my beloved DSLR’s or the all-but-obligatory zoom on the point ’n’ shoots brings to the pitiful hobbyist almost all the capabilities the Ansel Adams adepts had with their camera bags o’ lenses & darkrooms of mystery & magic. ... Even I used to toil in a b&w weekly oubliette, striving after super high-contrast photos that’d show-up legibly in the low-rent newsprint rag. ... But the photography magazines’ super talented pro photo meisters’ exciting adventures continue nevertheless, with all kinds of lenses and intricate ideas about how marvelous they are. ... An increasingly-puffed term of high art is “prime”, which means a non-zoom lens, so rare and precious and obviously more expensive, since you gotta collect ’em all. ... But what is the point of all these ridiculous megapixels if you can’t extract anything you want from a picture in a decent crashing modern paint program!?!?

And I should mention the free autostitch software which, at least for still-life / landscapes, can replace the very widest wide-angle lenses. It’s very simple-minded software, but that’s the charm. ... Although I’ve also got a meretricious “fisheye” adapter (<$30) that fits my beloved DSLR kit lens and the odd point ’n’ shoot....

Foreigners

And so I must make fun of the delightful British photo magazines. The US Popular Photography’s final issue was 4/17; there are a few others, but as is the case with the beloved electronic music magazines, foto fans across the pond are a decade or so behind the muricans, largely I imagine because the iphones et al cost twice as much due to the blessings of socialism. So there are two fat British shill magazines, Nikon’s NPhoto and Canon’s PhotoPlus. These are not like the beloved British masterpiece of puffery Sound on Sound — no, these are apparently wholly-owned subsidiaries of japanese companies but they are fat and happy and chock full of amazing creative things you can do with your beloved DSLR + a DVD with cloying videos of the same. And of course interviews with astonishingly successful photo meisters divulging their innermost tricks and magic. And in recent years, relentless photoshop puffery, no doubt because photoshop’s eternal slavery is such fun!

... But I must say, reading these thick volumes I am amused by the beautiful color pictures, but appalled at the endless struggle which apparently is expected of the photographic hobbyist. No wonder everybody uses their phone. ... And then the 2/17 brit Digital Photo was its last issue! They didn’t even pretend to translate to the internet. ... Which, I realized, just means they assume anybody stupid-enough to buy these silly DSLR magazines must be technically illterate — I mean, they’re the people who can’t figure-out instagram. Of which of course I also know nothing but that’s only because I’m so subtle & high-minded. ... And I let my Canon puffery PhotoPlus sub lapse; I just couldn’t stand it anymore, and of course it wasn’t cheap in the USA — or even in the sceptred isle for that matter. Even if you don’t sign-up for their obviously fraudulent “club” scams. Although I still shamefully buy the occasional issue @ Barnes & Noble — well, before the B&N closed....

... & muricans

5/22/20. Tragically, the eco-fanatic democratic party front Outdoor Photography has ascended from this vale of tears into the internet — but only because the hideous worldwide covid crisis forced them, and if I’d just give ’em an email address, they’d happily bombard me with pdf issues and superior right-thinking advertising until the end of time. ... And then I actually went to the web site, and there was no place to put the so-desired email address. ... So those who go into the outdoors and take photographs with their ridiculously expen$ive cameras will no longer have trusted holy communist guidance....

8/17/20. They’re back! Beyond all hope & despair, there they are, once again, 4 color communism!

... & Tragically, Beautiful Pictures Are Free

When any idiot can take pictures and distribute them with his phone, the price falls to zero. Of course the average picture is uglier than it used to be — maybe? ... or maybe not ... but there are zillions of the things shooting up to the internet every minute.

It is the bounden duty of camera companies, photography magazines & books, and all the foto-fun advocates to persuade enthusiast and “professional” potential camera purchaser alike that this isn’t so. By lying. And the photographic pufferatti take pitiful exception to the obvious general debacle, shouting “sports!”, “news!”, “ecology!”, even most pitiably “weddings!!” — but really, it’s all about the same. ... I’m not insisting no one can sell a picture now & then — but that the exalted trade is a lot like being a professional lottery player....

The Antiquity Biz ... in Black & White

And that’s what the DSLR sunset and my parade of prematurely-antique cameras and disappearing viewfinders is all about: the end of the photo biz, like the buggy-whips before it. ... But, really, I won’t be so bleak — it’s a conversion, into a kind of antiquity biz, a nuanced photo-technology art form in itself: the strange features, the ridiculous attitudes, the amazing falsehoods. ... A lot like the guitar biz....

There was actually a $7,950 (body only) 18mp 10760 M Leica mirrorless black & white only digital camera. The aspiring photographer who wishes to take only black and white digital pictures will rush to acquire one of these — if Amazon isn’t out of stock. ... I have seen this marvel actually extolled in a camera magazine puff review....

The Paint Program

Finally, I will snootily admonish those who follow the digital camera path but foolishly neglect paint programs — you are sad pitiful people who will remain unhappy in the digital world of light & beauty. ... As noted in my paint program definition, there are more than a few freebies, and anyway you’re paying $Ks for the camera. ... But sadly, even despite my vast technical savvy I wasn’t born knowing these things: it took me years with my beloved 1998 PaintShop Pro 5 before I figured-out the layers, much less the more advanced gobbledygook — and please inspect my stirring derision of popular paint programs old & new. ... And go ahead, see if I care — shovel those megapixels; get that b&w camera — you can’t do anything like that in software, can you!?!?!?!

— the imaginary enthusiast
4/18

more silly cameras....

The Grand Denouement: My Precious 450D DSLR Departs — NOT!!!

Mon 11/21/22 9:40 am. And now it is gone! Probably forever, unless a few days soaking in deoxit’ll fix the poor thing. It didn’t run out of shutter; it just got tired and gave up. I put in a fresh battery, but at first it wouldn’t turn-on; I deoxited around the on/off switch and eventually it turned-on, and demanding I set the date/time, but the dumb arrow key thingeys wouldn’t work, or worked intermittently — never enough to get to the time.

Presumably proud canons across the land do this, demonstrating once again the wondrous reliability of the DSLR — even ’though I only left it fallow since 2017! ... Oh the perfidy; oh the sorrow. ... So I bought a 450 body from ebay for $70.

... Sat 11/26/22 9:28 am. So I guess I don’t mind paying the $70 stupidity tax to find out, once again, I’m an idiot. ... Along the weary way:

• My dslrmanual.bat didn’t work.
• On this web page’s diatribe, there were at least two DLSR typos for DSLR including the headline above....
• So eventually, heroically, I read the manual (RTFM), and it said I have to press SET before I could change the date settings!
... Oh so obvious! So Stupid! ... Even stupider, I had to do that for every quantity! Oh such fiendish cunning!
• Both units required me to pry the non-Canon replacement battery out with special dangerous camera destruction tools I keep around for such purposes....

But I kinda like having two 450d bodies around; I mean, why not? And now I will remember forever this important/stupid feature of the cunning Japanese software, so ingenious....

Broken Type in Firefox Web Browser?

Looks kind-of like “” but not quite that bad? ... For me, it happened only on one machine, started with Firefox version 19.0, and stopped I sincerely hope with “Options / Advanced / General”, uncheck “Use hardware acceleration when available”. ... Brief google spelunking suggests the option rarely increases browser speed, and it seemed to have no effect on mine, but does occasionally do bad things. ... It probably sped-up some 386 machines in 1998 or something....

Friday, November 22, 2013 7:45 am. Alert Alert : same “fix” also cured a dual-screen system, where firefox’d (25.0.1) disappear in the “other” screen on the left (internet explorer, of course, didn’t). ... I’d view some page, move it over to the left screen, then close firefox and foolishly run firefox again later and all I’d get is an empty transparent display frame — just the outside rectangle, no content controls nothing. I could resize it into the other screen where it’d restore itself. ... Or defeat this now obviously pathological “hardware acceleration” bug, which is presumably just unsupported cruft left-in by the Google-financed fun-loving Mozillaoids.....

Or Herky Jerky Scrolling?

Yes folks disabling hardware acceleration will fix the distressing personal Firefox malady of Sudden Scrolling Bumps also! No more screens-a-scrolling like MSDOS! Smooth again like the Great Nullity intended! ... I take it back; it did that for a day. Probably some stupid always-on bug, like the brilliant firefox programmers like to do (“those stupid lusers don’t know what they should want”). ... Or it might’ve been a bug. I tried to exit/start again, and firefox complained that it hadn’t stopped, and I told it to kill itself, and after that the smooth scroll was back. Ahhh the joys of precision programming. ... And I like the idea of a bug inspiring the intrepid browser to use hardware acceleration by accident; it just fits somehow....

Disappeared Download Manager

This has been going on for years, as the moron forces at firefox gain the upper-hand and make that nasty download window disappear, and then presumably the frontal-lobal bunch put it back; and finally, the morons won. Search for a plug-in that’ll do it good; some of them do it bad. ... Actually I can click the vestigal download indicator and it’ll ask “show all downloads” which if I click will open a download window. Thank you kindly frontal-lobeless incompetents. But it can crash doing that; if it feels like it, I guess....

Disappeared Firefox!! ... In Windows 10, of course....

This has happened twice to me on different Win10 machines, and there are only three in the herd. I forget how I fixed it last time, but it was a struggle of hideous dark proportions. This time is took less than hour, so I guess I’m improving. ... The symptoms were the same: Firefox would run, and appear in the list kill95 produces for instance. But would not appear on the screen. Presumably some adorable cross-wires about screen sizes or whose on first or something....

1. Uninstall firefox.
2. I ran everything and searched for “firefox”.
3. Using elevate, I obliterated every firefox directory, from an elevated command line.

Easy-peasy eh? I mean it took me about an hour, including a few false starts. ... You could try just uninstalling, but that seems too easy for modern FOSS Windows super-10 software....

... And of course there’s the non-searchable PDFs....

Evil Restore Page

After it crashes, firefox likes to try and restore the page(s) you were looking at, so it can crash again. As usual, the web was filled with ways to defeat this feature, none of which work. A plausibly arcane but probably also non-workind fix might be:

• Goto firefox page “about:config” what exposes secret magic fatal to mortal user.
• Locate “browser.sessionstore.max_resumed_crashes” and change it to zero.

Windows Selection Color — NOT!!

Firefox desperately wants to be confused in Windows so you’ll switch over to some more sexually-mature operating system like the beloved Linux. In aid of this effort, it prevents firefox from showing it’s selected the way other Windows programs do, because it’s incredible wonderful that way.

If you want to tell if firefox is selected, this page told me how. Be advised that soon-enough, firefox will notice this information is still available, and viciously cripple it, because that’s what FOSS is all about, you lucky devil!

... But it turned-out, I was just fooled again! It shows firefox as always selected — cunning linux commies.... Such fun!

Apple Sux

Let’s just admit it; they’ve jumped the shark and joined the great American mediocrity parade. I never updated my pitiful little iMini to rabid cat or whatever it was because the previous catastrophe was so weird, but then I forgot and foolishly upgraded my iphone & ipad to iOS 7 just because they whined at me. At least rabid cat never did that....

And now the stupid ipad, in a cruel mockery of my advancing years and deteriorating mental states, can’t remember its wireless password any more. And appears to have whacked my wifi generally, although that’s a tricky determination, the wonders of modern technology and all. ... Ooops my bluetooth keyboard is apparently gonzo too; so I can enter the password with their creepy useless screen keyboard. ... Reducing my beloved ipad to slag....

So, don’t be like me; DON’T UPGRADE ANYTHING APPLE! at least until the seasons change and the storm passes. ... Just don’t; wait. I knew this, but I did it anyway because I forgot and of course there’s no way back, unlike the kindly Microsoft which at least lets you roll back their catastrophic security upgrades — although, to be sure, not their operating systems either; but then they don’t whine at you to upgrade those — gosh don’t the day stumble on! ... Now (2025, in the days of the Dark Monster) usux®’ll beg to upgrade to whatever dog’s breakfast they’re peddling this week almost every day, if not every minute!

— the truly cranky programmer
Saturday, September 28, 2013 5:05 am

P.S. Well the thing has managed to sign-on to the wireless twice without demanding a password. Who knows? Might go for three. I’m leaving my passwords taped to the case. ... And the bluetooth managed to spring to life, with a trick: “forget” all the existing devices, and then pair up anew. And it tried to have bluetooth with an HP laptop it never considered before, but I soon put a stop to that. ... So I guess everything’s OK; it’s just like a Microsoft operating system and you expect it to fail in stupid new amusing ways. ... And looks so cute with meaningless graphics window dressing! // Cancel faint praise. The most amusing wacko user hostility: trying to enter the guest wifi password, and it refuses to use bluetooth! Must do it with stupid graphics keyboard. I’m surprised they don’t force me to use iCloud-it’s-so-wonderful-why-does-it-languish for that; although they try to get me to sign-up at every twist ’n’ turn....

Appledammerung

And then I discovered it did the favoritist thing ever: destroyed my notes! Hey go stupids! No upgrade from hell is complete without destruction of the user’s text! It’s just the thing to do! ... It converted all the line endings on my beloved “notesy” dropbox documents, which is practically the only reason I ever use the thing, to transfer my notes to the wonderful open world of Windows — well, it converted all the line endings to cutesy better-than-you our-line-endings are hot Apple stupid fan boy moron line endings. In ASCII, they look like lizard droppings. GO APPLE! ... Maybe I’ll buy a surface and see how stupid Microsoft’s got....

’n’ How ’Bout that Garageband?!?!

Version 11? Google for it, and the web is filled with the usual suck-up reviews for the wonderful version 11. But all my garage band admits to is version 10.something. Which after numerous hangups seems kinda stable for a few minutes, but I can reliably “open existing project”, browse around a little, click cancel — hey, where’d it go?! It disappeared! ... Gotta quit and start again. This is how I learned there are no demos for the program, no cute little projects you can just load-up and watch it play; of course maybe the installation is full of ’em and Garageband has its own secret dysfunctional reasons and won’t tell. ... I mean, it is free; I paid $5 for “additional content” but I don’t feel cheated yet. Although then again I engaged in the usual cranky maneuvers to hook it up to my Bose desktop speakers. ... And I imagine version 11 wandering around in the dark, perhaps operating perfectly — well not judging by web chit chat — oh I see it’s version 2011, i.e. 11 with an apostrophe. ... OK I think I got it. So version “X” aka 10 just doesn’t work and probably never will. ... But it’s free....

Win/Lose

These sad reflections broadened to a visionary realization: Apple, despite its overwhelming success with iTunes, lost the music wars. And iTunes was always a mop-up operation anyway; Apple didn’t monetize the music biz or create new markets, they took over the end of the music biz. Commercial music was going downhill, it’s all but disappeared today, and Apple made buckets of money by creating a commodity monopoly for internet music as the biz died. But competitors didn’t arise; the entire market shrank as people do other things and no longer dote on their playlists; it was fun for a while presumably, but it’s just too much trouble and the people aren’t excited by new songs as is obvious from the ghastly prevalence of old ones.

The decrepitude of Garageband 10 is a symptom of the one new thing in music: well, we used to call it “disco” and it’s hardly new, but at least people still dance for it in Europe — but Apple can’t get those people even if they give it away, and their senior product the $200 Logic DAW is, like their other artistic offerings, and their entire computer line for that matter, neglected at best. Because they’re making too much money on phones and not enough on what today’s kids call EDM which is all but the singular focus of all my music magazines, at least the European aka the prosperous ones, excluding the redoubtable but also still opulent Sound on Sound....

And Apple has a serious competitor for Garageband and Logic in the thumping world of EDM: Ableton Live, who can still sell their products for $400 and $600 to my continued consternation; I can only afford the kiddie wheels freeish crippled “lite” version which is actually far more than I’ll ever use or comprehend. ... But Ableton’s “session view” is the way the people want to make their mechanically repetitive beats, and it’s not in Logic or Garageband. ... Sun 7/3/16 I believe in the last few months or so Apple finally added an obvious Ableton session view to Logic and/or Garageband I forget....