Days Before Digital
Yesterday I bought my first cheap digital camera; the magazine editor I write for in York suggested it would be useful to send in some pictures with reviews. Fair point, but it's going to take me a few days to get to grips with the bloody thing. At the moment, I have managed to turn it on and off and notice it makes an annoying sound like a small budgie chirping. I have put it back in its box and will try again later.Thankfully, I have Thursday off to hopefully master the small beast before I use it at a gig on Friday night. It reminds me of the days when I was given my first mobile phone, only about 5 years ago and the burden in mastering that gadget.
As much as I appreciate modern technology and the use of the internet for sites such as Word, sometimes I crave for days of old; meeting people on time in pubs and not receiving texts with updates of how late they will be etc.
It's strange to think back to the turn of the millenium, when I had no e-mail, computer, used Word DOS BASIC on a crappy D.S.S. PC and hand delivered printed articles (done on old word processor) to my local paper. If one day, the world wide internet collapsed, we'd all be in a pickle wouldn't we?
- More from David Wright.
- Login or register to post comments
So true...
I can hardly remember life without a computer or the internet now. Strange isn't it?
Don't be afraid of your digital camera... it's just a tool, like a film camera is. But digital cameras are a great example of technology that makes life so much easier in some ways, but also lacks something in another sense. Particularly with regards black and white photography, film has a 'feel' and 'depth' that it is very hard to achieve with digital. Sometimes the 'perfection' that digital offers is not actually desirable... a photograph taken on fast black and white film allowing for a really grainy print, using a vintage Leica M3... now you're talking!
the other weakness in digital photography is
of course, the whole thing of storage.
Whilst looking for something in my Mums house recently, i went to an old drawer that hand bundles and bundles of old photographs that almost immediatley took me back well over twenty years. Stupid things and all images a propos of nothing, but it was a wonderful half hour or so i sat down, with a cuppa, identifying people and places.
Will that still happen in years to come? I mean, in theory, my future self might stumble upon an old memory card, but what are the odds on compatibility in that length of time?
Lets be honest, whilst the digital camera/card can hold almost a gazillion photos, we never print off the same amount and perhaps back in the day, being limited to 24/36 made us a lot more careful of what we'd snap at in the first instance.
Couldn't agree more...
I'm staring at around 200 CDRs of digital negatives as I write this... so I'm as guilty of it as everyone else these days.