Cameras have played a minuscule part of my life, but they have held my interest as a father and individual over the decades. I wrote an extendeded essay, “Cameras as Remembrances of Things Past,” which can be read on Subtletea.com, David Herrle, editor. It spoke of the cameras I’ve had as a child and an adult and what pictures I’ve taken with them — a Kodak Bantam made in the forties; an inexpensive throwaway camera by Canon which eventually fell apart as I could not afford a better instrument; a manual Pentax K1000 which taught me a great deal about depth of field, aperture and priority settings which I sold in the seventies for a Nikon FE, manual and automatic which served the family all through our child-raising years in the seventies to the nineties. My son now has the FE and Kodak in his possession, patrimony, if you will. My most recent camera, a Ricoh GR1s, I purchased after my wife’s death in 2000 and it was expensive. It has served me well, a terrific instrument, but I had to have it repaired once and it is near another breakdown. The lens is a tiny miracle in wide angle, uses film, and the key thing to note here is that I almost always used it in program mode rather than manual — too lazy to do so, too weary. The shots always exemplary, the construction of the body not so.
Cameras for me are male toys, instruments which I never really mastered but relished the quest (I learned a great deal). Given all this back story, and if you are impatient in this expedited age, allow me to tell you right now what I am going to write about so that you don’t feel “delayed.” I am writing about the computer age, cyberspace, all that jargon that obsesses the young and befuddles the old. As the ancient sage said, the only constant you can count on is change; however, the old salt left out a lot. Change is new, it is not better, it can turn into better or it can turn into butter, it can do harm, it can do good, but to assume that change in the long run is a sign of progress is similar to thinking that religion, no matter how fractal it is now, is eventually good for the soul. We call that bullshit.
Back to being expedited. I have fought hard and long to resist moving toward a digital camera. I liked the tactile feel of a metal camera, its heft and the arrangements of its bells and whistles, of the insertion of film, for that involves time and care, of film itself, of ordering either a matte or shiny print, especially 4x8s. I liked opening the envelope and removing negatives and prints; at one time I had glassine envelopes for holding the negatives and a looseleaf album for the prints. I kept records of the family in these albums and they bring me pain when I see those alive and dead within and the joyous places we had joyful times in, never to be experienced again. Nostalgia is the roux in this old Jew’s bones. Yes, I saw the reasoning in digital cameras — 400-500 shits (here you see a parapraxis, for I had meant “shots”; enjoy the slip) in some cases, very compact sizes; I was not too keen about going to a monitor to see the shots or the extensive array of computer techniques to modify the photos, endlessly so, and the ability to forward the digital shots all over the planet (Whither thou goest privacy?). For me to transistion to digital was to require a shift in me that I was recalcitrant about, for I was being slowly expedited by reason, culture, new conditoners, change and shifts in thinking if not behaving. The annoying thing about change is that it is upon you like wasps.
What brought this about was camera failure; the old Ricoh did not perform during a hilarious happenstance in the family and the shots came out poorly whereas a digital camera, I know, would have compensated for that with all the new digital devices such as image stabilization and face detection (the new lingo). So began a search for what I hope is the end of all the cameras in my life, the last car, the last leather jacket, the final shoes, the last pair of glasses — you see, retro man here, sees the future as a series of “lasts.” Oh, woe is me and alas! For those of you who enjoy being in the Expedited Age, you probably have gone to another site. By the bye, good riddance! Allow me to relay this essay for those who can abide delay, do not have to “cum” with everything they see or experience. And after not too long a search, which was probably the best part of it all, for I fondly remember all the researching and the “hunt” for the right camera decades ago, I bought a refurbished camera from Adorama in NYC, online. I have learned that refurbished cameras, for you yokels out there, is a very good way to go. The manufacturer gives his warranty and the camera is almost mint, refurbished by the factory. I did that before with success and I’ve done it again, at a much reduced price, purchasing a point and shoot, Canon A2000, realizing, that a digital point and shoot has even too much for me to digest. Thank god, it has an Easy mode for beginners, although I am not a beginner. (By the bye, there are no “seconds” in cameras; a defective camera is taken off the production line. Think refurbished camera if money is tight.)
Anxious and trepidatious about the camera, Jane suggested that I take a digital camera course in the local community center which I did. Not really! More about that in a moment. I read the manual which was so so helpful, like being thrown a pickaxe as you soar off the mountain in your Patagonia polar fleece jacket. What was reassuring was the EASY mode for beginners, and I knew it would stay on that spot for a long, long time while the digital camera would give me the best of all worlds, the real benefit of the camera, turning it into a nearly perfect point and shoot, taking care of conditions that were worrisome decades ago but mere trifles now. As to the course, it was led by a photographer who was a dreadful teacher. The students had all kinds of cameras with a wide range of questions that were all over the place, so that I soon sensed that in this digital age I knew a lot about cameras just by osmosis and using them than did the younger folk who had fancy digital SLRs. The old adage is to ask someone with the latest and the best of the cameras to show you his pictures; often they can show you their equipment, but that is all. I stayed for about 45 minutes and it was not getting any better; the course should have been divided into two courses — point and short digital cameras and digital SLRs cameras.
I decided to seek out a third party manual on the camera such as Canon Powershot Point and Shoot Cameras, which I did. What paralyzes me is the MENU and the NAVIGATIONAL BUTTON, although I scroll up and down on the computer all day long; it is the transference from one medium to another that creates “fear.” I’m not talking about Nazis banging down the house door but I am speaking about the jarring effects of the new coming at you, the different, the kind of fright that makes men turn into herds and burn witches. The weird retro fantasy I have, reminiscent of the book burnings of the thirties, is to imagine Ipods, Nanos, smartphones, Apple tablets, Steve Jobs himself, set on fire and relishing the crisping sounds and pops and whistles as Intel chips combust and explode. We are not given relief from the new, no man has ever had relief from that; the Samurai looked with disdain at muskets because the warrior could take out someone from a distance rather than face their enemy up close and personal. What we are not given respite from is that there is a tsunami that pushes us along, expediting our lives, rushing us as if pause, or momentary breaks, reflection, introspection and consideration serve no known purpose.
At my local community work out room, several old farts like myself are part of the sign in and sign out staff, et al. One kindly old man reaches out to me with his closed fist for me to register our friendship with my closed fist, in solidarity. I always tell him that I would most gladly shake his hand but I will not use the latest, the most “in” of greeting, devised by the young for the young. He stares at me as if I am an old foggy. I stare at him with a kind sadness, for I do not have to give up what it has taken me my entire life to attain — old age and a certain equanimity, perhaps some wisdom, and insight into human beings.I choose not to be expedited, I fight it regularly, enjoy the fight, and relish the rage as I go into the night, or some such Dylanesque line.
The Expedited Age (copyright pending)
Cameras have played a minuscule part of my life, but they have held my interest as a father and individual over the decades. I wrote an extendeded essay, “Cameras as Remembrances of Things Past,” which can be read on Subtletea.com, David Herrle, editor. It spoke of the cameras I’ve had as a child and an adult and what pictures I’ve taken with them — a Kodak Bantam made in the forties; an inexpensive throwaway camera by Canon which eventually fell apart as I could not afford a better instrument; a manual Pentax K1000 which taught me a great deal about depth of field, aperture and priority settings which I sold in the seventies for a Nikon FE, manual and automatic which served the family all through our child-raising years in the seventies to the nineties. My son now has the FE and Kodak in his possession, patrimony, if you will. My most recent camera, a Ricoh GR1s, I purchased after my wife’s death in 2000 and it was expensive. It has served me well, a terrific instrument, but I had to have it repaired once and it is near another breakdown. The lens is a tiny miracle in wide angle, uses film, and the key thing to note here is that I almost always used it in program mode rather than manual — too lazy to do so, too weary. The shots always exemplary, the construction of the body not so.
Cameras for me are male toys, instruments which I never really mastered but relished the quest (I learned a great deal). Given all this back story, and if you are impatient in this expedited age, allow me to tell you right now what I am going to write about so that you don’t feel “delayed.” I am writing about the computer age, cyberspace, all that jargon that obsesses the young and befuddles the old. As the ancient sage said, the only constant you can count on is change; however, the old salt left out a lot. Change is new, it is not better, it can turn into better or it can turn into butter, it can do harm, it can do good, but to assume that change in the long run is a sign of progress is similar to thinking that religion, no matter how fractal it is now, is eventually good for the soul. We call that bullshit.
Back to being expedited. I have fought hard and long to resist moving toward a digital camera. I liked the tactile feel of a metal camera, its heft and the arrangements of its bells and whistles, of the insertion of film, for that involves time and care, of film itself, of ordering either a matte or shiny print, especially 4x8s. I liked opening the envelope and removing negatives and prints; at one time I had glassine envelopes for holding the negatives and a looseleaf album for the prints. I kept records of the family in these albums and they bring me pain when I see those alive and dead within and the joyous places we had joyful times in, never to be experienced again. Nostalgia is the roux in this old Jew’s bones. Yes, I saw the reasoning in digital cameras — 400-500 shits (here you see a parapraxis, for I had meant “shots”; enjoy the slip) in some cases, very compact sizes; I was not too keen about going to a monitor to see the shots or the extensive array of computer techniques to modify the photos, endlessly so, and the ability to forward the digital shots all over the planet (Whither thou goest privacy?). For me to transistion to digital was to require a shift in me that I was recalcitrant about, for I was being slowly expedited by reason, culture, new conditoners, change and shifts in thinking if not behaving. The annoying thing about change is that it is upon you like wasps.
What brought this about was camera failure; the old Ricoh did not perform during a hilarious happenstance in the family and the shots came out poorly whereas a digital camera, I know, would have compensated for that with all the new digital devices such as image stabilization and face detection (the new lingo). So began a search for what I hope is the end of all the cameras in my life, the last car, the last leather jacket, the final shoes, the last pair of glasses — you see, retro man here, sees the future as a series of “lasts.” Oh, woe is me and alas! For those of you who enjoy being in the Expedited Age, you probably have gone to another site. By the bye, good riddance! Allow me to relay this essay for those who can abide delay, do not have to “cum” with everything they see or experience. And after not too long a search, which was probably the best part of it all, for I fondly remember all the researching and the “hunt” for the right camera decades ago, I bought a refurbished camera from Adorama in NYC, online. I have learned that refurbished cameras, for you yokels out there, is a very good way to go. The manufacturer gives his warranty and the camera is almost mint, refurbished by the factory. I did that before with success and I’ve done it again, at a much reduced price, purchasing a point and shoot, Canon A2000, realizing, that a digital point and shoot has even too much for me to digest. Thank god, it has an Easy mode for beginners, although I am not a beginner. (By the bye, there are no “seconds” in cameras; a defective camera is taken off the production line. Think refurbished camera if money is tight.)
Anxious and trepidatious about the camera, Jane suggested that I take a digital camera course in the local community center which I did. Not really! More about that in a moment. I read the manual which was so so helpful, like being thrown a pickaxe as you soar off the mountain in your Patagonia polar fleece jacket. What was reassuring was the EASY mode for beginners, and I knew it would stay on that spot for a long, long time while the digital camera would give me the best of all worlds, the real benefit of the camera, turning it into a nearly perfect point and shoot, taking care of conditions that were worrisome decades ago but mere trifles now. As to the course, it was led by a photographer who was a dreadful teacher. The students had all kinds of cameras with a wide range of questions that were all over the place, so that I soon sensed that in this digital age I knew a lot about cameras just by osmosis and using them than did the younger folk who had fancy digital SLRs. The old adage is to ask someone with the latest and the best of the cameras to show you his pictures; often they can show you their equipment, but that is all. I stayed for about 45 minutes and it was not getting any better; the course should have been divided into two courses — point and short digital cameras and digital SLRs cameras.
I decided to seek out a third party manual on the camera such as Canon Powershot Point and Shoot Cameras, which I did. What paralyzes me is the MENU and the NAVIGATIONAL BUTTON, although I scroll up and down on the computer all day long; it is the transference from one medium to another that creates “fear.” I’m not talking about Nazis banging down the house door but I am speaking about the jarring effects of the new coming at you, the different, the kind of fright that makes men turn into herds and burn witches. The weird retro fantasy I have, reminiscent of the book burnings of the thirties, is to imagine Ipods, Nanos, smartphones, Apple tablets, Steve Jobs himself, set on fire and relishing the crisping sounds and pops and whistles as Intel chips combust and explode. We are not given relief from the new, no man has ever had relief from that; the Samurai looked with disdain at muskets because the warrior could take out someone from a distance rather than face their enemy up close and personal. What we are not given respite from is that there is a tsunami that pushes us along, expediting our lives, rushing us as if pause, or momentary breaks, reflection, introspection and consideration serve no known purpose.
At my local community work out room, several old farts like myself are part of the sign in and sign out staff, et al. One kindly old man reaches out to me with his closed fist for me to register our friendship with my closed fist, in solidarity. I always tell him that I would most gladly shake his hand but I will not use the latest, the most “in” of greeting, devised by the young for the young. He stares at me as if I am an old foggy. I stare at him with a kind sadness, for I do not have to give up what it has taken me my entire life to attain — old age and a certain equanimity, perhaps some wisdom, and insight into human beings.I choose not to be expedited, I fight it regularly, enjoy the fight, and relish the rage as I go into the night, or some such Dylanesque line.