At The Online Photographer: Sony Electronics Posts First RX1 Samples
It set me off. Here goes...
<rant>
I'd like to say I don't give a spork.
But if you want it, take it. Go ahead. It's free. I'm no longer using it.
After 25 years of aching I bought a Pentax 67. I loved it.
The best part about owning the Pentax was selling it, two viewfinders, three lenses, and extension tubes while they still had value. Just before exactly everything in the world went digital.
Without planning, I've joined the 21st century. I like it just fine.
Someone smarter than I put the words together: Today photography is not about producing a product. It is about communicating. Sending messages. Pointing at reality. "Hey! Look what I saw. Look where I went. Look what I made."
I am happy.
So is Paul.
Paul is nearly 80. Paul is a retired Forest Service Ranger. His territory covered a large part of the Pasayten Wilderness in northern Washington State. Paul has been using a view camera since before I quit pooping my pants.
Paul has a Canon "something-X-something". He loves it.
He really likes the warning about not letting the front element of the lens touch the subject. He giggles like a girl about that.
I like giggling. I like girls. I like Paul. Paul is a mensch. Paul knows his schtick, photography-wise.
I like my camera.
My camera now (my main camera, my lover, my guru) is a Sony DCS-HX5V. See Luminous Landscape from May, 2010: "Putting the Fun back into Futography".
I have high dynamic range and sweep panoramas, whatever they are. I have 25mm to 250mm. I carry this sucker always. It captures images. I have no idea what the MTF is, or if there is one.
I have been posting a nearly-daily image from this camera for around two years now.
As I told Paul I don't give realism a chance to draw breath. I don't care if a 185-pound pimply mama with fat rolls is transformed by some Faux-Tow-Shoppe expert into a 6-ounce pink glittering pixie that makes men want to stab themselves in the eyes from despair and longing.
I don't care.
I don't care about reality. Photography has never been about reality, any more than Xerography has been about death, or trucking has been about love.
I get images. I play with them. I make something. I post it. I don't know what it means.
I don't care.
As far as I know, no one sees anything. No one but me, but I'm having fun here. Fun here, guys. I'm having fun.
Tell me about your $18,000.00 Elmotwit lens with hypersonic speed-flaps and built-in 24-hour clock screaming the hour every hour on the hour. Tell me about F, stop or non-stop. Tell me about burst modes up in the mega-bitzels. Tell me about snakeskin handles. Sing the praises of precision, six-speed knobs with overdrive. Croon about computer-aligned menus with tiny bubbles. Describe steaming hot bokrah.
I care.
Not.
At all.
The image, for me, for now, is a street corner. An intersection.
I arrive, late, early, or never. But from there I start.
And then I go somewhere. Wherever. I don't know. I go.
Days. One at a time. They arrive and they give me images of something, or of nothing. I don't know.
I'm playing.
I get crap on my shoes. I see eternity. I never know. I am not a photographer. I am a random organism looking around.
Every now and then something accidentally surfaces and turns its eyes on me.
And there it is.
Until tomorrow, when something else happens, or doesn't.
If you have $2800, take it out to the street and put it in a pile.
Light it. Watch it burn. Smell it.
Photograph it through a pinhole. Roast a hot dog.
You'll learn something. I bet.
You will.
</rant>
Reference:
