How far will you go?

AzPete

Veteran
I'm the sort of person that when I find something I will use it to death, get bored of it and then move on to something new. That goes for everything (well, not my wife of course) but includes cameras. Believe it or not I dont have a digital camera right now (cant part with some of my rangefinders), I'm hooked on cellphone photography at the moment.

The link below will take you to something Ive not seen before. So what are your thoughts or feelings on where photography is going and what the future may hold for us shooters.

iPhone Photojojo Telephoto Lens Lets You Zoom Way In On the Action - Technabob
 
I'm the opposite. I buy stuff, see something else, want that, sell 1st camera, buy new one, then buy something else, then sell it and go back to the original one i bought and so it goes on and on... I MUST stop!! I'm probably loosing my job at the end of March so won't have any choice but to use what i have for a while. :D
 
I still got my "oldies". I can't make up my mind "where to move". So...I'm waiting and getting older without new gear...so far that is. Seems that winter is leaving Holland (hooray), I must really start looking for new stuff right now!
 
Pete, I love your honesty! My signature line says where I am right now. I would prefer to find "my" camera and stick with her. Fingers crossed but for right now it's my little LX5.

OK, I will promise to read the link and respond to it, too, but have to get offline right now.;)
 
I'm with Djarum. Work it till it dies. Besides, I resolutely sticking with my cheapo dumb phone without attachments. Are you going to get one of these tele lenses then. I was thinking that even if you don't use it as a lens it makes a convenient handle for holding your iphone so you don't lose your signal:) Could be tricky in your pocket though.
 
I'm with Djarum. Work it till it dies. Besides, I resolutely sticking with my cheapo dumb phone without attachments. Are you going to get one of these tele lenses then. I was thinking that even if you don't use it as a lens it makes a convenient handle for holding your iphone so you don't lose your signal:) Could be tricky in your pocket though.

haha....great comment....I will think about it though :)
 
I'm the sort of person that when I find something I will use it to death, get bored of it and then move on to something new.

I am kind of like this too although I wouldn't say I move on to something new. I think I build on what I have and come back to it in the future. I sometimes find myself digging around the house looking for something from a while back and it's great when I find it, knowing that I have it. Don't know if that makes sense.


So what are your thoughts or feelings on where photography is going and what the future may hold for us shooters.

Don't really know what the future holds. Technology will be the driving point. I often look at that latest cameras now with their high ISO, auto-everything, I think back 100-150 years when photograph was in its infancy and am amazed at how far technology has progressed. But what grounds me is the knowledge that everything we have today is going to be depressingly obsolete soon. The idea of a 'camera' that the next few generations will hold in their hands may not even be recognisable to us anymore. I know the iPhone would have been completely and absolutely alien to people just a couple of generations back, much less 100-150 years.
 
I'm the kind of person that will try damn near everything, part very quickly with the stuff that I don't particularly like, and use the stuff I do like until something comes along that will do the job notably better. And if the technology isn't changing too fast, I'll sit tight for a verrrrrry long time. But if it is, I tend to stay just a couple of steps behind the cutting edge.

I was like that with bikes, buying and selling like crazy and trying everything. And then when I found what I knew just absolutely worked for me, well, I have the same two road bikes now that I've had for the past 5-6 years and haven't bought anything other than basic maintenance items since. While before that I used to try at least two or three frames per season, built up in a whole variety of ways. With cell phones, I remember having a basic cell phone and a basic palm pilot and a basic mp3 player and resisting all improvements in each until they could combine all of those functions into one device, which people assured me was years away. And then somewhere along the way I got a blackberry that did a passable job at all of these functions and now have an iPhone that does a much better than passable job at all of them and is with me pretty much always.

Cameras, I'm still in the early phases of buying and trying and selling and the tech is changing so fast I might be there for a few more years. On the other hand, if someone comes out with a pen-sized camera with GH2 levels of performance and a Nex quality flip up screen, I could be done with cameras for a while too. Preferably in an m43 body so I can stay with my current lenses. And I'd bet that'll happen sometime in the next couple of years. So the camera searching may not go on as long as the bike search or iphone search did...

I rarely sell something and regret it - it happened with one bike frame once and I got it back three years later.

-Ray
 
Gear doesn't mean much to me other than as a means to get to where I want to go. I wish I could claim some deep wisdom but it's because I had cancer about 10 years ago and lost absolutely everything I had (car, house, retirement, savings, friends). I used to be a HUGE gear head and wanted every new shiny thing as soon as it came out but it's amazing what a spot of difficulty can do to your perspective on things. It's not a self improvement method I recommend but it is pretty effective.

...as to where I think photography is going...I think the art of photography is still about the same stuff it has always been about. It's about light and making images with light. The craft of it however is probably in for a a real change. We can already alter our images far more than we could have ever done before using tools like Photoshop. I can see the photography and image making though other means combining into one great media image creation kind of thing that could be really cool. I'm looking forward to what comes next. It should be REALLY interesting.
 
I'm a little Pete with a lot of Andy.

Full bottle on the GRDII, love it, look that that black and white output, but it's a little wide for my only go to camera so best sell it to fund a dSLR kit, and a lens and another and another and another lens, then it's all too heavy. I need a compact. Oooh the LX5 looks nice, no VF, tiny sensor, hmmm....sell that, I want a compact with a big sensor. Hmmm.....research, research, research, Sigma DP2. Got it....love it! But sometimes I need something a little widre. Hmmm...oh yeah a DP1! Then I don't need the dSLR any more. So life will be good with just a DP1 and DP2....but I don't want to lug all that about all the time, so I might get a S95 for the back pocket. Yeah that sounds good. Love the DP images, if only it had a more active viewfinder. You know like the X100. Hmmmm.... But this is all just proximating what life with a Leica would be like. Hmmm...so if I sell all the dSLR kit I could stretch to a Epson RD1s or Leica M8....Hmmm....and I could get that sweet Leica glass. It's not so heavy and...oh but if them rangefinders just had that Foveon sensor. Yeah, but.....

...and that's just the last few months and minutes. But I think you get the gist of it.

Please just kill me now! :blush:
 
Have to join the queue behind stillshunter. My excuse is I have OCD* (and recurring GAS) so my kit is very fluid (or to quote BB, evolving). That said I'm not an early adopter preferring the maturer products with sorted firmware and find it hard to resist end of model bargains (like E-P1 +17mm + OVF for $349). The future doesn't stress my OCD - I'll stay one model behind. :D

* obsessive compulsive disorder
 
I find this thread very refreshing. It's a bit like what I imagine lying on a psychoanalyst's couch to be....free associating, without seeing the listener. Very helpful to "listen" to, too.

I suppose it is also a kind of GAS support group. In all seriousness, I do find reading everyone's responses to be quite thought provoking as I examine my own "How far will you go".
 
Oh god, the amount of time and money I've spent "cycling" gear is just terrifying.

I started out with a Sony A200 + kitlens. That lasted about 3 months, when I decided I MUST have the A700 + 16-85mm Zeiss!!! About 6 months later I realized (obviously!) I was far better than my A700 + Zeiss lens. I needed an A900 full frame and a BOATLOAD of vintage Minolta Maxxum primes (I owned the incredibly 100mm f/2 for about a week, which was nice).

I find myself taking more "lens test" pictures than, you know, "actual" pictures.

It turns out the problem was my gear was too big! It was holding me back! M43, here I come. GF-1 + 20mm, EP-1 + Konica primes. Now I have even more ebay searches to run!

Then, I lose my job. Dead-ass broke. Goodbye ALL MY GEAR IN A WEEK! (hello $6000!) Sold everything.

Didn't snap a picture for almost a year. Then, finally, I realized I should just get a fancy point & shoot and call it a day. I had an LX3 before and thought it was great! TL350? Great camera, but I need the top o' the line! TL500! Yay! Seriously good camera, but I'm a pixel peeper and you just can't get over how a small sensor picture looks up close.

DP1! Ewww, this thing is really horrible. Ick! It's like some crazy 90's digital camera. The screen looks like an old Nokia cell, it takes longer to focus than most cameras take to start up, focus, and snap the picture, and anything above ISO400 turns into a horrifying Pollock piece. Oh wait! If you use it right it looks better than any camera I have ever used! Yay! Again!

But it's a little wide......... and so I begin looking for a deal on DP2S.

And so the vicious cycle goes on!
 
Latti, I wasn't sure whether to cry or laugh when I read your post. That sense of humor of yours certainly shows through in this confession. I'm really glad you're employed again!
 
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