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Wednesday, 9 March 2011

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Best camera on earth

With the progress of Electronic technology today almost all cameras can be called point-and-shoot cameras, however sophisticated, technologically advanced and expensive they are. The thrill of taking a photograph as we used to in the old days is gone now, gone forever.

It is an art that the younger generation is missing now, because today taking a photo has more to do with handling electronics and technology than creating a work of art. We are the slaves of our camera today, and not its master, even though the modern camera would always let us over-ride its technology if we wanted to.

Using a box camera needed very steady hands, because even the slightest shake of the camera could blur the picture. It was because of the longer exposure time required, and there was no technology to compensate for the shake at the moment of clicking the shutter. Yet we could take photographs of really good quality even with a box camera.

After the box camera with its fixed lens, we had the Twin Lens Reflex cameras, where we could focus on the object. I remember the Rolleicord and the Rolleiflex cameras, with which we had to focus manually, looking at the image on the large view finder.

I think the Rolleiflex had a built-in light meter. At other times we had to use a light-meter to decide on the aperture and shutter speed. When adjusting the shutter and aperture, we had to think of the depth of field too, in addition to the quality and the speed of the film, (measured by the DIN no.) we were using.

Cameras of the olden days

In the Single Lens Reflex cameras, like the Leica, we could use film rolls with 36 exposures, while the Rollei cameras had only 12 exposures per film. Trying to capture photos with just 12 shots available, required skill and luck. We had to learn to reload a film in seconds, if we were covering an event like a sports meet, so we would not miss any important moment. Sometimes in our haste, the film did not get properly wound and ended up blank. We had a further restriction of the flash bulbs, which could be used only once and were expensive, and had to be used carefully.

Even in the 1960s the Linhof Technica was like a hand-held studio camera, with its lens and the back frame which could be tilted to adjust for depth of field or perspective correction.

At the B&H, New York an old Linhof Technica would cost around $ 3000!, which was the price quoted by a camera shop in Bangkok for a special edition Rolleiflex, while at B&H a used Rolleicord was only $ 300, the price of a little digital camera. I had the good fortune to use all these cameras and the photographic equipment in the dark room at St. Aloysius' College in the 1960s, under the guidance of Rev. Fr. A. De Burra, who was a perfectionist. I recall one day when he got us to use up 3 rolls of 35 mm colour film just to take a good shot of a garden lizard! Today we can take any number of exposures and check immediately how it had come out, as long as we had enough storage capacity in the memory chip. In the past, we had to wait till we got into the dark room, till we removed the film and immersed it in the developing fluid, and waited impatiently in the semi darkness to see what would come out on the film. Once developed, we had to print them, once gain exposing the photographic paper to the film, guessing the exposure time needed, then washing the paper to bring out the photograph. Today our children cannot experience the kind of thrill and excitement we knew before the age of the digital camera.

Using a camera then meant studying the object or the scene carefully, before we could decide how to capture it in the camera, from what angle, with what background and what should be included in the frame. This made us see the beauty of the place. Today we just point and shoot, without worrying about what is covered, because we could take dozens and dozens of photos in a few seconds and we move onto the next location. We get into the habit of not looking around us.

We could always do that later, in the comfort of our home, through the photos we had taken. But it is not the same as enjoying the natural beauty of the place we had visited. This has blunted our powers of observation, weakened our sense of appreciation of our environment. When cameras were not so readily available, at such low prices, we used to look at things closely and store all the scenes in our memory, to be recalled anytime, anywhere, without the aid of electronic equipment.

Taking or recording a Photograph has become a science today, the art is the editing of the photograph using digital technology. Today I have come to believe that the best camera on earth is our own eyes. We don't have to worry about exposure, shutter speeds, zoom and pixels.

We don't have to worry about the storage capacity of the memory chip, or about playback. Most of all we do not have to worry about accidental deletions, or deterioration of the printed copies or the negatives. Most of all our eyes give us the opportunity to observe everything around us, at leisure, without having to concentrate on the technicalities of capturing the images. And perhaps someday in the near future, we could transfer our mental images through our computers into printed or digital formats, or transmit the images to other people directly. [email protected]

 

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