DSLR Popularity

[hakepb]

Just like you don't need a new DSLr to take a great picture (when your old one is still functioning just fine) ,
I've read a few enterprising college students say you don't "need" the newest textbook to pass a class. (Of course that does not work on new, high tech subjects) as many new versions are just a few updates, a new graphic here, some typos corrected there... (And with an old version costing pennies, you're not outanything if you do discover it is materially different.
(To be fair I would rather recommend DS going to a community college and s state school to save vs the old textbook "trick"

 

[havoc315]

That makes me wonder what the future is for printed photographs. I was taking a silver class this semester and when we had our final critique that was a topic brought up. What happens with photography? Are we going to stop printing altogether? Those of us who print silver or other non-digital processes are already considered oddities. How long before we all just have a large display screen on the wall? I know some of us are already to that point. And what does all of this mean to the intrinsic value of photographs since now rather than a few hand crafted prints you have millions of digital copies of an image?

At least you brought the topic back to photography, after I went way off on a tangent.

My DW was cleaning out a drawer, and found boxes of photographs. Some may have been from our film days, but some were also prints made from digital. Now, it seems we rarely order prints. When we specifically want to frame a picture, we print or order it. My son needs some photographs for a school project, so we printed a few. But we no longer print out hundreds of 4X6s. Don't carry pictures in our wallets (but do carry them on our phones).

So yes, I do think printed pictures are on their way out. I don't think you have to worry about prints being totally replaced by a big digital view screen.
Just as people still adorn their walls with real paintings, there will be a place for printed photographs. But how many photographs do most people really display in their homes?
Used to be, would go on a vacation, and end with a box of vacation photographs. But there is no real reason for that box anymore... can just store the digital copies on the harddrive and on a photo sharing site.

So I definitely think that digital sharing is greatly reducing printed photographs. I know in my own house, we have gone from hundreds of printed photographs per year, to a couple of dozen at most.

 

[photo_chick]

Used to be, would go on a vacation, and end with a box of vacation photographs. But there is no real reason for that box anymore... can just store the digital copies on the harddrive and on a photo sharing site.

And that brings up another conundrum. What happens when social media sites and photo hosting sites go away? What happens when the media we've stored our images on becomes obsolete? What happens when the time comes when jpegs and RAW files are unreadable by future technology? By not making prints are we condemning our images to a limited existence? Then again prints don't last forever either so maybe it's all ephemeral on some level.

And now I'm way off topic. LOL

 

[havoc315]

And that brings up another conundrum. What happens when social media sites and photo hosting sites go away? What happens when the media we've stored our images on becomes obsolete? What happens when the time comes when jpegs and RAW files are unreadable by future technology? By not making prints are we condemning our images to a limited existence? Then again prints don't last forever either so maybe it's all ephemeral on some level.

And now I'm way off topic. LOL

At least it's a photography discussion. So not sooo off-topic.
But you answered your own question -- it's not like prints last forever either. And plenty of places currently advertise services like, "Convert your VHS to digital... Convert your film negative to digital"

What happened to a person's huge record music collection, when records became obsolete? And then when cassette... and then even CD became obsolete?

I can imagine it now..... the notice from Flickr/Shutterfly/etc -- "Convert your online jpgs to brain waves!"

 

[photo_chick]

Just like you don't need a new DSLr to take a great picture (when your old one is still functioning just fine) ,
I've read a few enterprising college students say you don't "need" the newest textbook to pass a class. (Of course that does not work on new, high tech subjects) as many new versions are just a few updates, a new graphic here, some typos corrected there... (And with an old version costing pennies, you're not outanything if you do discover it is materially different.
(To be fair I would rather recommend DS going to a community college and s state school to save vs the old textbook "trick"

I went to a community college and am currently at a state school. They still force you to get new textbooks when they change versions.

One way publishers are encouraging this is by having an online component to the textbook. Be it an ebook or a print book. You get the code for that online part when you buy the new book (most recently my Spanish class did this). The profs require you to use parts of the online component so you end up being forced to buy the book. It's becoming a replacement for the lab manuals that you used to have to buy new every time. I've also had instructors ask questions that were specific to the current edition of the book to insure you actually bought it. And watch out of you get in a department where faculty members wrote the book... they hit you over the head with it and some have "book checks".

I'm not a book buyer in general. I've not bought books for classes where the professor pulls the tests from the lectures. But sometimes you can't avoid it.

And this post didn't have anything to do with photography. LOLOLOL

 

[DSLRuser]

So yes, I do think printed pictures are on their way out. I don't think you have to worry about prints being totally replaced by a big digital view screen. .......

......So I definitely think that digital sharing is greatly reducing printed photographs. I know in my own house, we have gone from hundreds of printed photographs per year, to a couple of dozen at most.

I have a ginormous contanier, like a what you use to store christmas decorations, filled with 4x6 prints from 1988 to 2001 (film days). in that box i also have all the negatives. none of it catagorized.

On my computer, i have almost a full terabyte of digital pictures from 2002 - present. all sorted by year, then by events within the year.

i print 4-10 large prints of 8x10 or larger a year and thats it. outside a school project or something i dont make prints.

but what i do have is 3 TV's in the house. all connected with Apple TV's. i have cherry picked all my 100,000+ photos and have aboyt 1,500 in a folder that randomly play as screen savers for any of our apple tv's, laptops, desktops.

point is. being all digital, i have way more access to my photos. and they are scene way more than any 4x6 print ever was. we sit and watch the apple tv's slide shows for hours. its a constant rewind of the last 12+ years of our life.

 

[MolonLabe]

And that brings up another conundrum. What happens when social media sites and photo hosting sites go away? What happens when the media we've stored our images on becomes obsolete? What happens when the time comes when jpegs and RAW files are unreadable by future technology? By not making prints are we condemning our images to a limited existence? Then again prints don't last forever either so maybe it's all ephemeral on some level.

And now I'm way off topic. LOL

I'll keep it off topic, lol------

Eventually the data will become outdated. Just like they have services to convert VHS to CD/DVD, we will (if we remember) convert the .jpeg to whatever is next.

I'm not worried about that, conversion will be easy and quick and do it yourself.

I am worried about saving all the data.

Right now my WDW pics from two weeks ago are only laptop and a portable HD I have in my fireproof safe. It's 7500 pics, most of which are RAW and I haven't weeded through yet.

Until I get them on CD (in addition to laptop and external HD) I won't feel right. I still need to use an off site service or something in addition.

 

[PrincessInOz]

And that brings up another conundrum. What happens when social media sites and photo hosting sites go away? What happens when the media we've stored our images on becomes obsolete? What happens when the time comes when jpegs and RAW files are unreadable by future technology? By not making prints are we condemning our images to a limited existence? Then again prints don't last forever either so maybe it's all ephemeral on some level.

And now I'm way off topic. LOL

I've only been taking pictures in digital format for about 2 years or so. I've come to the same realisation about 2 months ago. So, I've been going through my electronic files and picking out the ones that I like.

In a quirk of convergence for the topics in this thread....I'm taking my digital files and turning them into a photo...BOOK! I'll be printing them out, preferably in hard cover so that I have a hard copy to look at.

Printing presses might be in their sunset; but I think that there might still be a need for the small scale, niche market bespoke style of printing.

I went to a community college and am currently at a state school. They still force you to get new textbooks when they change versions.

One way publishers are encouraging this is by having an online component to the textbook. Be it an ebook or a print book. You get the code for that online part when you buy the new book (most recently my Spanish class did this). The profs require you to use parts of the online component so you end up being forced to buy the book. It's becoming a replacement for the lab manuals that you used to have to buy new every time. I've also had instructors ask questions that were specific to the current edition of the book to insure you actually bought it. And watch out of you get in a department where faculty members wrote the book... they hit you over the head with it and some have "book checks".

I'm not a book buyer in general. I've not bought books for classes where the professor pulls the tests from the lectures. But sometimes you can't avoid it.

And this post didn't have anything to do with photography. LOLOLOL

I've just placed the "book" order for my DS, who will be in grade 7 next year. 50% of the list gave us the option to buy an e-book only OR e-book with physical hard copy. I've chosen to go e-book only in all cases. DS has a 1 year old laptop; and that is almost now obsolete as far as schooling is concerned. Schools over here are going the way of the i-pad.

 

[photo_chick]

I've only been taking pictures in digital format for about 2 years or so. I've come to the same realisation about 2 months ago. So, I've been going through my electronic files and picking out the ones that I like.

In a quirk of convergence for the topics in this thread....I'm taking my digital files and turning them into a photo...BOOK! I'll be printing them out, preferably in hard cover so that I have a hard copy to look at.

Printing presses might be in their sunset; but I think that there might still be a need for the small scale, niche market bespoke style of printing.

Blurb books are awesome. They also make great gifts for grandparents.

I've just placed the "book" order for my DS, who will be in grade 7 next year. 50% of the list gave us the option to buy an e-book only OR e-book with physical hard copy. I've chosen to go e-book only in all cases. DS has a 1 year old laptop; and that is almost now obsolete as far as schooling is concerned. Schools over here are going the way of the i-pad.

My DD is in seventh grade and they've gone to having a classroom set of books to use in school and ebooks at home this year. It's so much better than having them lug home a bunch of textbooks every night.

 

[boBQuincy]

And that brings up another conundrum. What happens when social media sites and photo hosting sites go away? What happens when the media we've stored our images on becomes obsolete? What happens when the time comes when jpegs and RAW files are unreadable by future technology? By not making prints are we condemning our images to a limited existence? Then again prints don't last forever either so maybe it's all ephemeral on some level.

And now I'm way off topic. LOL

Not off topic at all!
What happens is we convert our old format to the new format *but* not all of our data gets converted. Because conversion takes time and money, due to varying levels of interest only that which we deem worthy of preserving gets converted. Many recordings on vinyl records never got converted to CD, the interest/demand (also known as $$$) was not there.

What is popular, not necessarily what is "good" is what we tend to save. Many renaissance paintings were covered over to reuse the canvas, our modern methods are not likely to be much different. At least in the film days if we saved the negatives at all we probably saved the entire roll. Now we delete randomly and it is certain that some worthwhile images are being deleted.

It will be interesting to see what we have saved in the next 20 years.

 

[MolonLabe]

Not off topic at all!
What happens is we convert our old format to the new format *but* not all of our data gets converted. Because conversion takes time and money, due to varying levels of interest only that which we deem worthy of preserving gets converted. Many recordings on vinyl records never got converted to CD, the interest/demand (also known as $$$) was not there.

What is popular, not necessarily what is "good" is what we tend to save. Many renaissance paintings were covered over to reuse the canvas, our modern methods are not likely to be much different. At least in the film days if we saved the negatives at all we probably saved the entire roll. Now we delete randomly and it is certain that some worthwhile images are being deleted.

It will be interesting to see what we have saved in the next 20 years.

I think the difference is that converting, on a 'professional' copy from vinyl to XYZ requires specialized equipment not everyone has. I do know some people who made acceptable copies onto cassette tape.

Speaking of which, that was technically illegal. Of course the common sense doctrine would say that simply converting what someone bought so they could continue to enjoy it could never be considered theft, I'm sure the music recording industry would disagree. But I digress.

Today, all our of JPEG's will easily be converted, at home (or while you ride the subway or whatever) with software we will probably download for free or as a byproduct of something else.

I.e. I can use lightroom (or even MS Paint which was free) to save in a variety of different formats.

The digital age will make everything much easier to save or 'upgrade'. That is assuming it doesn't get deleted, erased or lost on accident.

Also I'm sure someone will leave a stack of CD's in an attic for 50 years and come back to them 25 years after the last CD player/reader was made and be SOL...

 

[havoc315]

I think the difference is that converting, on a 'professional' copy from vinyl to XYZ requires specialized equipment not everyone has. I do know some people who made acceptable copies onto cassette tape.

Speaking of which, that was technically illegal. :

Nope, completely fair use. The legality of vcrs went up the courts too -- The copying of broadcast television. Obviously, we know which way the court decided.

 

[photo_chick]

Not off topic at all!
What happens is we convert our old format to the new format *but* not all of our data gets converted. Because conversion takes time and money, due to varying levels of interest only that which we deem worthy of preserving gets converted. Many recordings on vinyl records never got converted to CD, the interest/demand (also known as $$$) was not there.

What is popular, not necessarily what is "good" is what we tend to save. Many renaissance paintings were covered over to reuse the canvas, our modern methods are not likely to be much different. At least in the film days if we saved the negatives at all we probably saved the entire roll. Now we delete randomly and it is certain that some worthwhile images are being deleted.

It will be interesting to see what we have saved in the next 20 years.

We've already lost data in our house. We have things on floppies, jaz drives, zip drives, hard drives from obsolete operating systems... my husband has work on a syquest and that was cutting edge storage at the time. We never thought about it becoming obsolete so we didn't copy it onto other formats right away, always saying we'd do it later, and now it's a bunch of useless plastic sitting in the closet. Now with my images I'm fighting to stay ahead of the changes. It won't take much to render it all unreadable.

But my vinyl... I'm still spinning 33's on my tunrtable. Until I can't get replacement needles for it anymore.

 

[coloneldebugger]

We've already lost data in our house. We have things on floppies, jaz drives, zip drives, hard drives from obsolete operating systems... my husband has work on a syquest and that was cutting edge storage at the time. We never thought about it becoming obsolete so we didn't copy it onto other formats right away, always saying we'd do it later, and now it's a bunch of useless plastic sitting in the closet. Now with my images I'm fighting to stay ahead of the changes. It won't take much to render it all unreadable.

But my vinyl... I'm still spinning 33's on my tunrtable. Until I can't get replacement needles for it anymore.

That data isn't really lost, it's simply a matter of hooking up those old devices and copying the data off. I don't know of a digital photo format from that past that can't be read today.

I still have some old digital photos from an ancient Sony digital camera that stored the pictures on a 3.5" floppy. Like this They've been copied over to several hard drives through the years, but they are still as good as they ever were. Of course it's work to keep your photo storage organized. But make that little bit of work and organization a habit and you'll be fine.

Photo websites aren't going any where any time soon. The era of cloud storage is only beginning.

 

[photo_chick]

That data isn't really lost, it's simply a matter of hooking up those old devices and copying the data off. I don't know of a digital photo format from that past that can't be read today.

But it's not quite as easy as hooking all of those devices up to a computer in my house and reading the data. Some use obsolete connections and/or don't have drivers available for current operating systems. At that point in becomes a lot more difficult to get that data.

 

[coloneldebugger]

But it's not quite as easy as hooking all of those devices up to a computer in my house and reading the data. Some use obsolete connections and/or don't have drivers available for current operating systems. At that point in becomes a lot more difficult to get that data.

I know cables and drivers are an issue at this point, sometimes ebay is the answer for these things. Or even search through reddit. There are lots of photography and techsupport subreddits there that might be able to help. It's not all pictures of cats.

That also follows along the line of getting a good organizational habit for those photos.

For me...

On the main computer at home, the big old honkin' desktop, there is my 1TB hard drive set up as drive D. My folder structure is:

• Main Photos
  • Year
    • Month
      • YYYYMMDD - all photos from that day

That D drive is automatically backed up to the E drive (another 1TB hard drive) using NTI Shadow (here). The backup kicks off any time there is a change to the Main Photos folder. Plus, I upload all the images to my smugmug site.

So, really the main point of failure for me would simply be not getting the images into that Main Photos folder. And once I'm done playing Santa for all the family I plan to add a Synology NAS (somthing like this to mix so I have yet another backup location outside of my computer.

 

[boBQuincy]

But my vinyl... I'm still spinning 33's on my tunrtable. Until I can't get replacement needles for it anymore.

Going off topic, in 1983 I was an engineer for Shure Brothers helping to design equipment to test phonograph cartridges. After seeing a prototype CD player at an audio engineers show I knew it was time to start looking for a new job. Although Shure had other products and is still around, the phono cartridge business went like a precursor of Kodak's film business 20 years later.

Long after the fact an analyst noted that one big mistake was to think Shure was in the phono cartridge business when in fact they were in the music reproduction business and needed to be looking beyond cartridges. Same for Kodak, even though they knew about digital and even held patents their management was still stuck in film.

 

[boBQuincy]

Completely on topic, we got back from WDW last night and saw many people with dSLRs at the parks. At Osborne Lights the number of people using cell phones for cameras was about equal to the number using cameras.

 

[havoc315]

Long after the fact an analyst noted that one big mistake was to think Shure was in the phono cartridge business when in fact they were in the music reproduction business and needed to be looking beyond cartridges. Same for Kodak, even though they knew about digital and even held patents their management was still stuck in film.

Apple and Google are bidding hundreds of millions of dollars for Kodak's digital patents. So your point is correct, though not so simple for companies to fix.

Many companies see the change coming, but are just too slow to adapt. They don't realize how quickly change can occur. Blockbuster was often criticized for not moving from VHS to DVD quickly enough. Though that wouldn't have saved them, as DVDs are now rented from kiosks, and more people are just digitally sharing.

But it's easy to criticize a company for being slow. There is the realization they have a heavy investment in the older technology, and transition is very costly.
Using the Blockbuster example -- even if they had been ahead of the curve, and transitioned to DVD, and thought about renting through tiny Kiosks instead of huge stores -- they would still be left paying rent on long-term leases on their stores.

So I guess the best companies not only anticipate the changes, but also have enough corporate flexibility to adapt. That's part of the reason the leading technology companies today -- like Apple -- outsource most of their production and assembly.
There is a story about the first iPhone ... how it was initially being made with plastic instead of glass. Steve Jobs noticed that his keys were scratching the surface of the iphone in his pocket. This was just shortly before the product was being unveiled and going into full size production. They very very quickly changed the design to glass, got the suppliers, etc. What if they had already been heavily invested in the plastic screens?

 

[WDWFigment]

Printed newspapers are already on life support. The parent company of my husband's work is a large media company. They've recently dumped all their newspapers. There is no future in print.

That makes me wonder what the future is for printed photographs. I was taking a silver class this semester and when we had our final critique that was a topic brought up. What happens with photography? Are we going to stop printing altogether? Those of us who print silver or other non-digital processes are already considered oddities. How long before we all just have a large display screen on the wall? I know some of us are already to that point. And what does all of this mean to the intrinsic value of photographs since now rather than a few hand crafted prints you have millions of digital copies of an image?

That gets way, way off topic I know, but it also comes back to the DSLR question and the current proliferation of them in society. One reason people use DSLR's is for the image quality. But when you stick to digital only viewing you don't need the resolution and can get away with much lower image quality. Consider an HDTV is around 2MP. What does this mean for the cameras? We're seeing a surge in the use of DSLR's but as we continue to shift from one type of viewing to another will that change? Maybe the increase in hand held devices being used as cameras is a sign of that change starting. Who knows.

No doubt it's an interesting time for photography.

I've been saying this for years, but photographers need to adjust their business models or else risk losing their shirts. Elsewhere, I've read complaints from photographers who have been losing business to the point where they have to switch careers. Part of this is due to external factors (oversaturated marketplace, amateurs undercutting prices), but a lot of these people face this problem because they have business models predicated upon the sales of prints. Relying on prints is no way to do business.

When my wife and I were looking for a wedding photographer a couple years ago in the Chicago-area (an oversaturated marketplace), we interviewed numerous photographers, the vast majority of whom would not give me raw files. Many would also not provide digital files, period. One even said something along the lines of, "the finished product [a photo book and slideshow] is her artistic vision."

I can understand the raw file thing (even though I don't agree with it), but no digital files? Are these people insane?!

Being a professional photographer is just as much about business acumen as it is about talent and quality of work. Many pros I've met don't seem to understand that.

Just like you don't need a new DSLr to take a great picture (when your old one is still functioning just fine) ,
I've read a few enterprising college students say you don't "need" the newest textbook to pass a class. (Of course that does not work on new, high tech subjects) as many new versions are just a few updates, a new graphic here, some typos corrected there... (And with an old version costing pennies, you're not outanything if you do discover it is materially different.
(To be fair I would rather recommend DS going to a community college and s state school to save vs the old textbook "trick"

When I was in law school, I only purchased the current edition if it was a couple of years old and reasonably priced. I saved thousands of dollars over three years, and only a couple times was I disadvantaged by not owning the current version (I could look up the cases online after class if necessary, so it was never an issue beyond looking foolish if called upon). Still finished in the top 10 of my class, and had plenty of beer money by not wasting it on textbooks!