Unplanned obsolescence

 

 

One question I get asked a lot as a photographer and member of a photographic society is "my partner/husband/friend passed away and left a lot of cameras do you want them"

This always raises a dilemma because a) we want to help, and anything photography related is always of interest, and b) it will almost always result in receiving kit which is basically worthless and then working out what to do with it.

Let us be clear that some kit will always have value. For example, anything with Leica stamped on it will always have value. Also, some pre-war kit has nostalgic/historic value (not box brownies, however - there are so many out of there). Additionally, some old lenses have value, ironically because they were so poor, they can be used to create interesting artefacts. Old USSR lenses like the Zenith Helios lenses are especially popular.

Most kit offered don't fall into that category. It is things like low-end modern DSLR's and compact digital cameras. The unfortunate thing is that although some of these items might have been expensive when bought only a few years ago, today they have basically no value even in almost new condition.

I raise this dilemma because recently my recently widowed wife's uncle asked if I would be interested in his ex-wives cameras. I said in a moment of weakness yes, and this Christmas a large parcel arrived with a ton of old cameras. 

I was intrigued to what was inside and as you can probably guess  there was no Leica, but a number of digital compacts, all virtually unused (it was clear she was a serial camera buyer). However, although of little or no value in themselves, they do pander to my other interest of camera and photography history. So in the rest of this blog, I will use them to highlight recent camera history.

Exhibit 1

Built 2002

 

Price when new £720 (£1200 in 2021 prices). Value now - £0

When we got married, we were too poor or cheap to get someone to film it, so my wife's aunt, Jenny, did it for us. In fact, it might be this very camera she used. Unfortunately, it turned out that this sort of camera, rather than being the future, was just a brief interlude.

 

Storing the image on a miniature videotape, it meant rather than storing your memories forever, in a few years you were left with the issue of what to do with the mountain of plastic piling up in your loft. (Our wedding video was converted to DVD a few years later).

However, the technology on these sorts of cameras was superb. Not only did you have a digital camera that supported a good zoom lense and good speed reproduction, but the effort required to support a moving tape robust enough to faithfully record images while withstanding jolting etc was impressive.

 

Unfortunately, it had a number of issues. Tapes made the cameras large, you could only record for about 15 minutes at a time and there was no easy way to edit them, and sharing them was basically inviting everyone around to your house.

 

Despite the technology and cost, such cameras quickly died out when video cameras capable of recording to memory cards started arriving, meaning they are about as welcome as a mail order bride to a daughter's wedding.
 

Exhibit 2

Canon Ixus 70  2007 Cost when new £179 (2021 Price £264 )

7.1 Mpixels 1/2.5" sensor

Focal length (equiv.) 35–105 mm F2.8–4.9 

 

Value today £30

 

The Ixus 70 represents a whole load of cameras around in 2007. They were small (the Ixus 70 is about the size of a large matchbox), had a reasonable zoom range and were very popular.

 

Playing with it, it is hard not to see why. it is easy to carry around, very well-built and takes reasonable images in good light (even if the so-called viewfinder is a bit of a joke). 

So why don't we see such cameras around today? The easy answer is a mobile phone can do all that plus a lot more. I remember I bought a small such camera for my wife and I quickly found the issue when I tried to use it. Battery life was not great, so the camera spent a lot of time off. When something happened that I wanted to take an image of, I had to turn it on which took up to 1/2 second, by which point the moment was missed. 

Also, when photos started being shared, the lack of connectivity spelled the death-knell for these sorts of cameras, and I am sure many people have them cluttering their desk draws. We get offered these cameras all the time  and I still have not come up with any use for them apart from technological curiosities. 

Exhibit 3

Samsung Galaxy Camera (2013)

Price new £799 (2021 Price £975) 

Price now  £100

16.3MP backlight-illuminated CMOS sensor

21x zoom with 23-481mm equivalent focal length and OIS

F2.8-5.9 maximum aperture

ISO 100-3200

If I could have bet in 2013 what the camera of the future would look like, it would be this one.

Not only was it sleek, well-built and gave a good sensor and zoom lens, it boasted a huge rear screen covering the entire rear of the camera. It also had the kind of user interface that a Sony owner would weep for, with intuitive manual settings, touch to focus etc.

On top of that, the camera was driven by android OS, the same seen in mobile phones allowing to connect to Wi-Fi to share images and add apps such as Snapseed, so you could edit your images on your phone. You could even but a SIM card on and connect to mobile networks. 

One interesting quirk is that instead of full SD cards, it takes microSD cards, which reduces its footprint a bit.

It did and does now feel the way cameras should be, but it turned out to be just a brief experiment and not followed up on. OK, there were some complaints that image quality was not that great, but it was more than that.

The 1st reason is that Samsung decided to get out of the camera market in 2016, which came to a shock to many since they were quite highly regarded. However, the management of Samsung saw, probably quite rightly that the market for cameras was shrinking and since they were not a big player it was better off investing elsewhere. 

The reason for the shrinkage was again that cameras were being  incorporated into mobile phones. In many ways a camera like this should have been a good competitor since the lens and sensor size was streets ahead of the mobile of the day (for example the iPhone at the time had a 1/3.2"sensor in front of a plastic fixed lens), however the problem was why carry this camera around and a mobile? When a mobile would do 90% of what the camera did, without spending £800 for the privilege.

However, camera UI's, their lack of flexibility and inability to customise them is still an issue in modern cameras. It is a pity that this attempt could not of been carried forward to DSLR's, A definite might have been.

Exhibit 4

 

 Panasonic HX-WA20 (2012)

£250 when new (£314 in 2021)

Price now £69

1/2.33in CMOS 9.8 Mpx

7.5x optical zoom (28-280, F4 -20 )

This one is a bit of a peculiarity. Although bought out in  2012, it would be hard to guess that it is 10 years old, and it is the one camera that i would think about still using today.

Obviously the camera is designed to be video centric, however it does offer a usable stills function. The interesting thing is the form factor. The truth is that camera design has pretty well stagnated. Yes there are tweaks here and there, but the fundamental design is not fundamentally different to the 1st SLR's 60 years ago. 

The strange thing is that SLR's were designed as they are because the camera spool had to be pulled across the aperture. However, despite being no film or canister, cameras are still designed as if they are doing exactly that. There have been attempts to move away from that for, but design conservatism has meant they have generally failed. 

This camera is interesting since it shows an alternative design strategy, although largely it is designed as a video centric device. However, again, with cameras video capability being a major selling factor nowadays, the question has to be asked whether the SLR blueprint is really a good form factor for video?

However, this has nothing to do with why I would still use this camera. It has a trick that mobile phones still struggle with. It is waterproof up to 3m. When I went diving in 2019, I bought a small waterproof Fuji, but this would have worked nicely, with big controls. 

Unplanned obsolescence

So my unexpected gifts have given me to look at recent history of camera technology. One of the weird thing is that apart from the video camcorder, none of these devices are unusable and would take fine photos today, but are basically considered junk.

If you bought say  Nikon F mount in 1963, you could almost get a lifetime of usage out of it. Now the usable life of a camera can be measured in months. For example, the DSLR manufacturers seem to bring out a new product every 6 months. There is often little wrong with the existing camera, but this forced obsolescence means that usable products are discarded before they even get a scratch.

To me, this seems wasteful and unnecessary. One way it could be improved is enforcing software upgrades. Fuji were the 1st to introduce the concept of kaisen, where the life of a product could be extended by software, and other manufacturers have gone some way in doing that, but it could be better.

 I am always interested in the maker community who re-use and re-purpose technology. However, if manufacturers were encouraged to provide methods of software updates and also after a period of time provided the source code, a lot of hardware would not go to waste. 

However, there is little benefit for manufacturers to do this unless forced by law, so I expect the draws and landfills of the land will continue to get filled with fully functional, but obselete devices for years to come

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Big eyes

I get bored very easily with "standard" photography. While it is great to get that iconic photo of a landscape, after a while I tend to go to any technique that differentiates an image, be it ICM, different angles, etc. This is one reason I am always looking for lens that are different, quirky or just weird. 

This is also one reason why I am generally  banned from going into charity shops by my wife. Apart from my predilection to buy books, I am always on the lookout for old camera equipment. This is even less likely than finding decent books, but secretly you hope to uncover a Leica, which the fool at the checkout has priced for £2.50. However, failing that, I am always a sucker for old lenses, but again I never had much success.

However, recently I was perusing a local charity shops while my wife was otherwise distracted taking the dog to the vet.  After discarding the usual Dan Brown's, I found 2 lenses in the corner of the shop. One was an old Tamron zoom which did not hold much interest, but the 2nd one was more intriguing. At 1st glance it looked like the front end of a CCTV camera, and I could not decide whether it was worth a punt. At this point I was saved by the bell in the form of a call from my wife asking to be picked up, so I put it down and went home.

However, the next day, I could not stop thinking about it, so I snuck out at lunchtime and picked it up. for the ridiculous price of 10 quid. 

 

 

When I got it home, I googled it, but I was no more the wiser.

 It was clearly some sort of wide angle/fisheye, made by AICO in Japan, but it did not seem to have any sort of mount, not even a screw in M42. It had a screw that looked like it would fit into a filter mount, but it was not quite the right size.

The mystery was eventually solved when we found information on Series VII adapters. These were a class of filters and lenses that could screw on to the front of an existing lens to add extra reach or wide-angle capabilities. 

To try it out, I got a 50mm to Series VII converter and attached it to the front of a 18-55 zoom. Obviously the lens itself has no aperture control, or focussing. However, being a fisheye, it does not need much focussing anyway

The Results

I have never had a true fisheye before, so I was a bit surprised by the initial results. Rather than a full image, the lens only created a port hole effect, having a circular image. It was a bit like the effect of using one of those crystal balls, without the need to find where to place it on the ground. Looking at other fisheye, this seems pretty standard. Of course being attached on a zoom I could decide how much of an effect to have by zooming into, so magnifying a certain area, but I actually liked the effect in certain scenarios. 

One issue was really bad flare, and it was best when no strong lights were being picked up. However, it was really good for pictures of streets where the fisheye effect showed up most strongly. It will be interesting to see the results I will get in say a forest environment

Conclusion

Buying an old lens is not about photography perfection, but breaking the mold. Photography should be about pushing the limits, and playing with different pieces of glass helps push us in different directions. While the lens may not get used much, there will always be a project or use that will come around, which we will dig it out. For that alone it is £10 well spent 

 

NFT and the art of the deal

This last year has been a tough one for anyone whose primary source of income was through photography. 

Any face to face activity, often the bread and butter of full time photographers, has been severely curtailed by Covid-19 leaving photographers to rely on things like print sales to make ends meet.

However, just when things were at their bleakest, a new proposed saviour appeared over the horizon with the letters NFT printed on their tee-shirt. 

But what is a NFT, and is it the new messiah or just a very naughty boy?

So what is this NFT?

Simple put  an NFT is a new way to monetise the sale of digital images. It has come largely to the fore through some photographers like Neil Burnell selling digital prints for prices for the kind of money that traditional print sellers could only dream off.

Since then social media has been awash with photographers trying to get to grips with NFT's, with some resorting to almost evangelistic zeal in extolling others to get on board. As a result, there has been somewhat of a schism formed between photographers who see this as the next great thing, and others who have doubts and feel more cautious.

So what is exactly is an NFT, and why is it being sold as the future of photography? 

NFT stands for Non-fungible token, which rather than a method of selling photos sounds like a foot disease. 

To explain what it is, lets ask a simple question. Which of the two images below is more valuable?

If you said the image on the left, I'm afraid no playtime for you

The answer is that they are in fact both equally valuable being purely digital images and in themselves contain no intrinsic value.

This is because although such images take effort to make, in a world where both creation and delivery of photographs is now a purely digital exercise they can be easily duplicated and disseminated. This means in economic terms, supply constantly outstrips demand and as everyone knows not all rare things are valuable, but all valuable things are rare.

Unlike say a print whose reproduction can be limited and controlled, there has not been up to now a similar method to put limits on a digital image. This is where NFT's come in. 

An NFT is a digital document that due to the process in which it is created (which we will not go into here, because it involves a lot of maths and very few people understand it anyway) is guaranteed to be unique and non-reproducible. This is what the Non-fungible means. Not only that, but it contains an unchangeable ledger where each token is linked to a previous copy and therefore can record a chain of ownership. A NFT can be associated with a digital item and uniquely identify it. 

So what does that have to do with photography? 

Well, a photographer can now attach link an NFT permanently to a single instance of a digital image and in doing create an unique image and sell or auction that image. One (bad) metaphor used of a signed baseball card (or pannini football sticker to the majority of the world). There maybe 1000's in existence, but only one signed by a sportsman it represents.

If you are thinking why would anyone want to buy a digital image, that looks like all the other copies  just because it has a unique signature, join the club. But that is what is happening on websites setup to trade these things, and significant amounts of money are being used to purchase them so clearly there is a demand.

NFT's are intractable linked to the concept of electronic money. You mayof heard of bitcoins, the  payment method of coice for ransomware proponents. Well NFT's are linked with a similar currency called Etherium and these are used to purchase NFT's which can then be converted to the sort of hard currency banks etc are happy to deal with.

Money, Money, Money

So we can now raid our back catalog of digital images, attach a NFT, auction them off and retire happily, right? 

Well maybe, and certainly some commentators have suggested that if you are not doing this you are 'crazy' . However like any get rich quick scheme, it is worth investigating exactly what you are getting into before jumping in with both feet.   

So what follows are my thoughts on what things you may need to think about and where this might be going in the future.

First thing to think about is who is actually buying these items and where is all the money coming from?

Caveat emptor

So why are people purchasing digital prints by spending the kind of money that would allow them to buy 20 physical versions?

My guess is that, like most new things, the purchasers will come in 3 waves. 

Firstly, are those idle rich who always want to be first just for bragging rights. i.e. the kind who queue up to buy the first iPhone, limited edition records etc. While money being used to purchase these images may look a lot to a starving artist, to some people a couple of thousands is the kind of money they spend on a good lunch and certainly no hardship if you want to brag on your next super yacht meeting with Bill Gates and Roman Abramovich

The second wave will be investors and speculators. The kind of people who are not so interested in the art, but the hope that its price will increase over time. However, both these groups are the early subscribers and limited in number. 

The 3rd wave will be the vast majority people who buy into things like this as it becomes part of normal behaviour.

However, to anyone hoping to get rich, there is a danger that the first wave has already moved on, and the second wave are now holding back to see where the market is going. Whether the vast majority of people will ever come to see a digital print as anything other than a curiosity is open to question. Maybe it is just my age, but the idea of getting the kids round in 20 years’ time to download my original Burnell, doesn't seem likely. 

Maybe I'm behind the times with this, but the point is that I would not mortgage the house on the ability to sell photos this way. The market could already be saturated, and there is anecdotal evidence that after the initial enthusiasm (see wave 1 and 2), the market has cooled considerable.

To see why this maybe the case, let me introduce you to the hype curve. This is a known phenomenon in the tech world and basically almost all new technology follows it.

The first stage is where everyone gets excited about some new technology. Early evangelists extoll its virtues and tell everyone that they need to get in on it, creating a huge wave on enthusiasm. This reaches a peak, where people start finding that the initial promises are not met and people move onto the next big thing. Then eventually after the hype has died, a better, more realistic expectations are formed and some use is made of the product, but not to the extent originally envisioned. 

 

My thoughts are that at the moment we are just below the peak of inflated expectations, and maybe anyone who wants to get into this, needs to be aware that the hype and good times may not last forever.

But why should you care, as long as there is money to be made? Well, the point is that none of this is free. Websites advertising NFT's aften charge an upfront fee, and if the hype crashes you may find you are spending money in a dying market.

Also, because you are buying and selling in a so called crypto currency, there is also a danger that any value will fluctuate wildly as the valuation of the currency changes. Because such currencies are not backed by things like government bonds, they are more prone to variation. For an Ethereum coin has reduced in price from $4000 to $1700 in just over a month so it is well to be aware that markets are extremely volatile

Legal Eagle

Another problem is whether buyers actually understand what they are buying? 

Purchasing always involves some manner of contract between buyer and seller, but NFT's and the whole concept of ownership of digital items creates a whole range of new issues that national laws have not caught up with yet. 

Take the issue of copyright. The assumption is that when you sell a picture, you are selling a single image, but you retain its copyright.

Problem is with all copyright questions; it is based on a concept developed 100 of years ago which does not sit well in the digital era. Firstly, is the buyer aware of this or is there an implied right when someone buys an image.  Secondly which law does this come under? The jurisdiction of the seller, the buyer, where the auction site is hosted?  

These legal questions will now doubt in time be answered, but for now it is worth being aware that we are in uncharted territory legally about what rights the seller and buyer actually have and while the market remains buoyant this maybe moot, if the prices drop (or plummet), speculators might actually come back and ask what their money has actually bought. 

Another legal grey area is what happens if a photographer mints (NFT jargon for create) a second image exactly the same as the 1^{st one}. Is there anything in the rules which indicates uniqueness? Where does enforcement responsibility lie?

Then, there is the issue of what happens if someone sells an image which is not theirs? Again, you would hope the original artist can use copyright law to protect their rights, but like we stated above, where would you sue?

However, the more likely problem in the short term is the rise in scams. Take a population that are in need of money, add something which promises easy access to said money, add a touch of incomprehensible technology, and you have an area ripe for exploitation by fraudsters and scam artists. No doubt we will see  the rise fake sites, people offering non-existent consultancy, or other such rich quick scams (A Nigerian prince wishes to help you sell your image, etc).

So basically, be very careful you understand the terms and conditions you are signing up for, what fees are due, and whether the site is valid. 

The Environment

 A lot of photographers I know, especially those working in wildlife and environment are very conscious of their responsibility to the world around them.

One big area of concern has been on how NFT's affect the environment. To explain this you have to look at how NFT’s are generated.

Unlike normal money whose value is based on some intrinsic value, things like NFT are based on making computers do work to generate them to locate a secret code. The codes are so designed so that as computers get faster, the work required to generate them increases, therefore limiting supply.  

 However as anyone who has run a rendering program with a laptop sat on their legs, work requires energy. How much energy? well, recently police raided a house they thought was a Marijuana farm by its heat signature and the fact they were illegally siphoning a large amount of electricity from the grid. Instead of a normal farm however, they found a server farm searching for bit-coins. 

As another sign of how much power is being used to sustain things like NFT's, China recently cracked down on bit-coin farming. As well as causing the price of crypto currencies to drop, the electricity consumption in China dropped virtually overnight by the equivalent of the production of 7 nuclear reactors.

So this activity is taking a lot of energy to basically generate nothing physical and there are serious questions whether if you care about the environment you should be encouraging it so that you can sell a few pictures? 

Conclusion

So should photographers buy into the NFT hype and start auctioning of there digital prints? There is no doubt the rewards of some of the early users have been spectacular and I'm as keen as anyone to see photographers and other digital creators gain their just reward from their efforts.

but...

As well as Caveat emptor we have Caveat Venditor or seller beware. Any transaction involves risk, but the problem with NFT's is that it is too early to really understand what risks you are taking on.

Also it has to be said I am a bit concerned that the debate about NFT's has been distilled down to two camps, those who evangalise it and others who are very negative. As photographers we should all understand there are many shades of grey, and so it is with this debate.

The danger is that hyped expectations will in the end back fire, so If you want to go down this path, make sure you understand what you are selling, your legal exposure. Make sure the sites you using are valid and trusted and you use common sense cyber security principles such as good one time use passwords. Do not pay large upfront fees, and be aware of any ongoing costs.

More importantly, do not assume that you will sell much or in fact anything. There is nothing wrong in dipping your toe into new technologies, but do not assume that things will change overnight, if at all.

In short, like any undertaking, do not get pushed by others to take risks you do not fully understand, and be wary of any claims of instant riches.

And yes, I still feel uneasy of living in a world where digital objects are given equal value to physical representations, and I don't think I'm alone in that. Maybe we are entering a brave new world where value is only represented in 0 and 1's rather than ink and paper, but part of me feels I would not like that world, but maybe it is only a sign of age and the next generation brought up on Instagram and Facebook have no issues with it. 

My biggest worry is that I have reached an age, where I would dismiss something just because it is new.  However my gut feeling is that this is not one of those occasions. However if I'm wrong, contact me in 20 years to tell me how stupid I was.  You can even attach a NFT and sell it to me :)