Thursday, January 26, 2006

The Devil Invented the Digital Camera

You know what I hate? Digital Cameras. I mean, they offer some great features, such as the ability to take a picture and post it to your computer in a matter of minutes. I’m grateful for this. This allows me to share with you a picture of my 1 and ½ year old niece. Here she is.




I know, I know. She IS beautiful.

Unfortunately, this photo doesn’t do her justice. Why? Because it was taken with a Digital Camera!

Digital Camera companies need to stop marketing their products as baby, child or pet friendly. They are, indeed, NOT! By the time the dumbass camera actually takes the picture, the subject has pulled a Houdini and is nowhere to be found! Now, if you work in a morgue, or a home for senior citizens (preferably crippled ones), then by all means, the Digital Camera is right for you! If not, well, then, plan on a lot of pictures of ironing boards with two strands of blonde hair in the corner.

The Digital Camera companies hide the fact that their products are best suited for dead, comatose or otherwise lifeless subjects. Part of the scam is to plaster tons of pictures of kids, dogs and babies all over their sites. Case in point: This shot, from the KODAK website, of a little girl peering out from a swing-set. Now, what you can’t see (and what explains her slightly frightened look) is that her entire bottom half is duct-taped to the base of the nearest pole.



Here’s another one from Kodak. Ten minutes before this shot was taken, this kid was running all over that backyard. The best the professional photographers could get was a 1-inch square of the hat in the frame. So, they jammed her into this swing to keep her from going anywhere. You can tell something is awry by the way she has her hand held up. She’s like, “what the hell just happened here?”


Another thing I hate about Digital Cameras is that they take forever to load up each terrible picture you’ve taken. So, for example, you get the dog to sit and look cute, then you press the shutter button. In the 1.32-second delay between pushing the button and taking the picture, the dog gets up, and you end up with only a corner of the tail in the shot. Then, the dog goes over and starts snuggling the cat, so you run over to this calendar-quality photo-op and start pressing the shutter button over and over but nothing is happening. So, you look at the little window and see that the picture of the tail-tip is loading at a rate of 1-pixel per minute. By the time the load completes, the dog is done snuggling the cat and has begun to take a crap.

Arrgh! Another missed photo op – all because of the DEMON DIGITAL CAMERA.

I think we, as smart consumers, need to stand up for our rights! We need to burn our digital cameras and return to the days of the single lens reflex. Either that, or I recommend buying stock in a good duct-tape company.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

That's a good one Vicki. My pics Sunday came out terrible. I think the answer is to snap the picture, wait 2 seconds and then tell everyone to smile. Of course that does not work with the animals(especial when the dog feels the need to drop a goodie on your lawn). UD

Anonymous said...

Boy do I understand this one. Taking pictures of animals at the zoo was weird. I got half a face of a tiger. The back end of a panther. And even the top of a head of a human with the lemures. And the other thing I hate about digital cameras is how fast the batteries go dead. You are just about to get the shot of a lifetime and you hear beep, beep. M

Anonymous said...

I agree with you 100% on this one. I mean really... you are a fabulous photographer, if digital photos turn out this way for you, I would hate to see what would happen if I had a digital camera. I am going to stick with my 35mm. miss you!
Ronda, Doug, and Emmy

Anonymous said...

The key to buying a digital camera is to buy one that actually cost a few hundred dollars. If you expect a throwaway camera from walgreens to give you Nikon 35mm quality prints, your wish will not come true.

BTW: Your niece is angelic in a smudged sort of way.

Anonymous said...

Digital cameras are for parents documenting their home life and children, teenagers who like to take pictures of their friends doing stupid things, and really lazy photographers or people who think they are photographers, who enjoy the convenience of simply pressing a few buttons for the finished product. There is no real work involved, let alone art. Let the high school portraitures have the digital camera to take fake pictures of pimply teens for the yearbook. Serious photographers shouldn't need it. And photoshop is for suckers.

Anonymous said...

It's not the camera that's the problem. it's people who think they can just point, push a button, and get a great picture...

Just like with film, if you want a decent picture you're going to need to put a little bit more money into your camera than a couple of hundred dollars. What you're getting when you use a point and shoot digital camera is basically equivalent to what you would get with an old school film rangefinder camera... but the downfall to most consumer level digital cameras is that crappy focusing mechanisms they're equipped with. If you remember correctly early digital cameras came with 2 settings: landscape and macro... basically focus forever or focus for anything about a foot away (just like a rangefinder *wink*)... if you want a camera that preforms quickly, then maybe you should buy something from 1998 that is modeled after a rangefinder, with little to no delay? Or maybe you should consider spenging a few extra bucks and getting a DSLR?

Long story short: It's not the camera, it's you.

aline said...

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Anonymous said...

Digital cameras - no matter how expensive - still clip the highlights, and then there are the memory cards, batteries and chargers and the software. Blah, I like my Canon EOS 7 SLR (film). :-) You can pry my cold dead hands from my film camera.

Anonymous said...

I should rephrase: you can pry my film camera from my cold dead hands.