Wednesday 3 February 2010

Camera mags

I bought a camera magazine the other day. The first for thirty years, at a guess. I bought it as much to check the adverts as anything, which proved to be a waste of time as there were very few from retailers - I suppose the internet is where most now ply their wares.

Apart from the fact the magazine was about digital photography and not film it could easily have been one from the eighties. The advice on techniques to make better photos, and the resulting images, being as stale as ever. Clichés abound. But I suppose features telling people that the only way to really improve is by learning, and the best way to learn is to take lots of photos. Then again, if you don't 'have an eye' for a photograph you're going to be buggered from the start. But articles about using the latest technology keeps the masses buying more equipment, which keeps the manufacturers happy to keep buying ad space.

An all singing all dancing digital SLR won't make you take better photos, it just makes turning them into prints faster and simpler. Within minutes of returning home from a snapping session you can have a glossy A4 print in your hand. Unless you're the kind of sad sack who wants to spend hours fiddling with your RAW files in some expensive software package...

The magazine is in the recycling bag.

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