Andrew Ferrier

Note to self and others: never use Picasa to download photos direct from the camera when using RAW+JPEG. It has a nasty habit of downloading the JPEGs, then deleting the RAWs. Ouch. Always use a card reader on the Compact Flash card instead.

I went to the Focus on Imaging show at the NEC at the weekend. The show itself was a little disappointing, obviously oriented more around trade sales than the end-consumer, and was marred a little by poor organisation from the NEC resulting in large queues, a car-park merry-go-round, and so on. But nevertheless, there were some interesting stalls – Canon and Nikon having the largest and most impressive, with some substantial Canon L-series lenses on display.

I availed myself of the special show pricing (and suffered the robust crowds) to buy a Canon 400D body, plus the lens I’ve been trying to get hold of – the Canon 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS. The lens is cheap, but allegedly better optically than its poor non-image-stabilised cousin that is shipped by default with many Canon bodies. At some point, I’ll invest in something better.

I had a (35mm) SLR some time ago, but sold it when I started using my digital compact more. I’ve been missing the flexibility of an SLR, though, and the appeal of higher ISO (the heroin of digital photography?) was too much. I’ll give it its first proper crack at the whip at the weekend, no doubt.

Well, it took me a while, so both of my travelling companions already got their photos up. But I finally got round to posting up a few select snaps from our Lake District trip a month or so back. As I expected, most of my interesting shots were of the tragically recursive variety: photographs of photographers.

I’ve been interested in photography since I was small, progressing through a simple fixed-focal-length compact camera to a basic 35mm SLR, playing with many cameras, including SLRs and compacts, and now back just to a digital compact camera I quite like. I’ve found digital sufficiently liberating that it has re-invigorated my interest in photography: primarily because it makes everything easier and cheaper. (Maybe one day I’ll invest in a 35mm digital SLR but I still want something smaller). Even my new phone has a camera that’s worth a second look.

Flickr, of course, has been a great success story of recent years, providing a simple and cheap way for anyone to upload and share photos. They have got the balance just right between the man-in-the-street and the enthusiastic amateur, so much so that many professionals now inhabit Flickr (don’t be fooled by the ‘pro’ logo, though; it means nothing more than that a subscriber is paying for more space – which is what I do). They’ve also spent a considerable amount of time getting the social aspects right, so much so that it’s easy to spend hours browsing Flickr for funky photos and talking with other keen photographers. Many of my friends are also into photography and most of them have Flickr accounts.

At the same time, Flickr makes it trivial to access mountains of excellent content that most photographers would be rightly jealous of. I’m proud of some of my best photos, but it doesn’t take long on Flickr to find stuff that’s miles ahead.

Despite the legal, moral, and practical issues involved in copying a photo (see the Creative Commons page for an indication of how unnecessarily complicated it can be to understand), I can’t help but think that all of this will reduce the average cost of a saleable photo for a professional photographer – whether they choose to participate online or not. In fact, it’s easy to see that this is true, simply by observing the rush of online stock photography websites selling stuff for pennies. Put in other terms, it makes it easier to become a professional photographer, whilst making it harder to make money from it. It’s a good substitution argument – if I don’t like the price you’re charging for your pretty picture, I’ll find another one (and Flickr and the web makes it easy). It’s no coincidence that the consequences of this digital enablement roughly mirror the struggles and increased opportunity that many music artists are going through with the rise of online music, file-sharing, etc.

None of this is designed to discourage anyone. It’s got to be more satisfying to beat the world than just those lucky few who can afford a camera. But like much of economic progress, the commoditisation of good photography is going to be easier for the consumer (viewer) than the producer (photographer).

Just spent a little while consolidating all my photos: moving the remainder from my Gallery installation on andrewferrier.com to their new and preferred home on Flickr. My Flickr account is now vastly more populated with photos (and more variable in quality). This script basically did all the work. It doesn’t support nested albums, so I had to move all sub-albums to the top level, as well as removing the few ‘symlinks’ I had on photos (later versions of Gallery support this). But apart from that, it was plain (if a little slow) sailing. A recommended approach.

I feel a bit like Richard Gere in Pretty Woman, but without the good looks, the riches or the sexy female companion. I’m now enclosed in a room on the top (26th) floor of the Holiday Inn on Van Ness Ave., and it’s much nicer than the motel I stayed in last night. The only problem is the altitude; as Gere said ‘[I stay here because] … it’s the best’. I asked for a high room too because of the view – it is fabulous (see this photo). Like his character, though, I’m scared of heights. What a combination.

So the Redbook residency is over, and after a little dance around the Bay Area this morning involving Best Western, Hertz, and BART, I’ve rid myself of my car (minimum hassle, especially considering I dented the bumper), and am sitting in a shabby motel a few blocks off the dodgier end of Market Street in San Francisco. I’m none too impressed – despite the seemingly ubiquitous free wireless – simply because the area doesn’t feel that great. To that end, I’ve booked myself in a (seemingly much nicer, but also more expensive) Holiday Inn from tomorrow. Another hard lesson in ‘you get what you pay for’.

Nevertheless, I went for a wander earlier around town, particularly down to the Financial District, where I took a few pictures of San Francisco’s most famous (and tallest) skyscraper, the Transamerica Pyramid. Currently trying to figure out the good places in town to chill out – I really don’t want do that much touristy stuff, especially since I’ve done a lot before. I hope to spend some time unwinding before heading back to the UK.

Went for a trip up to Napa today (through downtown SF, across the Golden Gate, around to Napa via Sausalito, then back down the eastern side of the bay via Oakland). It was a beautifully sunny day, so I took plenty of photos with the new Sony. Sunny weather always makes photography easy, even for amateurs like me, but I have to say I’m quite pleased with the results. You can see the latest photos in my Flickr photostream.

I am now the proud owner of a Sony Cybershot DSCW-55, which I’ll use for the remainder of my trip around the Bay Area to take some photos, after my Canon Powershot failed. I got it from Best Buy for the bargain price of $240 including a 1GB memory card. Not bad for a 7.1MP camera, especially given that current exchange rates almost halve that price when converting to pounds.

Advantages:

• Easy-to-use Sony design – the build quality seems pretty good too. Normally I avoid Sony in the same way I avoid Apple – I just don’t understand the fuss (sorry Apple fans). This time, the bargain price swayed it for me.
• Much slimmer and lighter than my Canon.
• Goes all the way up to ISO 1000 (my Canon only does ISO 400). It remains to be seen how much noise there is at this level, but it’s still nice to know it can do it. I shoot in low light a lot, and hate compact-camera flash almost on principle.

Disadvantages:

• Not quite as many features as my Canon. It won’t do aperture-priority, shutter-priority, etc. I can do without these for the time being.
• No gravity sensor. It remains to be seen how annoying this will become, but Picasa makes rotating easy so hopefully it won’t be a big problem.
• Only a 3x optical zoom. Not sure what this translates to in old numbers, but it ain’t much.
• US charger – of course I didn’t expect anything different, but will have to solve this in the UK somehow.
• US-only warranty – didn’t expect anything different either, but just decided to take the risk – that’s an easier decision to make with $240 than the ~$1000 the 400D would have cost.

I’m really not sure what I’ll do when I return to the UK. It probably depends on how many the Canon will cost to fix. I might sell it on Ebay once fixed and part-buy an SLR with the proceeds (I really should have followed Adrian‘s advice originally and bought the 400D in the UK). I don’t really want to keep it; I’m most unimpressed with Canon now, and I get the impression the Sony will probably do everything I want from a compact. We’ll see.

It appears that my problems with my Powershot may not be the result of mishandling after all; I’m a victim of the dreaded E18 error. This appears to be a design flaw in Canon compact cameras that they refuse to acknowledge the existence of (the fact that there’s an extensive Wikipedia page for the problem says it all). Numerous solutions have been suggested; I’ve tried taking the camera apart a little to clean out around the lens but got nervous and screwed it back together again. My last attempt will be to buy some compressed air in a can and try that. By the sounds of things, if Canon try to charge for repairs, I may just have to pay up. But this, combined with the fact that it appears they won’t honour their warranties worldwide (which means I cannot really buy a 400D here) means that my opinion of Canon has plummeted from their previous record with me.

I’m still stuck with the problem of how to take pictures; I’ve looked into hiring a camera, but the only ones seemingly available are high-end SLRs at around $75/day – far more than I want to spend. I may just end up buying a cheap compact so I have some photos to take home.