Attention Amateur Photographers: It's Not About the Camera

I was photographing my local high school hockey team last night and there was a father of a player on the opposing team alongside me.  As photographers secretly always do, we were both sneaking peeks at the other's choice of camera and lenses.  He had a high-end Canon camera and lens, both of which are often seen in the hands of professionals.  He held the camera dearly, shooting and immediately checking the results on the camera's LCD screen, and seemed genuinely interested in why I was just standing there calmly watching the teams warm up, my camera snuggled in my bag.  Surely I couldn't know what I was doing.

During the player introductions, I pulled the camera out, took one test shot, and stood at attention during the national anthem, while he was still shooting and frowning at the results.  Once the game was about to begin, we exchanged pleasantries, and that's when the chat-fest began.  He was having trouble getting good color rendition, exposure, and asked me what I was doing.  I explained that I had previously set a custom white balance for the ice rink so that my colors were perfect, and I know the light levels in the rink, so that my exposures were always consistent.

Hand-Built Video Dolly

Finished Video Dolly

Now that I have a digital SLR that will record high-definition video, I want to take advantage of it and produce video pieces for my clients.  However, as most photographers know, the shape of dSLRs does not always enable steady hand-held use, and if you want to introduce intentional camera movement, most results look like they came from the cutting room floor of The Blair Witch Project.

This has spawned a whole new-fast growth industry in accessories for video dSLRs that allow the photographer/videographer to get better footage with motion effects, which add impact to the resulting video.  One such accessory is the video dolly, which allows the camera to be moved laterally in a smooth motion.  Like any new cottage industry, the prices of said accessories tend to be outrageous.  And as many of my peers will attest, said author of this blog will likely come up with a unique, hand-built, inexpensive solution that will operate at least as well as its over-priced brethren.  My peers have dubbed me “MacGyver” and it is a moniker that has to be earned…and it is not just thrown around like a party favor.  Here is my story...and my honey of a dolly.

The End of a Kodak Era

This week Kodak announced that it was getting out of the camera business in order to save money.  No, that’s not a typo.  The company that brought photography to the masses in 1884 is exiting the business.

Kodak did not invent the camera.  Cameras were around for decades before.  In fact, the first known photograph dates back to 1825.  For the next 60 years, large box cameras were used to expose light onto glass or metal plates that were coated with light-sensitive materials, making it a very time intensive and laborious process.  Taking photographs often involved a strong-willed photographer, a couple of Sherpas, and a mule train to carry all the equipment.

What George Eastman did when he patented roll film in 1885 was to make it easier for everyday people to take photographs, without Sherpas or mule teams.  He coined the phrase “YouPush the Button, We Do the Rest”, which described the process by which a camera owner would send the whole camera back to Kodak when the roll was completely shot, and Kodak would process the film, make prints, and load film back in the camera, which it would then return to the owner.

Kodak started making cameras in 1891, introduced the No.2 Brownie in 1903 (which basically invented the photography enthusiast), and invented the first digital camera by Steve Sasson in 1975.

Fast-forward all the way to 1999, when I worked in Kodak Professional, testing the DCS professional digital cameras.  Kodak would buy camera bodies from Canon and Nikon and strip out all the film parts and replace them with all the digital components.  Half the Canon cameras would have a Kodak logo on them and were sold by Kodak, and half got the Canon logo and were sold by Canon.  Likewise with the Nikon cameras.

These cameras were the best digital cameras in the world.  I remember watching events like the Super Bowl, and noticed that at least 90% of the photographers on the sidelines were using Kodak cameras.  Only a photography geek would notice that, although I apologize to no one for that.  The cameras were also used by photojournalists all over the world, who happily used the amazing 2-megapixel cameras and could send photos all over the world…within hours…not days as with film.  We laugh at that now...but at the time, they were the cat's pajamas.

I also worked on the DCS Pro Back system, which was a 16-megapixel back that would fit on a medium format camera.  The camera back was amazing, but at $10,000, you weren’t expecting to sell a lot of them.  I felt very fortunate to be able to use that system, knowing that it was going to go into the hands of the best commercial photographers in the world.

In 2001 or 2002, Nikon introduced their own digital SLR camera.  Although it didn’t have all the bells and whistles, it was priced at about half of what the Kodak cameras were selling for.  I remember it being really quiet around the Kodak offices for almost a week.  As other camera manufacturers came up to speed on digital technology, other cameras came to market.  None of them had the quality of the Kodak digital SLRs, but they were good enough for the common man.  Sales of the Kodak cameras dropped, and Kodak Professional stopped making professional digital SLRs in 2005.  And this week, the announcement came that consumer cameras would no longer be made.

It is the end of an era.  I have a collection of old Kodak cameras, some dating back to the 1920s.  As a Rochester resident, the home of Kodak, we lived and breathed Kodak cameras our whole lives….for the better part of 120 years.  Until this week.  Now we get to witness Kodak moving off in another direction.