Brownie to digital in 60 seconds
I bought a camera the other day. It had an instruction manual that might as well have been a syllabus for a college course. 150 pages. Technical? Daunting? Oh yeah, you bet.
I remember my first camera, a Brownie. Had to crank the film to take the next picture. I remember my first Polaroid. You could watch the picture develop right before your eyes in 60 seconds. Magic in a box. Instamatics came next. You have to admit, we could all take nice pictures.
My family had a movie camera. 8mm I think — we watched those home movies like they were made by Cecil B. DeMille. About 3 minutes long, each one, but we’d wait for the next installment, rewind the little reels, splice them when they broke, change the projector light, all the nuisances worth the trouble. I loved the soundlessness of them, just the whir of the projector and the old man talking over it. I still love that.
I got myself a single lens reflex when I got out of school. Got myself lenses and the whole rigamarole. Took the film in to the drugstore to have it developed. Nice photos. Real nice photos. Later on I got a profession I needed photos AND slides. I’d drag along two cameras, shoot a million shots, keep maybe 6. Carry filters, lenses, lighting equipment, tripods, light meters. Looked like Ansel Adams on safari.
Now we got digital. I had a little bitty camera. Weighed about what a hummingbird weighs and did everything but stand on its head. Dropped the images in a computer and manipulated em til they looked great …. Or at least a whole lot better.
My new Bad Boy is digital with exchangeable lenses. It can be programmed, it can tell time, it can compensate for fluorescent lights, it can shoot landscapes or action movies, it could run for President and probably win on the GOP ticket this year.
Photography has been one of those things in my lifetime — like aviation — that makes me shake my head in wonder. If I ever figure out my new camera, the one that comes with an honorary PhD, I’ll probably sit back with no little pride that our generation dreamed this up and made it possible for me to actually learn how to use the thing. Well, at least til the next generation makes all of it obsolete….
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