Complexity in photography

On Photography
By Robert de Gast, June 29, 2007

You press the button…and we are not sure..

In the year 1900 George Eastman brought out the “Brownie” camera. It cost one dollar and produced six pictures. There was only one button to push. In fact, there were only two controls: the button (the shutter release) and a key to advance the film. A later version offered the possibility of setting the lens for “sunny” or “cloudy.” That was it.

Since the customer could not load or unload the camera, one had to send the contraption back to Rochester, and Eastman came up with “You press the button and we do the rest.” It became one of the most famous slogans in advertising history. Were those the good old days? Some people now wonder….

Fast forward to 2007. Even the simplest digital cameras offer literally hundreds of settings ranging from exposure to sensitivity, and from shutter speeds to color hues.

Have our lives been made easier? I don’t think so. And there is no reliable evidence that our photographs have become better, more beautiful and more insightful. The fact is that photography has become more difficult. The manual for my digital camera (and I bet yours) is book-length. Technological innovation has become frustrating and many people have thrown in the towel. Some of my students have not even attempted to read the user’s manual, and leave it in the unopened plastic bag. “It’s too intimidating,” many say, and some stop even trying to use the camera and return it, noting that “it doesn’t work.”

Product returns in the US cost a hundred billion dollars a year according to a study by Philips Electronics. It turns out that at least half of the returned products have nothing wrong with them. The buyers just couldn’t figure out how to use them.

So who’s to blame? You guessed it: the engineers and the marketers. The engineers pride themselves on coming up with more notions, and the marketers see those notions as selling points. The result: frustration. But as James Surowiecki pointed out recently in The New Yorker, although consumers find overloaded gadgets unmanageable, they also find them attractive. We think that the more features there are, the better the photographs will be.

We are not, as it turns out, very good at predicting what will make us happy in the future. We buy more expensive cameras because we think that will make our pictures more beautiful. We generally also do a poor job of evaluating our needs and skills and thus get stuck with unsuitable products. The researchers at Philips Electronics found that Americans who returned a product that was too complicated for them had spent, on average, just 20 minutes with the product before calling it a day.

Relying on the machinery is not a good idea. Fine photographs are the result of effort and time—meaning, mostly, patience. The features in today’s digital cameras can make your photographic life more rewarding, but good pictures still need your eyes, brain and energy.

Your manual probably contains about 150 pages. Don’t try to cram the information. It doesn’t work. If you have a question, go the index and only look up what you need to know. Then wait for another day to look up something else. Little by little, all will be revealed. And take solace from the fact that you already know how to install the batteries and the memory card. Seven pages down! Manual labor ahead!

Robert de Gast leads photography workshops and offers short, private tutorials. He can be reached at 152-7396 or via e-mail: robertdegast@hotmail.com .