With the advent of Pentax, Sony & Olympus entering the beginner market of dSLRs, the price of entry level cameras has dipped below £400 and in some case £300. This has had some consequences of both good and bad.

The good is that it has opened up photography to those who had never bothered before. The bad is that every Tom, Dick and Harry now has a website offering services, selling or giving away pictures which has upset certain industry professionals. Two years ago there where one or two dSLR’s at knockhill trackdays, now there are too many to count.

The major player in upsetting professional photographers has been the creation of microstock photo sites such as iStockphoto where anyone can upload pictures of almost anything, as long as they pass stringent checks. The stock photo sites charge very little for a royalty-free image with the photographer making even less. So in order to make decent money you need to have a large, varied portfolio.

Still, it’s not all rosy at the microsites as various other blogs point out with multiple sites using the same images, breach of copyright and general inconsistencies with how uploaded images are vetted.

Roxy V by torch light

This has impacted the pockets of certain professionals but ultimately (and thankfully) not all images can be catered for by microstock sites as one web developer points out, so as long as the professional photographer is keeping up with the times, they should not lose income.

Drinking alone

The Idiots

Photography whether digital or analogue is not easy as there are many variables which you have to take into account. Using a camera is not like DVD player where you don’t need to read the instructions. With a modern camera, reading the manual is essential.

Take for example the Canon manuals I’ve had for the 300D, 20D and 40D. All have been well laid out and easy to understand, they give you the basics of what aperture/shutter speed do and more importantly tell you how to work the camera, informing you of what various menu functions do which seems to be lost on some people - The Idiots.

I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve read on various forums such as dpreview, dslruser and in photography sections of other forums people asking questions which are to be found in the manual. Just one such idiot.

RTFM for god sake. Read a book on how to take pictures. Read online for free… but when you ask questions like how do I change the ISO or why does my flash not fire above 1/200s it bugs the hell out of people.

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 8th, 2008 at 4:03 pm and is filed under Ramblings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.