Tuesday, July 20, 2010

Technology: The Enemy of a Good Photograph?

Oh, for a good quality manual camera again! I'm referring to flash pictures, which have become all too common since the advent of the digital camera, due to its automatic flash. This means that the lighting in most pictures is obviously artificial, overly harsh, or completely wasted--the latter owing to an extreme distance of the subject, or else because the sensor is spooked by a misleading shadow over the camera itself. It seems to me that if an average person were presented with one of the better cameras, he or she wouldn't have the faintest clue how to use it. This is because these cameras afford the photographer manual control over such settings as aperture, shutter speed, focus, and of course, whether or not to use the flash, whereas most modern digital cameras make all these decisions for you. "Quel domage," as the French say.