Every industry has conferences. When I was at Amoco, then BP Amoco, then BP, I always joked that the other people on my team got to go to Dallas, Houston, Denver, Vegas, Montreal, Toronto, and other such places. Where did I go? Empress, Whitecourt, Chinchaga, Steelman, and for my sins, Fox Creek. And for me the event was work, typically a turnaround, or software training. No swag bag for me. I was lucky if I got pizza for lunch.
I'm sure you will all be shocked to know photographers have conferences, and that introverted me went to one. Lightchasers in Pincher Creek was fun! More talking and less photography than I expected, but then, I wasn't sure what to expect. I even ran into some people I know, which was nice.
Linda came along and had a wonderful time hiking in Waterton, hunting for wildflowers. She even bought bear spray, just in case.
Technology changes so fast. It seems like only a short time ago I bought my current workhorse camera, a Canon 6D Mk2. According to Lightroom I've put about 190,000 images through it since October 2017. The rated shutter life is given as 150,000 actuations, but lots of people get far more than that. The problem is that we never know when a thing will fail. If I'm taking the camera out for a walk and it stops working suddenly, it's no big deal.
It's a very big deal if I'm in the middle of a paid photo session like a race. I take the old T6i as a backup, just in case, and I even experimented with having both cameras on the go during one event. They are similar, but not the same, and there is no time to futz with settings, so I haven't done it since. I'd always said I'd buy the last one off the shelf during a stock clearing sale. That way I spend a few minutes setting up the menu choices, and I'm done. Zero learning curve.
At the conference I chatted to the guys from The Camera Store, and they said it had been discontinued early in 2024, and they had sold their last one a while ago. They suggested some other stores might still have one, and they were right. Today I scurried out and chatted to a nice young man at Vistek, and put a deposit down for a camera they'll ship from Mississauga. I should have it Thursday. He says it's the last one they had, and might well be the last one sold off the shelf in Canada.
I know most of you are not camera nerds, but some of you are shaking your heads, wondering if I've lost my mind by not jumping into the mirrorless world. Well, the Canon rep at the conference gave it a good pitch, and let me put my lens onto his camera.
Holy Doodle. It's like looking at a Star Trek screen. Keep in mind that for my main film camera, all I see when I look through the viewfinder is the scene and some frame lines, which are sort of guidelines, not actual rules. Nothing else. When I look through the 6D Mk2 viewfinder, up at the top I see a little cross hair telling me if the camera is level and vertical, which I should look at more, the one aiming point I use just above the middle of the screen, and across the bottom the shutter speed, the aperture, the EV correction (which relates to shutter speed), ISO, frames available in the buffer (which I never look at), and green or red dot telling me about finding focus (which I typically don't look at).
As a simple example of the mirrorless camera, it not only finds and focusses on eyes, (and you can choose between human, cat, dog, and other animals), but you can choose which eye. Or you can let it pick the closest one. Or if it can't see an eye, I will pick the head. I'm not sure what else the algorithm does. The viewfinder was so full of all kinds of information I could barely see the scene.
The camera does everything to be helpful in getting the photo I want, or perhaps I should say, getting the photo that the AI brain thinks that I want. As I was thinking about what I want, it turns out to be different things, depending on the event. It might be a person, or a cute dog, or a neat scene without any people in it, or something abstract. I really don't like arguing with electronic stuff.
I'm pretty sure the learning curve is steep. The more stuff that electronics do, the higher the odds of it doing something you don't want. I typically don't mind if I screw up a shot because I goofed. There's been a few that I wince at because it's the shot I wanted, and the focus is slightly off. But mostly I get the photo I want. A tool should be there to do the job you want it to do, not do the job for you, or do the job it thinks you want to do. I don't want to have to interpret complicated menus to set up a system to take the pictures I want. I want to set ISO, shutter, and aperture, and have the autofocus target the point I select.
It is entirely possible this is the last camera I'll buy, though never say never. The current one could die soon, or it might go years. The new one could go decades, since I am a bit more thoughtful about pressing the shutter button. Maybe even longer if I devolve to doing everything except paid gigs on film, and there are people that want film images.
Here's the view on the way into the first photo field trip.
Bonus points for anyone who knows where I am.
Of the Day
Driftwood (NZ)
Film
Linda
Rampaging on ahead, exploring new trails.
Celina
Newfoundland
Polar bears
Why ever didn't I publish this, and maybe I did
90 days, or so ago
The business end of a Lancaster bomber.
