Much of what you said in your intitial post, and in this one, I agree with, John. Sort of.
You're making the assumption that people really care about improving the mistakes they made with their film p&s's. I don't see that happening with many (most?) people. Walk around touristy areas, and it's amazing how many have digi p&s's these days. And, they're making the same mistakes that they made with film. Looks like they're taking about the same number of photos. I don' see many folks editing on the fly - which BTW, really isn't a good idea in my books. It's pretty hard to consider a photograph "in the heat of the battle" so to speak. The only way I'd delete something while shooting is if I ran out of memory, and I had no choice. Editing should be done after the fact, when one can be a bit more detached, and has the time to properly consider why something should be deleted.
Now, if someone really wants to improve their photographs, they'll do it, digital or no. They'll have already decided to buy an SLR or decent rangefinder, for the flexibility they afford. They'll have already learned how to eliminate red-eye, and started to try to compose a bit, rather than just "point and shoot".
Here's why I think digital is a boon to the casual amateur. It's new technology. It's exciting. You can send piccies back to Nanny and Grampy ~while you're still on vacation~; "here we are standing next to Old Faithful this morning...". You only have to remember the camera - 'cause you can buy AA batteries anywhere in the world (AFAIK). So a lot of folks are going to take more photos just because of the convenience of it. You take more photos, some are bound to turn out.
"The optimist thinks this is the best of all possible worlds. The pessimist fears it is true." -J. Robert Oppenheimer
From: "John Francis" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: "Why digital cameras = better photographers" - BBC news Date: Mon, 19 Jan 2004 16:39:00 -0500 (EST)
> > Hi, > > John Francis wrote: > > Mostly right things but then.... > > > We care about the process; most folks don't. For them, the > > digital camera does help, even if it's only because of the fact > > that it's very easy to see what you did wrong almost immediately. > > Given the "most folks" scenario, I think it is more a case of "that" > rather than "what" you did wrong. In many of those "most folks" cases > they will not have the faintest clue _what_ they did wrong. Or, more > properly, they will not have the faintest clue how to correct their > perceived mistake. An advantage of digital is that they can then change > settings, even at random, to see what happens and get an instant > result. I wonder how many of them will actually undergo a learning > experiance from it?
If they just learn not to take photographs that have a tiny dot in the middle of the screen surrounded by an expanse of nothing much, or pictures with the top of the head (or half of little Jimmy) cropped off, that will eliminate the vast majority of bad snaps.
Then, of course, there are the under-exposures because the built-in flash isn't quite powerful enough to illuminate an entire sports arena.
After that it's a toss-up between bad timing (eyes closed, mouth open, etc.), glaring reflections from the flash (including trying to take a picture of the TV screen using flash), and thumbs, hands, other people's arms, etc. getting in the way of the subject.
All of those mistakes are fairly obvious, and easy enough to correct.
Only after that do we get into the "tough" scenarios: the wrong part of the scene in focus (at least nowadays with AF cameras there's usually *something* in focus, which I guess is some kind of an improvement), or motion blur because the shutter speed is too low. Those are going to be harder to correct without at least a little thought.
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