adetorrent; photography, lifestyle.

When the iPhone 3GS was released, I could no longer resist. I had the O2 Xda smartphone running Windows Mobile - Or was it Pocket PC? Whatever it was, I made do, all the while convincing myself that I didn't need an iPhone. However, once I saw the Apple commercial featuring the voice commands - "Play songs by Kaiser Chieves!" - I drank a gallon of the apple flavoured kool-aid. The iPhone was many things apart from a phone. One of which was a capable point and shoot camera in my pocket, all the time. "Take your camera with you at all times" was no longer the mantra reserved for Lomographers and street photographers, it was for everyone, including me. Again, that online benchmark revealed the iPhone as the primary source of images uploaded. For many, it quickly replaced whatever camera they previously used. I was no exception. "Ah, I'll just leave the camera behind, I've got the iPhone". Then social networking hit the big time. Fac...

The world moved on. Film went out of fashion and affordable digital cameras rolled in. Film photo labs closed down all over the place. Consumer photography transitioned gradually from emulsion to silicon. Inevitably, I too stopped reaching for the film camera. One day, ten years or so ago, I placed my camera (with unfinished film) into a drawer, and simply forgot about it, till this year. There it laid, the boots 500AF, dormant, the battery slowly draining over the years, waiting for the day I'd pick it up again and snap it's positive battery contact. I quickly grew frustrated with the Nikon Coolpix 775. The image quality appeared to deteriorate over time.  The apparent loss in quality was of course relative.  It's a digital camera. Zeros and ones then, are zeros and ones now. It was in fact other people's photos that had improved. Annoyingly enough, at some point there was a sudden spike in the quality of photos on Flickr (yes yes). It was as if Earth had been inv...