Digital Camera's Interesting Times

Digital camera manufacturers are in trouble. Of course. Because marketing has been pinned solely on the resolution count -- the almighty megapixel -- and that single feature's marketable equity is doomed. There is an upper limit to the useful resolution necessary in photography, and I think we've found it. More resolution than absolutely necessary is simply a waste of storage space. And so the market is saturated with 5-8MP cameras that are all competing for attention of consumers that are satisfied with the 4MP cams slung around their necks. (As an interesting aside, used film SLRs still command a respectable price. The same can't really be said for any digital camera.)

This has to be the most rapid life-cycle of any product to date. The early adopters were getting on board back in the mid-90s at the earliest, and the technology was still considered 'cutting edge' in the late 90s, where prices of rudimentary cameras and memory storage media were outrageous. Then in about 2000 the floodgates opened. Compeition got fierce, features improved and prices dropped. Rapidly. Now many companies are starting to feel the cost of expensive R&D schedules, as their consumer bases start to dwindle. Nikon is perhaps the one exception, as they have used intelligent marketing and their renowned expertise in photography in this new era. In the meantime, HP is bailing out of the Asian camera market altogether, and a lot of the other do-it-all electronics giants are seeing sharply reduced profits. Even strong second-string players, like Pentax, are feeling the crunch.

I think the problem is that while digital has been touted as "better than film", in most respects it really isn't. And instead, ironically, using film as its benchmark has limited what digital can be. I expect very soon we'll see an improvement in sensitivity to allow digital cameras to shoot in light dimmer than the eye can see, and image stabilization will become ubiquitous, as it is in camcorders. Of course multi-function units will cause minor clamours ("my PDA can receive e-mail, play MP3s, run movies, make phone calls, do my homework, find me a girlfriend, and take half-decent pics too! Woohoo!"). As to whether they have the ability to turn this market scenario around, I'm sceptical. The mainstream market's full, leaving only the niches.

My advice to both manufacturers and consumers is to slow down. For the consumers, take a hard look at what you need, and set what you want to spend. Carefully factor in accessories, batteries and memory, and don't be distracted by big numbers and bigger promises. And if you're satisfied with what you have, stay that way. For the manufacturers, your customers are getting wise. It's time to get down to the business of high quality, and useful features over flashy fads and glitzy gimmicks. The rewards may not be as glamourous, but they are certainly more trustworthy.

No-one Here but us Scary Wierdoes

Who would willingly subject themselves to scarring, piercing, burning and injecting? A prof of mine once said if you want to have some fun, climb into a packed elevator and scream at the top of your lungs, because, well, you know what you're doing. Projecting a wierd persona follows much the same lines. Imagine the insights that Marilyn Manson has about the human condition. He can watch everything from behind a mask and a costume.

I have wasted very brief moments of my channel-surfing existence watching extreme makeover shows. It surprises me how surprised these women are. They talk about the increased confidence, and how much better they feel about themselves. But no-one mentions the removal of honesty. No-one talks about the costume that people have inserted into their bodies, or the permanent psychological changes that accompany it. Once you've got those implants and dental veneers, what do you do with them? Sure you've got confidence baby, but how long can you keep up with yourself. And anyway, just how noble is it that you've done all that "only for yourself"?

Now get this: in a recent interview a walking human spectacle said that we're only seeing the very beginning. He believes that people will begin modding their bodies, removing parts of their organs that seem to be extraneous, and streamlining bodily functions. Add to that the many jokes that people are making about surgically implanting electronic devices like cell phones. I'm not laughing. I mean for some people they may as well be implanted already, they're so removed from their daily reality.

So many people are so passionately chasing after the wind, looking for the next wagon to clamber on, doing whatever it takes to prevent life from feeling old. The rebel in me is getting a thrill out of just being where and who I am, as hard as I can.

Those Evangelicals

In listening to the media discussing the gay agenda vs. the Christian agenda, I get a mental picture those two exploding helmets they show during televised football games. They appear on the screen, crash together in hi-rez CG goodness, some people passionately express some pretty inane convictions, and we're back to the helmets. (I hate TV sports, but those helmets somehow disengage my hair-trigger eye-thumb reflexes.)

Especially since the same-sex marriage decision in Canada I have found myself watching more gay media. And I actually think we're closer to each other than either side would ever admit. The gay stuff has a leg up because it's more of an unknown novelty, while all people think they're experts on God and religion.

I'm not as free as some respected friends who've gone on record saying Christians should allow gay marriage, because "Well, what's the big deal?" I guess my retort to that would be, "If the deal isn't so big, then why do gay people want it?"

Words are all we have. Symbols are assigned definitions, entirely arbitrarily in most cases, and they form the tenuous shared culture experience that connect human beings together, and we call that language. Changing the definition of a fundamental cultural tenet, like "marriage", is riskier than at first it may appear. As pointed out by several religious thinkers (and here I'm not just referring to Christians, if you're curious), divorce has made what was indefinite temporary. In general that has caused much harm to society, across all generations. It continues to have repurcussions that weren't imaginable. In college-aged students there is little expectation to get married; they've seen their parents' example, and they're not readily buying into the marriage model. So instead we have even more tenuous relationships forming, ones without formal recognition or lasting commitment of any kind, except perhaps to car payments and mortgages. In the span of two or three generations, relationships have become comoditised.

I think there's a historical simplicity to the design of marriage. But if you take it apart to examine it, you realise just how complicated it is. And that's when you realise that have no idea how to put it back together.

However I'm not the type to say we're all going to Hell in a handbasket. Or that the world is about to end. I'll leave that to the other radical evangelists. But when they say it, I'll sort of shrug. "Could be, could be."

Movie Review: The Wedding Crashers

This movie has generated a lot of hype, and a smattering of positive reviews. My question is, "How?". Here's the premise: the instition of marriage gets liberally pissed on for 1.75hrs, and the movie ends in a wedding.

We're given a loose story, looped carelessly around the actors. Or maybe you have the actors stringing up a loose plot. Either way, the improvised dialogue of the movie should have been cut in half, and the freed frames should have been used to tell a better story. When the actual wedding crashing fun of the movie ends early in a single montage, a feeling of doom descends.

Ask yourself, could any movie coming from Hollywood portray a man raping and sexually molesting a woman, and call it funny? So how is it funny if the genders are reversed? Unfortunately, as this movie amply demonstrates, feminism hasn't resulted in less objectification of women, it's simply enforced equal objectification for men.

I think that's ulimately the problem with this flick. Everything about the human condition is trivialised, from sex to suicide. It's not a Monty Python-esque caricature of articifial institutions and affected idiosyncrasies, which I could have appreciated. Instead it tries to be sincerely romantic one moment, and comically slapstick the next. Needless to say, it fails on both counts. For more hope and less degradation, go rent Spun.