Thursday 28 January 2010

Hell, no, we won't logo...

I was buying a new car recently and I was asked if I wanted it "debadged". I'm aware of this "service", of course - a bit like having your hair cut or liposuction it is one of the few services in which you pay more to walk away with less - but it has always slightly mystified me. I have no particular desire to hide the model of car I am buying, so why bother? The salesman smiled. "Very well Sir", he said. and was going to leave it at that.

Out of curiosity, I asked him what sort of customer said yes. His answer was an interesting object lesson in reverse psychology. It seems that debadging is most popular with those buying base models. They opt for it so that they do not have anything on the back of their cars that declares they have gone for the cheaper option. The irony is, the salesman continued, that it is for the most part only those buying base models who choose to debadge - those who can afford the top of the range have no issue in "flaunting it". Thus, he pointed out with a certain degree of schadenfreude, if you see a debadged car, it is almost by definition equipped with cloth seats, small wheels and a socially inept owner.

This led me to thinking. One of the stranger sub-plots in the world of Leica is the desire to eliminate the red dot; remove from the front of the camera that which proclaims most loudly that you are using a high-end piece of photographic equipment. There are regular threads on fora seeking views on the best tape to use, or the best means to eliminate not just the dot but also the white lettering. Gaffer, duck, duct, insulating, etc - all have their adherents (sorry!).

So what is going through these people's minds? The most oft-expressed desire is to make the camera more "stealthy"; to present a more ninja-like face to the world. The theory goes that the red dot catches the eye and the "decisive moment" is lost.

Bollocks.

What catches people's eye is a 160-lb bloke dressing like Action Man night-stalker, making sudden movements as if he has mallards in his underpants and waving a camera in their direction. The red dot, or lack of it, has no bearing in this situation.

Let's move on to justification #2 - "I don't want to attract the attention of thieves". In this case our taper has moved to a specific class of people by whom he doesn't want to be noticed. That red dot just SCREAMS money, doesn't it?

Bollocks (again).

The average street thief is a) opportunist b) unaware of the Leica price list c) not choosy. A camera is a camera. The thought of someone initiating a mugging and then saying - "oh sorry, mate, didn't realise that was a Niktax 3000P - thought it was the far more valuable 30xls. Sorry to bother you, mind how you go..." - is not really credible, is it? A camera is a camera - it is something you have, that they do not, and something that they can sell for money. It's that simple.

Red, and proud of it...

Sooo... Justification #3 - "I don't want to be seen using an expensive camera to shoot poor people." ...I love this one. Anyone who follows this philosophy really shouldn't be allowed out on their own. Let's turn it on it's head - a great way to test any argument - "I only want to be seen shooting poor people with a cheap camera." - Well, let me put it this way; if I were pushing a Lidl trolley along the embankment, dragging my cardboard after me and swigging from a meths bottle and two photographers approached, one with a cheap disposable, and the other with an M9, I know which is more likely to catch my good side - that's the one without the suppurating sores and alopecia. If this is truly an issue to you, just stick to shooting the sort of still-lifes and landscapes so beloved of Amateur Photographer - nice, safe, anodyne and completely non-confrontational.

...and that brings me neatly on to justification #4...

Aesthetics.

Yes, aesthetics matter. And to some extent, this is the one justification with which I have some sympathy. Here's my confession - I don't like logos. If a company would like to pay me for advertising their product, I will gladly do so, but I am neither famous nor high profile enough to be sponsored, so that isn't going to happen.

I had a splendid dispute with a car salesman (yes, another one) a few years ago. I was buying a Land Rover Discovery; the Series II model that still had the spare wheel on the back door. Now, I object to advertising a dealership, so asked politely for a plain spare wheel cover. Not only was this request refused (I later bought one myself) but also my request for no cover at all; I was told that the Sales Director would not allow a car to be driven off their forecourt without a suitably tacky cover shouting their name.

In the event, and having nearly cancelled my order, I came to what I saw as a suitable compromise; I collected the car, complete with stencilled cover, drove it all of one yard across the forecourt, got out and removed the offending article, before frisbeeing it up on to the showroom roof. It described a graceful arc, and settled somewhere highly visible but inconvenient. The salesman smiled - his responsibility was discharged - and my vehicle was no longer a 4x4 billboard.

But that's one thing, and easily dealt with. I would never dream of buying an article of clothing that proclaimed "Nike" or "O'Neill", or any of a number of other brand names. I may be a Bill, but I am not a board. However, I have never let a logo stand in the way of ownership either. I have never bothered about having "Olympus" or "Leica" on a pentaprism, and I am not about to start now. It is an integral part of the design, an integral part of the product. Nobody removes the Spirit of Ecstacy from a Rolls Royce, so why worry about that little red dot?

For those to whom it really matters, there is one simple alternative - buy a Leica old enough not to have the dot - suddenly all your problems are solved. Ok, it won't be digital, but for many who seem to care about such ephemeral matters, I have a sneaking suspicion that it won't really matter - it's all about appearances. After all - who actually takes pictures with anything other than a cameraphone these days...?

Bill

--0-O-o--

- All images on this blog are copyright Bill Palmer and may not be reproduced in any format or medium without permission.

Tuesday 12 January 2010

Tag, you're it...

I have in the past few days learned all about the joys of "Geotagging". For the uninitiated, this is the process by which you can augment the EXIF data of your photos with the physical location that they were taken. Small, relatively cheap GPS receivers are used to track your travels and the record that they keep can then be combined on your computer with the images that you have taken (usually by means of timestamping) so that you can append the co-ordinates of each photo.

That's the theory - great, isn't it?

When I first heard about it, my Inner Geek got all excited - the propeller on the top of his head whirred so fast he nearly took off. A new shiny thing! A new means of enhancing the joys of photography! I can RECORD where I took each photo! I can, within a few tens of yards, say EXACTLY where I was standing! Inner Geek immediately started conducting internet searches for Geotagging gizmos. Prices were compared, baskets were added to, complete with free postage.

Then my Inner Pragmatist rubbed his chin and chimed in with an awkward question.

"Why?"

Inner Geek froze, his spiny fingers just inches from the wallet.

"Pardon?"

"What will you use it for?"

Inner Geek excitedly rattled off the rationale. Inner Pragmatist shook his head.

"No. What will YOU use it for...?"

Inner Geek sagged, and shuffled back to looking for the best deals on Babylon 5 boxed sets.

Now don't get me wrong. I can see a multitude of applications for professional, technical and commercial uses. The ability to provide locational information - or proof - would be very useful in many situations, including stock photography.

What I cannot quite get my head around is the unseemly excitement this technology seems to generate in otherwise sane photographers of a certain age. It seems to be the self same men who would not dream of stopping the car and asking for directions but are happy to let the mellifluous tones of an in-car satnav direct them the wrong way down a newly one-way street. I think it is the same phenomenon that leads to the wearing of those fancy Breitling emergency watches by those who never go further out of their depth than the bathtub. "The big boys have it so therefore I must have it too!"

Me, I use a Moleskine - no batteries, no chargers, no upgrades, no wi-fi, no SIM, no bluetooth, no firmware, no fixes, no GPS, no calibration, no hassle. Multifunctional, always on, compact, fits in a pocket or a corner of your bag, there when you need it, interfaces seamlessly with pen or pencil...

...and you can use it during take-off and landing...

It's all I need - seriously. And it is all that 99.9% of us "need", if truth be told. There is a simple pleasure to using a map - a paper map, that is - and marking it with a pencil. There is enjoyment to be had actually writing about a location rather than just double-clicking it on a screen. A couple of years ago I went to Seville for the first time. No photo, no exif data, no tag could bring again to mind the smell of the orange blossom in the same way that my notes - made at the time, in a pavement cafe - can.


Old-school "geotagging"...


Finally, there is one other aspect to geotagging that bothers me - the invasion of privacy. This has many facets - many of which are distasteful at best, and downright dangerous at worst. Imagine as geotagging becomes more mainstream, the mayhem that will result when the first mistress is tracked to her back garden by a wronged and embittered wife. Or the first battered ex-wife is tracked down by her abusive ex-husband from the embedded data in an otherwise innocent snap on Facebook... Imagine the consequences when the whistle-blower in the witness protection programme has their new life blown apart.

...it goes on.

The genie is out of the bottle, I know. Pandora has nothing on Panasonic. We cannot retreat from this latest "advance" - and no more should we - but we can be circumspect about it's use and cognisant of the risks...

...can't we?


Bill

--0-O-o--

- All images on this blog are copyright Bill Palmer and may not be reproduced in any format or medium without permission.