In praise of the “don’t know how the pic will look" camera

We just developed our first prints from our digital camera- after 3 years! My brother, who had gifted me the camera, took more prints than I did out of it, and I was surprised by my own capacity for inertia. While the pictures were downloaded onto the computer and shared and everything, they never ever made it to the photo store.

On the topic of these devices, let me say one thing- they are alright, but have altered the vacation-going experience considerably.

Mainly have added more points to the blood pressure of parents vacationing with their bratty 4 to whatever-year-olds.

Now one thing to be said about the older cameras- they were inaccessible to children. One could easily ward them off by saying that film was expensive, “you’re not old enough”, or that using film from an early age causes irreparable brain damage and you just have to look at daddy for proof.

With digital, though, it’s quite the opposite. My niece just told me the other day, “Aunty, you should not look at that screen for too long.” As I switched it off in a hurry(with help from her, of course), she winked at her brother.

There’s no reason you can give these kids for not using the camera. While it may be great for young cameraperson geniuses, for most of the folks, it’s just heart-attack time, as they watch their kids dangling that $500 camera on the edge of a wall, which falls an equal number of feet into a steep gorge.

And of course, there’s the question of prints. With everything computerized these days, people enjoy photos, cards and everything over the computer. Of course, Betty looked a lot more tanned, and Kavitha lost all that weight- thanks to a new health and beauty plan called- photoshop!

While all that time is spent in touching up photos and making them perfect, only the very diligent of folks would bother taking prints. The rest of us are just content looking at it on our desktops as our wallpaper! Part of it has to do with the fact that there’s just nothing to look forward to from the prints- you’ve seen it all anyways.

A point brought home by my recent foray into printing digital.
After the 3 years of owning the camera, I finally decided that it was time for the first prints from it. I made a CD of the photos I wanted printed, and went over to the store, and of course, the machine would not read my CD. I tried about a dozen times, and failing at all the attempts (one would think I’d have given up after at least 5-6 tries), I was told by the woman at the counter that maybe my CD wasn’t OK. So I ran back home (lest the moment be lost, and those photos were condemned to never see the light of enlarger), made another CD and went back to the store. This time it read my CD, but I could not select the pictures I wanted printed. I had about 200 photos, and I definitely did NOT need to print all of them. Disillusioned, I returned home, with the photo lab woman wishing me luck next time!

With the wonder of the internet, though, I uploaded my pictures onto a website, which printed the pictures and also sent me an email confirming the amount to be paid (which, I must admit, is too attractive to not consider going digital).

Now that the prints were there, it was only a question of picking them up. I was kind of excited, not knowing how they would look on PAPER, but mostly because, I think, of Pavlovian conditioning of being excited when picking up photos.

I went to the store, and after listening to how convenient the whole digital process was, I was given the prints. I took the photos, and after going home and settling down on my papasan, started looking at the photos.

(Just as an aside, I have to settle down in a comfortable position in familiar surroundings before looking at any pictures that I’ve taken, and preferably alone- it’s just one of my many, you know, things.)

And man, what a let down! They were just like they looked on the screen! I don’t what I was expecting, but it definitely wasn’t this- the pictures themselves were great, but they gave me no kick.

It’s just like I feel about pregnancy (which is over-rated, as experiences go, by the way)- Not knowing the sex of your baby while pregnant is the only way you’ll ever look forward to the rest of it. When you know what your print is going to look like, and you’ve already shared it with so many friends- all that remains is the labor of making a print.

With digital cameras, there’s another double-edged sword phenomenon at functions- that of the multiple photographer syndrome. They’re the “digirazzi.” With everyone owning one of “those”, there are flashes going off every second, where people capture their own versions of the wedding/ birthday party/bar mitzvah/whatever. There is no place to hide from them, and if Annie wants some time off to make out with the best man, the digirazzi are there, waiting. As these are “mental candid cameramen” (meaning they think they’re) they look for the story behind the story.

In those good old days of paper and film, they wouldn’t bother wasting an entire roll of film on this- bad enough they have to bring a gift!

To be fair, though, if it weren’t for digital, we would never have so many good pictures of our trips. When I took a few (candid) pictures of my sister’s wedding with my old 35mm, it turned out the shutter wasn’t working alright, and it all looks like it’s dark and taking place in secret in a dungeon.

As the great artist Poison sings, “Every Rose Has Its Thorn!”