My pal Optio is under the weather
Posted on November 22, 2006
Filed Under All, Photos |
So, most people will find this silly, but I’ll bet even some hard-bitten, gnarled, been-everywhere, endured-everything photojournalists will understand my complaint.
Today my Pentax Optio-X stopped working: it’s the camera that’s produced almost all of the pics you’ve seen here recently. I love this camera: it features a brilliant design (IMHO), though it has some techie shortcomings (like the dread shutter lag, now rapidly disappearing from digital cameras). Like every camera, it has strengths and weaknesses: it is a tool. Only poor workmen blame their tools - the Optio X is capable of some very fine photos should the photographer care to use it well.
The Optio X has a rotating lens/imaging head, a design I first saw in the Nikon Coolpix 995 I purchased a few years back, but the Optio X is much smaller. The great thing about a rotating head is that it allows the photographer to look down, and not at the subject of the photo. This is really crucial in public situations, where photos are so fleeting, you may not have a chance to approach your subject and establish rapport before snapping the telling moment.
Modern digital cameras, with their LCD screens that one holds at arm’s length, are probably the most aggressive, and useless, camera technology from a standpoint of photographing strangers, something I do a lot. With these cameras, people really know that someone is photographing them, and it almost inevitably wrecks the moment, and the photo. There’s also the issue that when a geezer like me sticks a camera in a stranger’s face, e.g. a young woman, a child with a nearby hovering parent, misunderstandings are common. People, expecting the worst, want to know what the !@#$ I’m doing photographing them, their daughter, mother or whomever.
I don’t think Henri Cartier Bresson would have done well in this new digital-viewfinder era. He did a great job, maximizing his silent Leicas, median stature and affectation for generic clothing in an age when such existed. His photos of life in France remain among my all-time favorites. All-hail the master of invisibility.
Anyway, Optio (my ‘friend’ - know that I am mush-headed enough that many of my cameras have names) needs repair. Pentax no longer makes a swivel head model, and I am unaware of any other maker who does. So I will probably send Optio off for yet another repair (the cumulative costs of which will now exceed the $400 purchase price 2 years or so ago). I don’t think modern consumer-market cameras are built to take daily usage and the pounding of hauling them around on Muni, Caltrain et al.
In the meantime I will be using my digital Leica Digiulux 2, which requires a whole new modus operandi - much more like M. Cartier-Bresson’s very fine techniques. I’ll dress a little more ’street,’ and have cards that say ‘Chris Gulker, Street Photographer.’ I’ll wear the camera around my neck, and just act like a photographer. With luck, I will survive the more strenuous objections of my subjects…
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I’ve recently realised this in the context of taking photographs of my friends. I realised that now I had a digital camera, even though it doesn’t conveniently twist like Optio, I could take photos of friends without looking through the viewfinder, and quickly check the results on the LCD, re-adjusting my aim if necessary. Not as easy as having a twisty LCD, but workable.
Apart from getting more natural poses (when my friends get a camera pointed at them, they tend to look like this: http://www.flickr.com/photos/pauldwaite/259139249/in/set-72157594310073324/), I’ve found that holding the camera in other places than in front of my face tends to give me more unusual and interesting angles. (I’m also, rather ungratifyingly, better at composing photos when I don’t actuallly compse them.)
Sometimes I’ve got pictures I couldn’t have gotten if I insisted on having my face next to the camera, like this one:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/pauldwaite/259141897/in/set-72157594310073324/
I was sitting next to the chap in question, and had my camera on the table in front of me, facing back towards him.
I’d be especially interested in knowing the tool’s failure details. As off warranty, a bit overused, maybe time to take a closer look inside and go for an upgrade for the second camera. Is there a rep counter? What kind of case? Nicks and dings?
Fun pix Paul, and you have definitely picked up on one of the pro’s bag of tricks, which is to use angles other than eye-level as seen in the second shot. Camera on table is something I’ve done a few times… on the N Judah it’s camera on lap or messenger bag.
Getting low, or high, can make a routine snap much more interesting… try holding the camera down around you knee or ankle… it will likely take a few tries before you get the hang of framing without being able to see through the viewfinder, but the results can be worth it. It’s easy and cheap to burn ‘film’ in these digital days…
Greg - if the camera is unrepairable, I’ll send it to you for failure analysis. My guess is it was just too much engineering to pack into a $400 retail camera. The Nikon was more reliable, but it was much bigger and cost around $1000. The Nikon still works…
[…] Paul and Greg left comments about Optio: Paul noting that a low angle with conventional digital cameras can make for an interesting picture vs. the more usual mugging that people are wont to do when they know are being photographed. Greg, ever the curious investigator, wants to know why the camera failed. […]
Crikey, ankle-height eh? I’ll have to give that a go next time.
Yeah, I don’t think I would have stumbled on the more random snapping if I was still using film. One of the main reasons I shelled out hundreds of pounds on a digital SLR was that, with getting all my films developed onto CD to save the effort of scanning, I’d make my money back in film and development savings within a couple of years.
What I didn’t realise was that, with each photo now effectively free, I’d take so many more. This has led to me enjoying my photography more, simply because the process of taking photos, looking at them, evaluating them, and trying something different next time has been made so much quicker. Kinda like the iPod with music.
This might be your answer. Get another Lumix.
http://panasonic.co.jp/pavc/global/lumix/fz50/useful_functions.html
Heh, I’ll tell Linda the Optio is too expensive to repair and it’ll be ‘cheaper’ to buy a new camera… Happy Thanksgiving, Mr. R…
[…] Reading of Optio’s plight, Roger suggested replacing him with this Lumix model, which features a rotating viewfinder. Amazingly, this 10.1 megapixel Lumix FZ50, featuring a fast Schneider zoom is only $129 more than the Pentax when new. I can imagine saying to Linda, with a straight face, I’ve had to repair the Pentax 3 times now, it’s cheaper to buy a new camera.’ But here’s what I really want… […]
[…] Anyway, yesterday when I was writing about the relative economics of repairing vs. replacing my Pentax Optio X camera, I wondered how much the first repair cost. It was some months ago, I have since repaired a Panasonic Lumix that managed to accompany Linda on a tumble down a treacherous hillside, and I couldn’t remember which repair cost what. So I moved over to the G4 Mini with its ever-waiting Fujitsu SnapScan, fired up the Yep PDF browser and typed in ‘Pentax’: immediately 4 documents appeared, including the invoice for the repair. So I smugly typed ‘So I will probably send Optio off for yet another repair’ into the post below, having gone straight to the source. […]
[…] Optio, actually my old Pentax Optio X camera, has been dispatched to Pentax repair for the 3rd time. Readers may recall that I liked it’s small size and swivel viewfinder that made it easy to quietly capture scenes for the N Judah Portfolio. […]