When will we be satisfied? When is enough, enough?

While I have been anxiously awaiting PMA and the anouncements of New Models, I have sat here and reflected. I keep asking myself when will I be satisfied with what I own? When will enough, be enough? Is it just me or do these thoughts cross anyone else's mind?--Jason Stoller [email protected]
Catching that special moment with a great camera

Uhm, so far, it looks like it's just you... ;-)

OTOH, you could be considering the greater picture and debating whether man's quest for perfection might be his own undoing. Or just flip the channel and see what else is on.

PS Much like the supreme court's stand on pornography, I'm not sure what "enough" is when it comes to digital photography yet, but I'll know it when I see it. Uh, that is, I hope I will. For now, I'll say something North of 7MPs at 3-5 FPS with a ten to twenty shot buffer and 2 seconds per file processing/storage time that can handle high ISOs with minimal noise, knows what wide angle and tele really means, and doesn't cost over $2K or require a leaf blower backpack generator to run it. And now back in the real world...

Jason Stoller said:

when will I be satisfied with what I own? When will enough, be
enough

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When? Never,I say Never. It is not in mans nature to ever really to be satisfied and there will always be better. A line can be extended to infinity and be divided to infinity. I could say a lot more but the above is just the pure basics. Where as an individual may be content with certian aspecs in his personal life, mankind will always seek out better and if the concept of infinity is true there will always be better. A giant step with cameras or should I say imagery is when we will not need a device at all and we can produce it with pure thought.
I'm not a pro but I can give my opinion with the best of them: Will Walton

I guess 35mm reached it's peak in film - for the pro-sumer - nothing came along to tweak it, or replace it. Film speeds got better, quality etc., cameras improved. But are we seeing the end of that process? Is natural selection sounding the end of 35mm in favour of digital? Enough in one arena usually means growth in another. Hologram cameras - 3D imaging? Is enough ever enough? Or does enough evolve? Very philisophical this morning. Davidk

Jason Stoller said:

While I have been anxiously awaiting PMA and the anouncements of
New Models, I have sat here and reflected. I keep asking myself
when will I be satisfied with what I own? When will enough, be
enough? Is it just me or do these thoughts cross anyone else's
mind?
--
Jason Stoller [email protected]
Catching that special moment with a great camera

Click to expand...

On a personal point... I have just called it enough for myself. I just bought a new E-20 and thus have commited to using it for at least 2 years before replacing it. 2 years is about my normal usage on digicams thus far.

Started off with a Casio QV-100 (talk about a fine piece of equipment ... Yuck)
Oly 2100 UZ
E-20

I figure I ought to be able to have a heck of a lot fo fun before time to replace the E-20.

Jason Stoller said:

While I have been anxiously awaiting PMA and the anouncements of
New Models, I have sat here and reflected. I keep asking myself
when will I be satisfied with what I own? When will enough, be
enough? Is it just me or do these thoughts cross anyone else's
mind?
--
Jason Stoller [email protected]
Catching that special moment with a great camera

Click to expand...

--Tommy

I've had an Olympus 2500 and a Coolpix 990 for some time now, and I'm holding it at that. And you know what? I take pictures! And they look good. But I'm only a hobbyist.

After having bought four digital cameras (and this applies to all the other electronic stuff I've upgraded and upgraded) I have to say the fun is in wanting and dreaming. But once I got the thing in my hands, the fun dissipated, and I had to justify my purchase by using it for what it was designed to do.

For me, anyway, reading all these announcements of the latest and greatest doesn't have the excitement it used to have. I find it kind of a bore. But it is fun watching everyone else salivate or kvetch, or groan, or make way too much of what is only one little part of life.

---- Martin

Jason,

Honestly, if Oly would increase the buffer and write times of the E-20, provide a 6-7MP (actual) ccd, and increase the ISO to at least 1200 while reducing the noise a little more, I would not be looking anywhere else.

Jason Busch--'I do just about everything in my CCD's...'

When it comes to digital imaging there are too many areas left underdeveloped to foresee that time in the foreseeable future. It's not just resolution, it's noise, dynamic range, camera size, image format, compression schemes, etc., etc., etc.

But, when contemplating at what level THE MASSES might be satisfied I have to remind myself that Rosanne Barr became a star.

Jason Stoller said:

While I have been anxiously awaiting PMA and the anouncements of
New Models, I have sat here and reflected. I keep asking myself
when will I be satisfied with what I own? When will enough, be
enough? Is it just me or do these thoughts cross anyone else's
mind?
--
Jason Stoller [email protected]
Catching that special moment with a great camera

Click to expand...

Hi Jason

I think we're our own worst enemies on this issue.
Always looking over the hedge for something better.

It's a simple trap to fall into but one has to remember that this route involves spending lots of hard earned cash.
And the folk who fair worst are those that buy into cutting technology first.

The pro's are always going to need something that gives them a little edge, but for the hobbyist, common sense has to prevail.

The last decade has been unique where all sorts of electronic goods have evolved, but I think they are at a plateau now where we can forget about the technology and concentrate on the art.

It's common knowledge among IT people that the message to Microsoft is to back off with changing operating systems every few years and allow the industry to settle down a little.

The E20's buffer and other little foibles everyone knows about but overall it is a good package.

I do not want more pixels as it raises other issues such as storage.

Hard drives are filling up fast and recordable DVD media is pretty expensive at the moment, and I don't want to archive good photos as jpg's.

Don't fall into the trap.

Get to know and use what you have before thinking about moving on, and think of all the nice folk we can meet, and learn from, along the way, here for example.

Best wishes

Gerard

Jason Stoller said:

While I have been anxiously awaiting PMA and the anouncements of
New Models, I have sat here and reflected. I keep asking myself
when will I be satisfied with what I own? When will enough, be
enough? Is it just me or do these thoughts cross anyone else's
mind?
--
Jason Stoller [email protected]
Catching that special moment with a great camera

Click to expand...

--

Tommy Martin said:

Started off with a Casio QV-100 (talk about a fine piece of
equipment ... Yuck)
Oly 2100 UZ
E-20

Click to expand...

Tommy !!!!!!

A Casio QV-100 - I thought I had the last one! Still using it too. The beauty of it is, I don't give a S* if it ever gets stolen/broken or whatever!
--TomB

For all of us who can never be satisfied with our equipment, it is sometimes necessary to look back to the early works of Ansel Adams. Many, if not the majority, of his most respected works were accomplished with equipment that, even for his time, was third rate at best. The quality is in the presentation of the vision, not in the equipment.

--Coup

I guess we'll never have enough, for example, a few folks here have expressed their "ideal" camera with 6-7MP and faster storage, but what if you wanted to shoot a landscape in the kind of quality medium format or even a rangefinder camera gives?? You would want 16...32....50MP or more!!! and what if you could have this in a package the size of an E10 with a very high quality lens? Using a methanol fuel cell power source that lasted for 2 months before it needed a refil.

It will happen, you can be certain of that its just a matter of when, and when that time comes we'll look back at times like this and laugh at our "old" gear.

The problem with digital that I find is I always look back at shots taken witih an inferior camera and think they look bad (in my case a 6 month borrow of a Fuji Dx10, yes thats bad!), we will be doing that with our old E** in the future, its a shame but its inevitable, all we can do now is squeeze as much enjoyment and quality out of the equipment we have, and I think most people on this forum do.

Chris

Jason Stoller said:

While I have been anxiously awaiting PMA and the anouncements of
New Models, I have sat here and reflected. I keep asking myself
when will I be satisfied with what I own? When will enough, be
enough? Is it just me or do these thoughts cross anyone else's
mind?
--
Jason Stoller [email protected]
Catching that special moment with a great camera

Click to expand...

When I can buy a D1x for €2,000

An E10 for €500
An E20 for €650
A D30 for €1,000
An S2 for €1,500

And medium format backs for about €4,000

AND when it does not cost me the same again just to POWER the dam thing through a few daily exposures.

Pixels??? – Oh yes” – I’ve enough of those, except I’d like them graded, a A, B, C and D with A being the fattest professional class and prorata like C being the E10/20 class and the lowest being the cheapest consumer cams – so we can see at a glance and get our feelings for the pixels size v number v CCD “size” etc.

I am in the same boat. I bought the E-10 with the hopes to hang on to it till the next generation "consumer" DSLR that Nikon is supposed to announce at PMA.

Tommy Martin said:

Started off with a Casio QV-100 (talk about a fine piece of
equipment ... Yuck)
Oly 2100 UZ
E-20

I figure I ought to be able to have a heck of a lot fo fun before
time to replace the E-20.

Jason Stoller said:

While I have been anxiously awaiting PMA and the anouncements of
New Models, I have sat here and reflected. I keep asking myself
when will I be satisfied with what I own? When will enough, be
enough? Is it just me or do these thoughts cross anyone else's
mind?
--
Jason Stoller [email protected]
Catching that special moment with a great camera

Click to expand...

--
Tommy

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I think I'll say enough when we have a satisfactory vector-based capture device.

Jus dreamin

Sethu.
-- http://www.sethu.net

My comments in this forum have mostly resembled ramblings from a comatose bum propped up in a corner. My analogies just didn't work. So here goes one more try. My first mountain bike was nothing fancy. Noone rode them and the trails were not illegal yet. I had a ball. Last year the suspension bike reached a level of refinement that I approved of. So I paid $3000 for one. First ride showed that for some reason, around 35 mph, when I rode without hands, the bike would go into a high speed shimmy. So (like my e-10) it too is back at the factory. They are giving me an exhange frame tomorrow. Front and rear suspension, aluminum frame as thin as a beer can, and disk brakes make this thing an awesome collection of mechanical design. But yet, I was very unhappy. Comparisons and expectations are part of this equation of disappointment. I know little of Ansel Adams, but I know he did much more than take pictures. He walked. He experienced the beauty. He had to. I was thrilled with my first bike ($300) and upset with my new one. I expected more from it. There is happiness, but it's from within. It's easy to overscrutinize, especially in this highly paced world of product development. The e-10 really is one hell of an image maker. Look forward, but don't forget to look back too.
Gregg Kuljian
PS I'm better at peddling than thinking and writing! "Oh bother."

Chris Charlton said:

Chris

Jason Stoller said:

While I have been anxiously awaiting PMA and the anouncements of
New Models, I have sat here and reflected. I keep asking myself
when will I be satisfied with what I own? When will enough, be
enough? Is it just me or do these thoughts cross anyone else's
mind?
--
Jason Stoller [email protected]
Catching that special moment with a great camera

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

I have been hoping something would happen to mine. I actually gave it to my 8 year old son a few weeks back. He can't seem to break the thing either.

That thing is a big time battery eater!

Tom Barlow said:

Tommy !!!!!!

A Casio QV-100 - I thought I had the last one! Still using it too.
The beauty of it is, I don't give a S* if it ever gets
stolen/broken or whatever!

--
TomB

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--Tommy

Gregg I can Identify with that, I started riding recumbent bicycles this last year because I cannot ride a regular bike anymore and the cost for my titanium was out of this world. When I think of my old 2 speed schwinn with balloon tires that was built like a tank compared to what I am riding today I cannot even imagine it.

gregg said:

Chris Charlton said:

Chris

Jason Stoller said:

While I have been anxiously awaiting PMA and the anouncements of
New Models, I have sat here and reflected. I keep asking myself
when will I be satisfied with what I own? When will enough, be
enough? Is it just me or do these thoughts cross anyone else's
mind?
--
Jason Stoller [email protected]
Catching that special moment with a great camera

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

--Jason Stoller [email protected] that special moment with a great camera

Companies want to stay in business. They are determined to keep you wanting more - they never leave you satisfied... And they always ask too much for it - pushing the boundaries of what you will pay. Human nature is to want more - 'I can't get no satidfaction'.... And rightly so else we'd have been saitisfied with caves and clubs.

Looking at this in a wider perspective, I think many countries envy very much the West and its riches - they want the good things too and will travel across the world risking their lives to have a slice.

I am not Gordon Gecko evangelist, I believe in compassion. But basic to human beings is the want of more: 'more soup, sir' as Oliver Twist famously asked.--Plooph

Jason,

In contemplating an answer to this, I asked myself if the equipment delivers - in my case an E10. I went through some older photos that I had taken with my P&S film and then even my earliest E-10 pictures and the answer is a resounding YES! Ths recent Fuji announcement can allow me to improve in a few areas, but I can say unequivocally that image quality will not be one of those areas. Fact is, if Oly brings out a wider zoom range lens, I may just be satisfied for sometime to come. What about you, notwithstanding the philosophical debate, what would motivate you to upgrade or stay with the E-XX?
LesDMess

Jason Stoller said:

While I have been anxiously awaiting PMA and the anouncements of
New Models, I have sat here and reflected. I keep asking myself
when will I be satisfied with what I own? When will enough, be
enough? Is it just me or do these thoughts cross anyone else's
mind?
--
Jason Stoller [email protected]
Catching that special moment with a great camera

Click to expand...

--Oly SLR discussion group album http://www.fototime.com/inv/086F92046880B2F and http://www.fototime.com/inv/20392A0E8516C9A Once in fototime, click on the thumbnail to enlarge in a navigation window.