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Author Topic: the real cost of it all...  (Read 15205 times)

telyt

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Re: the real cost of it all...
« Reply #40 on: October 18, 2015, 10:31:41 pm »

Or better field skills.
Not always practical or possible.
Personally I prefer to shoot wide angle but not often an option.
This mugshot was taken from less than 2m away.
The nest shot was even closer.

Having photographed birds and other wildlife over the last 45 years with lenses as short as 24mm and as long as about 800mm I'll agree that a 600mm lens can be handy when there isn't enough time or motivation to learn and use better field skills.  That does not make a 600mm lens a 'need'.  It's a substitute for field skills and patience.
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gbdz

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Re: the real cost of it all...
« Reply #41 on: October 19, 2015, 12:10:32 am »

Why do the 'rich', whoever they may actually be, have to be considered filthy?
I've known some, been friends with a few, and they are neither better nor worse people than anyone else that I know to the same degree.

In this particular case I use the expression 'filthy rich' of the people who live off the money market playing it as if it was a casino.
They do not do anything to add value to the products on the market but they are very skilled in inventing ways to get their fingers on 'other people's money' (you know the film?) with results like the banking crisis with junk bonds with nothing but air inside.

Those are the filthy rich, not people like Jobs or Branson or Madonna. 
Gangsters and thieves are filthy rich, not just anybody with money.
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amolitor

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Re: the real cost of it all...
« Reply #42 on: October 19, 2015, 01:23:14 am »

Humans are not wildlife.

The fact that a population of short lived mammals can thrive in an environment is not proof that human beings, as individuals, would enjoy decent quality of life.

If one deer in ten dies as a faun, in hideous agony, that may be just fine for the deer population. It might even be fine for a human population.

It's not so hot for the ones that die, though.

This is the actual situation around the Chernobyl facility and nobody had ever pretended otherwise.



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jjj

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Re: the real cost of it all...
« Reply #43 on: October 19, 2015, 06:02:23 am »

Having photographed birds and other wildlife over the last 45 years with lenses as short as 24mm and as long as about 800mm I'll agree that a 600mm lens can be handy when there isn't enough time or motivation to learn and use better field skills.  That does not make a 600mm lens a 'need'.  It's a substitute for field skills and patience.
Or time. People are rarely time rich. Particularly in the US with the limited holidays one gets there.
Or safety. Most people do not want to photograph bears say with a 24mm.
Or wanting to keep their distance so as not to disturb the animals.
Or because even with field skills the critters are too darn small
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jjj

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Re: the real cost of it all...
« Reply #44 on: October 19, 2015, 06:04:03 am »

If one deer in ten dies as a faun, in hideous agony, that may be just fine for the deer population. It might even be fine for a human population.

It's not so hot for the ones that die, though.

This is the actual situation around the Chernobyl facility and nobody had ever pretended otherwise.
Never seen anyone acknowledge that when extolling how wonderful the wildlife is doing around Chernobyl.
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telyt

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Re: the real cost of it all...
« Reply #45 on: October 19, 2015, 07:45:03 am »

Or time. People are rarely time rich. Particularly in the US with the limited holidays one gets there.
Or safety. Most people do not want to photograph bears say with a 24mm.
Or wanting to keep their distance so as not to disturb the animals.
Or because even with field skills the critters are too darn small

who said bears should be photographed with a 24mm lens?  this was photographed with a 280mm lens and I had to maneuver between other people to get a clear view (the Forest Service was monitoring safety):


if you're disturbing the animal your field skills need improvement.  I spent a couple of hours with this Mountain Bluebird as it foraged; at times it landed within 2 meters of me and at no time was it alarmed (250mm lens):


I spent an hour with this jackrabbit as it fed and it eventually wandered within 3 meters of me (280mm lens):


hummingbirds are small (280mm lens):


squirrels are small too (280mm lens with extension tube):


All these photos were made on my time off - mostly weekends - from a full-time office job.
« Last Edit: October 19, 2015, 07:51:20 am by wildlightphoto »
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GrahamBy

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Re: the real cost of it all...
« Reply #46 on: October 19, 2015, 09:15:35 am »


The fact that a population of short lived mammals can thrive in an environment is not proof that human beings, as individuals, would enjoy decent quality of life.

Exactly: ecology doesn't care about individual survival.

However I've worked on data relating to the health of the populations evacuated from the Chernobyl area and there are surprising features: while childhood thyroid cancer incidence is up by a huge factor (~90, but some of this is likely a screening effect), there is surprisingly little effect on leukemia. The thyroid is vulnerable due to incorporation of radiaoactive strontium from the milk of cows grazing on fields contaminated by radioactive dust.

There is also a high rate of lung cancer observed in the clean-up workers who were shipped in from around the (then) USSR... but then they were also "rewarded" with unlimited cigarette allowances. It could be that the effects of radioactive dust and cigarette smoke multiply, as do tobacco and asbestos, or tobacco and radon.

Strange though that while so many people want to believe that radiation from Chernobyl and Fukushima is bad (fair enough), it's very hard to get across the message that irradiating kids in CT machines each time they bang their head on the ground may not be a great idea... even though the doses are now much lower than 30 years ago, when adult settings were used for children.
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gbdz

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Re: the real cost of it all...
« Reply #47 on: October 19, 2015, 03:00:58 pm »

There is very little concern of the cosmic radiation hitting frequent flyers. Very little is being said about the radon gas accumulation in houses built on certain types of bedrock.  I t makes me smile when people actually think that there is something evil lurking in the forests of Kiev despite the fact that the populations are doing just great.

Of course the primary responding teams got mortal doses of irradiation, I am not the one to dispute that.
Probably there were stillbirths more than usual. I am sure that statistically significant increase in thyroid carcinoma was observed. Statistically...you see?

There was no deluge of monsters dying away in massive amounts.
Why not?
Because we are congenitally protected against the mutagenic effects of electromagnetic and ionizing radiation. Evolution wipes the wounded mutants away from the circulation. The fetuses carrying massive mutations miscarry.

Healthy ones prosper.
People are just so ignorant, scared and completely thinking with their glands when somebody says the word 'radiation'. Radiation is everywhere...it  is just the dosage that makes the difference.

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jjj

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Re: the real cost of it all...
« Reply #48 on: October 19, 2015, 03:59:02 pm »

There is very little concern of the cosmic radiation hitting frequent flyers. Very little is being said about the radon gas accumulation in houses built on certain types of bedrock.  I t makes me smile when people actually think that there is something evil lurking in the forests of Kiev despite the fact that the populations are doing just great.

Of course the primary responding teams got mortal doses of irradiation, I am not the one to dispute that.
Probably there were stillbirths more than usual. I am sure that statistically significant increase in thyroid carcinoma was observed. Statistically...you see?

There was no deluge of monsters dying away in massive amounts.
Were you there doing observations to document this then?

Quote
Why not?
Because we are congenitally protected against the mutagenic effects of electromagnetic and ionizing radiation. Evolution wipes the wounded mutants away from the circulation. The fetuses carrying massive mutations miscarry.

Healthy ones prosper.
That must come as a surprise to all those women over the years who have given birth to 'unhealthy' babies.



Quote
People are just so ignorant, scared and completely thinking with their glands when somebody says the word 'radiation'. Radiation is everywhere...it  is just the dosage that makes the difference.
Except the dosages at Chernobyl are quite likely to be problematic. Unlike the usual background stuff.
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GrahamBy

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Re: the real cost of it all...
« Reply #49 on: October 19, 2015, 04:21:59 pm »

There is very little concern of the cosmic radiation hitting frequent flyers. Very little is being said about the radon gas accumulation in houses built on certain types of bedrock.

There have been several large studies on aircrew, especially those flying over the pole to Japan, who in principle will receive the largest doses. The only observed increases in cancer rates are for melanoma and other skin cancers... and only in cabin crew, not pilots. It is widely suspected that this correlates with sun bathing.

As for radon, there was a a large european radon project to map emissions across Europe. The best thing you can do if you live on basalt is... stop smoking. Because the radon effect multiplies on the tobacco effect, if you are a non smoker it is multiplying on a base rate 15-20 times lower, so the absolute risk becomes tiny. You should probably ventilate a bit too.
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GrahamBy

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Re: the real cost of it all...
« Reply #50 on: October 19, 2015, 04:25:44 pm »

This should be in the coffee corner.
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jjj

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Re: the real cost of it all...
« Reply #51 on: October 19, 2015, 05:15:44 pm »

This should be in the coffee corner.
Well discussion started as a LuLa article, so correct location.


You should probably ventilate a bit too.
;D
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jeremyrh

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Re: the real cost of it all...
« Reply #52 on: October 20, 2015, 02:40:07 am »


That must come as a surprise to all those women over the years who have given birth to 'unhealthy' babies.

And a great comfort to those who lost their babies due to miscarriage.
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Rob C

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Re: the real cost of it all...
« Reply #53 on: October 20, 2015, 04:04:26 am »

This should be in the coffee corner.

Better yet, The Lancet.

Rob C

Rand47

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Re: the real cost of it all...
« Reply #54 on: October 27, 2015, 03:03:01 pm »

Quote
To take your argument to its 'logical' end point you do not need any camera of any kind. Or anything really, other than the bottom tiers of Maslow's hierarchy of needs.
By not doing enjoyable things because they are merely a 'want' you'll probably end up being quite miserable. Doing things that make you happy/life worth living are as much a need as eating the things that satiate hunger.

For the most part I think there is value in some of this notion. (Deprivation for the sake of deprivation can make one miserable.)  I once added up the asking prices for the equipment on just the first two pages of this web site's for sale page.  The total was somewhere in the vicinity of $200,000.00  This undoubtedly reflects only a percentage of the money spent in acquiring the items.  It made me wonder how much "happiness" these purchases brought to their owners.  Gratification "at the time" I suspect was high.  Contribution to their overall happiness and wellbeing are another matter. "Yet when I surveyed all that my hands had done and what I had toiled to achieve, everything was meaningless, a chasing after the wind; nothing was gained under the sun."  I think our collective pursuit of the latest and greatest very often is a reflection of this age old hunger for meaning, that is never met in material pursuits or acquisition. 

That's one of the strangest things about photography as a pursuit/art.  Some images that we produce do contribute to our happiness and well being.  They can even be expressions of deep meaning for us that reflect our worldview in ways that perhaps even our words could not.  And there is "some" relationship between equipment capability and our ability to produce those images.  But it is not nearly as critical as we make it out to be.  And often the pursuit of "stuff" (no matter what the justification) becomes a joy robbing hole into which we throw wads of money in pursuit of something whose root and attainment lie in an entirely different direction.

Rand
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Rob C

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Re: the real cost of it all...
« Reply #55 on: October 27, 2015, 04:49:55 pm »

For the most part I think there is value in some of this notion. (Deprivation for the sake of deprivation can make one miserable.)  I once added up the asking prices for the equipment on just the first two pages of this web site's for sale page.  The total was somewhere in the vicinity of $200,000.00  This undoubtedly reflects only a percentage of the money spent in acquiring the items.  It made me wonder how much "happiness" these purchases brought to their owners.  Gratification "at the time" I suspect was high.  Contribution to their overall happiness and wellbeing are another matter. "Yet when I surveyed all that my hands had done and what I had toiled to achieve, everything was meaningless, a chasing after the wind; nothing was gained under the sun."  I think our collective pursuit of the latest and greatest very often is a reflection of this age old hunger for meaning, that is never met in material pursuits or acquisition. 

That's one of the strangest things about photography as a pursuit/art.  Some images that we produce do contribute to our happiness and well being.  They can even be expressions of deep meaning for us that reflect our worldview in ways that perhaps even our words could not.  And there is "some" relationship between equipment capability and our ability to produce those images.  But it is not nearly as critical as we make it out to be.  And often the pursuit of "stuff" (no matter what the justification) becomes a joy robbing hole into which we throw wads of money in pursuit of something whose root and attainment lie in an entirely different direction.

Rand


Nothing to dispute there: you nailed it.

I find myself getting a buzz out of my first digital body (D200) whilst the later D700 sits alone in its cabinet. The af 1.8/50 G I bought because of bad eyesight also sits doing not much after the first flush of excitement at crisper images, the older mf one is now being used again because I had to override the af so very often that poor eyes or not, manual focus was the only way to go for me.

So much for the newest and best. The number of times recently that I have regretted blowing a wad on that D700... but, should I want to do anything in poor light, it will come back into its own. Problem is, I don't want to do anything in poor light these days. And when I do, I'm perfectly happy to get noise, which I often add even when I have shot at 100 ISO. I just don't like clinically clean images anymore: they look anything but what I seek for my work right now; I like gutsy, not sterile, squeaky clean.

;-(

Rob C

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Re: the real cost of it all...
« Reply #56 on: October 28, 2015, 11:40:16 pm »

Equipment can aid learning, or it can get in the way of learning. In theory, one ought to be able to increase photographic skills quickly, because photos are reviewable instantly and because it doesn't cost to experiment with the variables of aperture, shutter speed, ISO, tripod v. not, panning v. not, composition experiments, lighting experiments, etc.

However, having new equipment all the time could distract one from learning skillls, other than the new set of menus and options on the new camera. Plus, a familiar camera is easier to handle in situations where seconds count. The more routine handling is second nature, the more attention can be paid to why one is taking the photo in the first place. And shopping for new equipment also uses up brain space that could be devoted to intellectual and esthetic uses.
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Ray

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Re: the real cost of it all...
« Reply #57 on: October 29, 2015, 02:00:17 am »


 I just don't like clinically clean images anymore: they look anything but what I seek for my work right now; I like gutsy, not sterile, squeaky clean.

;-(

Rob C

Then you should try photographing subjects that are not clinically clean, Rob. The clinically clean rendition capabilities of a modern Nikon DSLR should reveal the non-sterile, gutsy qualities of your subject matter in all its glory.  ;D
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Rob C

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Re: the real cost of it all...
« Reply #58 on: October 29, 2015, 06:46:30 am »

Then you should try photographing subjects that are not clinically clean, Rob. The clinically clean rendition capabilities of a modern Nikon DSLR should reveal the non-sterile, gutsy qualities of your subject matter in all its glory.  ;D


As I do, Ray.



Ray

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Re: the real cost of it all...
« Reply #59 on: October 29, 2015, 08:36:46 am »


As I do, Ray.



Now what is the significance of this photo, Rob? It is said that a picture is worth a thousand words. Could you describe in less than a thousand words, the hidden meaning, symbolic significance and import that might not be clear to some of us.  ;)

How does the graininess improve the image, for example?
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