From: "Jeff Spirer" > Three megapixel phones and zoom lenses are arriving now. Focusing lens > technology (using heat sensitive materials to move the lens rather than > mechanical) is working but not in any phones that I've heard of. My phone > has about 15 seconds of movie-making capability built in. > > There's a large mobile blogging community that can be found here: > > http://www.textamerica.com/ you've been doing your research Jeff! > Some people have found ways to make very interesting images with them. as wossisname has with Plungercam, and I for one am VERY impressed with many of those images! see www.plungercam.com for some stunning pics random thoughts: Interesting though, these folk have gone out and done what Weston had done and gotten to know their gear, something I tried to impress upon my students. Familiarity with equipment and determining, emphasizing and using the strengths was much better than having a bag full of superior products that they never learned how to use. It used to be an old adage among teachers of photography that one should stick to a single lens, usually a 50mm until it was known *intimately* before acquiring anything new, and zooms were to be avoided for they offered too many choices. Zooms of course were always put forward as the last choice for often they encouraged people to change the focal length before considering changing their perspective. Same applied with film stock, stick to one and get to know it before switching and swapping - that way you'd know what the film was good for and where it performed poorly. Plungercam and digi camphones have offered these same limitations. back to those students of mine.. Many initially used to question the validity of learning about optics, chemistry, photo history etc and would defend their position by showing me images they'd made asking what was wrong with them. Nothing was of course (they could have been better though), but they had taken these images 'on the hop' in almost all cases - something they'd seen and photographed. Few could build images, create them or start with little and produce a lot, they didn't have the skills. A bit like a painter copying a painting or starting to paddle, seeing where they would be led - there's a time and a place for this creative meandering but that wasn't what I was there for - I was there to give them the knowledge and the tools to be able to realise the images in their heads before they hit that sutter button. In time they came to appreciate this and understood the difference between button pushing in front of a decent scene and truly making the most of good subject material. limiting them in what they could do, what they were set as assignments to shoot proved better for them in the long run than me just offering critiques each week of the images they'd made - it structured them into concentrating, slowing down and working hard for each image, assuming that was their goal. I see the role of a good pro as being one who gets the best possible from the scene. In time and by building up a full arsenal of equipment that's known intimately and the skill to know what to use and where, one can achieve great things, but an undisciplined approach will lead toward a 'hit and miss' effort of image making unless he person happens to be particularly intuitive it just seems strange in this modern world that digi is the answer to everything, Before MF had something to offer that 35mm couldn't reproduce, likewise LF had something over 120. Film stocks were carefully selected for onbe atribute or another. Pro's could shoot for weeks on end completely isolated from the modern world with cameras that needed no power supplies (just as journo's could write powerlessly with pencils ;-) I just get the feeling that the abandonment of film cameras for another media is odd and while many will be served magnificently by electronic imaging, others will not and in time there will be no other option and it will be too late for any of us to say whoops k
