This post is being sent via telegram to an office that will fax it to an intern. Stop. The intern will then transcribe the post onto the blog. Stop.
I’m very well aware that we often say that the DSLR is dead. Though Gear Editor Brett Day still owns one, I’ll stick to my policy and the site’s policies. Are we saying that DSLRs are bad cameras? No. But instead, this policy is prioritized on focusing the site and gearing us up for the future. And we’re not the only ones saying this. Canon has declared that they’ll no longer work on other EF mount lenses unless there is enough demand. Sony doesn’t really care much about the A-mount anymore. Olympus gave up on Four Thirds mount properly a long time ago in favor of Micro Four Thirds. And Nikon is still the only one really pushing ahead. And then, you know, there’s Pentax catering to the folks who desperately still cling to DSLRs. Let’s take the motivation for this blog post, for example.
I have to admit that I get some pretty stupid emails. If there aren’t racists, self-righteous, or privileged comments coming to us, it’s stuff like this. In most cases, I ignore it. But this one, in particular, was just fun enough for me to comment on.
Before I continue, I’m going to do the following things:
- Complain to Bill Gates about how he’s decimating the typewriter industry
- Write a letter in quill and ink to Apple about how they’re devaluing the watch.
- Complain to Google that I’m furious that all my Encyclopedia Brittanica volumes are now void and useless.
- Mail a letter to Facebook about how the Yellow Pages and the White Pages are now just taking up space in my small Brooklyn apartment and that now I have to throw all of them out and carry them down the stairs.
- Send a telegram to the CEO of Netflix about how angry I am that they murdered Blockbuster Video.
- Tell Verizon how I really miss waiting weeks on end for them to send me a CD so that I can upgrade to AOL 9.0.
- Use my rotary telephone to make a complaint to Trello that they’re now voiding the need for all these notebooks that I have because I don’t need to keep records like that anymore.
- Send a fax to DROBO about how angry I am that I don’t need all the negatives and slides of the film that I’ve shot because their hard drives hold all the scans.
There’s a lot more that I need to do, but I don’t need to tell you all about my days. Stop. Instead, we’ll need to remember that technology advances as time goes on. Stop. And despite all of this, there are two ways that the camera industry could change. Stop. The first is that we purposely become defunct the way that the watch industry has. Stop. The second is that we can keep trying to innovate ahead and make responsible decisions about buying. Stop. In fact, we tell everyone right now not to have too much gear. Stop. Instead, we preach that you should choose what’s right for you. Stop. And that no one these days makes a lousy camera. Stop.
I have to admit that it would be really cool if the photo industry changed around and went totally work like the watch industry where units are mostly really just sold because they’re objects of lust. That’s basically how it is right now. And more importantly, we’d be happy to do nothing else with our day but complain on the internet.