canon eos 350d part 2

When the iPhone 3GS was released, I could no longer resist. I had the O2 Xda smartphone running Windows Mobile - Or was it Pocket PC? Whatever it was, I made do, all the while convincing myself that I didn't need an iPhone. However, once I saw the Apple commercial featuring the voice commands - "Play songs by Kaiser Chieves!" - I drank a gallon of the apple flavoured kool-aid.

The iPhone was many things apart from a phone. One of which was a capable point and shoot camera in my pocket, all the time. "Take your camera with you at all times" was no longer the mantra reserved for Lomographers and street photographers, it was for everyone, including me. Again, that online benchmark revealed the iPhone as the primary source of images uploaded. For many, it quickly replaced whatever camera they previously used. I was no exception. "Ah, I'll just leave the camera behind, I've got the iPhone". Then social networking hit the big time. Facebook overtook Flickr. Compressed images were the order of the day, so whatever you took the photo with, only the terribly compressed jpegs ever saw the light of day.

A curious app appeared in the Appstore - Hipstamatic. It basically took your photo and threw on a bunch of imperfections and chromatic noise of your selection in order to achieve an 'analog' look. I must admit, I quite liked the app. I used it quite a lot, and it was impressive to my Facebook friends at the time, as they had no idea how I was doing it. And then it happened. A copycat app showed up, but supercharged with it's own social network - Instagram! And it went viral. Suddenly, every photo on the internet attained a sepia tone/brownish tint to it. Even Facebook realised the virality of Instagram and quickly coughed out a billion dollars pronto.

Oddly enough, even though I am on Instagram, I have never used it. I follow a few people, but have never shot or posted a single photo with it, ever.  Just saying :) 

Soon enough I only picked up the DSLR when going on holiday. For everything else in the past two years, it was the iPhone. This past Spring, the Canon was toppled from its position of 'holiday camera' by the beautiful gem of a camera that re-kindled my love for film (ironically - more on that later), the Fuji X20.

Picking up the Canon DSLR again was a lot of fun. The buttons and dials are reassuringly sturdy and prominent and the shutter was unequivocal. You know when you've taken a photo. I had never used the RAW capability of this camera, and have never edited or post processed the results. So as promised I took a few shots within the narrow window of daylight I had, being so close the Winter Solstice here in the North, and got some jpegs out of the RAW. As I don't have Lightroom or Aperture, I decided to load the photos unto my iPhone (which defeats the entire purpose), where I 'processed' them using the VSCOcam app. The app imposes an upper limit on the resolution of the photos, so it dropped the rez significantly, but fear not, the filters will mesmerise you and divert your vision elsewhere.

Original

Processed

Original

Processed
Original

Processed
Like many filter/preset based post processing, the ultimate aim of VSCO is to achieve a 'film' look of your photos.  This naturally begs the question - why not just shoot film?

So there we have it - the end of the real nostalgia part of this blog. Going forward, I'm afraid it will be faux nostalgia of sorts as most of the cameras are old, yes, but newly attained by me.  It's been fun. 


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