Brian Micklethwait's Blog
In which I continue to seek part time employment as the ruler of the world.
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Most recent entries
- Brian Micklethwait’s New Blog starts now
- Now you see it now you don’t – then you do again
- Quimper Cathedral photos from a year ago
- Another symptom of getting old
- Quota photo of a signpost
- Three professional Japanese footballers play against one hundred children
- Sculptures and scaffolding
- There is no day that can’t be improved by seeing pictures of how they weigh an owl
- Meeting Oscar again
- A musical metaphor is developed
- Mobile phone photoing in 2004
- France is big
- Pink windscreen
- Just kidding
- Capitalism and socialism in tweets
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Brian Micklethwait's Education Blog
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My blogging theme just now seems to be photography, face recognition, me photoing photographers, and so on and so forth.
This Samizdata posting, for instance, is about a guy using a great big iPad to photo Westminster Abbey. Scorn was expressed by some commenters at how stupid this man was making himself look. I disagree strongly, as did Michael Jennings.
Michael’s comment about this deserves further attention and here it is in full:
It is believed that the reason that the first generation iPad did not have cameras was because Steve Jobs believed that people using it to take photographs would look ridiculous. This received complaints, not so much for people who wanted to use it to take photographs, but for parents of small children. Point the iPad at the baby, start up a video conference with the grandparents, allow the grandparents to watch the baby, and the grandparents will be happily occupied for hours.
However, people then started using the iPad for taking photographs anyway. So, Apple gave it a decent camera. I have one myself, and I prefer taking photographs with it to taking photographs with a cellphone camera. Whether that is the quality of the camera, I am not sure. (By standards of cellphone cameras, the one in the iPad is of high quality, but most high end phones have cameras of similar quality). I think it may be the screen. Everybody who takes digital photographs knows the experience of taking what you think is a good photograph, but discovering later that it is blurry, but being unable to tell that at the time on the tiny screen on the camera. The iPad has a large, very high resolution screen, so you have a much better ability to tell at once if you have taken a good picture or not. If you haven’t, there may even be a chance to take it again.
A final good thing about the iPad is its fantastic battery life. (This isn’t hard to explain - if you look at pictures of the innards of an iPad it is almost entirely battery). At the end of a busy day, its not uncommon to find that your batteries are low or completely depleted on all your devices except the iPad. You see something that needs photographing, so you use the iPad simply because it is still going.
As for looking ridiculous, that is all about what is normal and expected. If everyone does it, it no longer looks ridiculous.
To me what is truly ridiculous is refraining from doing what works best, because you think that looks ridiculous. It’s like that thing about being cool. If you are trying to be cool, you are by definition failing. If your over-riding concern is not to look ridiculous, then you are being ridiculous.
To illustrate the matter further, Michael immediately added another comment, which included this photo, also deserving of a wider audience than it may get while buried in a comment thread:
Underneath which Michael added:
For instance, if on a slow afternoon you unexpectedly find your self at the tomb in Jerusalem where protestants believe that Christ rose from the dead, it can be really helpful to have your iPad with you.
Indeed.
Last night, Michael and I both attended the Adam Smith Institute Christmas Party. Here is my photo of Michael, taking a picture of me with his iPad:
And here is my photo of Michael’s photo of me, as instantly displayed on his iPad:
Michael could be sure that his photo was in focus even as he was taking it, and certainly immediately afterwards. I could only be sure that my photo of his photo was also in focus when I got home, and actually, a great many of the other photos that I took at this shindig were not properly in focus, there being somewhat insufficient light (with what there was of it typically being ill-directed for my purposes), and people being prone to move about when they converse with one another. Which makes Michael’s point yet again.
The tablet computer in it’s current incarnation is less than three years old. People are still figuring out what it is for, and what people want to use it for. Apple initially didn’t think people were going to want to use it for photography, so it took them three incarnations to put a decent camera in it. The non-Apple tablet market is still catching up, so most of them are still further behind in this regard. (I think there are now some excellent Android tablets on the market now, whereas year ago there were none at all, but the ecosystem does still lag a bit. After the iPhone, it took about three years in my mind for the non-Apple vendors to catch up, and we are seeing a similar thing there).
Personally, if I am carrying my iPad and a smartphone at the same time and I want to take photographs, I have a strong preference for using the iPad. I think it is mostly what I said about the usefulness of the big screen. I think I take better photos with the iPad because of it.
Fair enough, Michael - and I’m in no way suggesting that you aren’t allowed to that (as long as you don’t hold it up in front of me!). :)
But my (Android) tablet has a 5MP camera and my cellphone has a 13MP camera. Even given the difference in screen size (10.1” vs 4.4") it’s an absolute no brainer which device I use to take photos of things.
Added to that, SA being rather behind the First World, tablets are still pretty much a rarity here - there are still only 350,000 in the country. So the whole “holding a big thing up to take a photo or video” still seems a bit weird.
I don’t know what cellphone and what tablet models you are talking about, so it is hard to know what you are comparing with what, in terms of the screen and in terms of the camera. (Megapixel counts are simply not the point, however, unless you are planning on blowing the picture up to poster size or above. The physical size of the sensor, the focal length, and quality of the other optical elements matter more). As I said, though, decent cameras in tablets are relatively new. The iPad has had one for less than a year, and if any Android tablets do, they are even newer than that.
While I agree that taking photos with one’s tablet is not such a silly idea (although I’ve found that many of them have far inferior cameras to cellphones or, indeed, cameras - if you see what I mean), it’s also important if you are going to use your tablet in this way to remember that there may be people sitting behind you at an event.
Please see this post, detailing something as trivial (for your other readers) or important (for me) as my son’s school concert last year: http://6000.co.za/new-pet-peeve/ and the complete lack of photos of my boy because of some woman and her desire to video little Tarquin (or whatever) on her sodding huge iPad.