Sigmo
lvl.4
United States
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Again, great observations from everyone!
jonny007:
To create a good Wiki, we'd need participation from everyone who has the time and the expertise to make it accurate, well written, and easy to navigate for everyone, but especially for newbies. It would be a big project and take a lot of time and effort.
A lot of people put a lot of effort into this forum as it is. Hopefully they'd be willing to help develop such a valuable resource and they'd find it to be more productive and better use of their time than having to answer the same questions again and again.
I think a Wiki or other means of having some "stickies" or the sort not only helps beginners, but also helps the folks who contribute a lot here by saving them from the busywork of repeating themselves. And that frees up time for them to offer the more "targeted" or personalized help that brings people to a forum.
Nidge:
As you say, I do think "how" we write our responses here is important. And as you also point out, there certainly are folks who we see come on here and complain that they've lost their Mini or had some problem, and then they loudy proclaim that the device is no good, and nothing anyone says to them is going to change their mind. So there is a lot of bad behavior on THAT end of things, too! This gets back to a point made by Dirty Bird, too.
We do have a lot of people who have been coddled by their parents, teachers, and technology itself who really can be cry-babies. They've never been taught to take responsibility for themselves. With everything handed to them so far in life, they're sort of doomed to be sad in the real world because suddenly everything isn't being handed to them with no effort required on their part at all. So again, I can understand the frustration by many here with that kind of behavior.
And this also brings to mind something I came to realize when participating in the digital photography forums, too. And that is that with the modern devices being so sophisticated, people don't learn the basics or fundamentals the way they might have in the past.
This is partially because they have no need to learn because the camera does it all for them. But it also goes beyond that. What I have realized when teaching (even people my age) is that if they never got to play with old-school cameras, then they've never had the advantages of even seeing what's inside of a camera, much less understanding how they really work.
When I learned photography, I was at my father's side not only watching him take photos, but also in the darkroom as he made prints. With the old cameras, you had to take them apart to use them. You saw what a lens was, what a shutter was, what film was or even what a focusing screen was. So you easily got a gut-feel for how the lens formed the image at the focal plane, and how different types of shutters worked. You could see and touch them! And when making prints, you were actually "inside of the camera" as the images were being made. You focused the image by adjusting the position of the film holder with respect to the lens. And you adjusted the size of the image by moving the head of the enlarger or selecting a different focal length lens, etc.
When I worked for that newspaper as a photographer back in the early 1970s, we exposed the printing plates (and did other work) with a large line camera. And that camera was actually two rooms with a wall between them where we'd place the lens! So you really WERE inside of the camera! Very fun, and I always thought that a great camera teaching aid would be to recreate that line camera and let the students be inside both the camera side and the "scene" side so they could see and feel it all.
So not only did we HAVE to learn things just to make an image, but we were priveliged to get to see what was going on inside of our cameras. And this gave us a huge advantage with digital cameras, too, because we had been given a fantastic tour of all that goes on inside of everything. So it was easier for us to grasp the basics. And since I was an electronic nerd by then, that helped me understand the electronic and digital side of things. So I have been lucky in those regards.
We weren't smarter than anyone else. We were just exposed to the fantastic teaching environment and "props" that were those old cameras and darkroom equipment. So we were at a huge advantage.
I have a coworker and friend who is getting into photography. And I end up bringing some of my old manual film SLRs to work because you can open them up and see where the film goes. And you can take the lens off and flick a lever to make the aperture move, etc. This is all so much easier to understand when you can hold it in your hand and play with it to see what goes on. You can hold that lens out in the sunlight and burn ants with it and see how it forms an image very hands-on!
And you can set different shutter speeds, fire it off, and see how the curtains move and get a feel for different shutter speeds and even see how the virtual shutter is formed by a focal plane shutter where, at higher speeds, the opening is just a moving slit, effectively. So that explains some strange effects you get when photographing fast-moving objects or rapidly panning the camera during a shot, etc. It'd take a lot of words to explain something that you grasp immediatey when playing with these things hands-on.
I remember being fascinated when watching those films they showed us using a projector and screen back in junior high school by something. When the teacher pulled down the blackout shades in a particular room so that it would be dark enough to watch a film, one of the shades had a hole in it. And you could see, projected on the opposite wall, an upside down image of the outside world. The kids playing field hockey or whatever outside (where we all wished we were). I got in trouble for staring at that and not the film. But when I told the teacher what I was looking at, she shut off the projector and we all looked at it. We were inside of a "camera obscura". A large pinhole camera. I always remember her taking that opportunity not to send me to the office, but to let everyone gain some amazing scientific understanding. (Probably a lot better than the film we were watching)!
Kids won't get that opportunity now that they watch videos on a bright TV monitor, will they?
So I know we have to be patient with people who have, in effect, been deprived of the luxury of seeing what goes on inside of things as the technology has hidden the real workings of things more and more.
djiuser_IJ7oTXK2Xt8l
Good points as well. I do think that people burn out or become fatigued, and that leads to a lot of the frustration that people end up expressing in their posts at times. Stepping back and trying to take some pleasure from it all is a great help.
I'm not innocent of any of this myself.
I've gotten great information from Stack Overflow, but as you say, I've seen some nasty exchanges there that make me hesitant to actually participate! So I guess i'm just like you in that respect!
And I hope that all of us can get some true enjoyment out of these forums. I've seen exactly what you say happen in a number of forums. It's why I basically stopped (or slowed to about once per year) participating in the one digital photo forum where I'd hung out very actively for many years. It just got too nasty, particularly from a select few who seemed to revel in causing hate and discontent.
InspektorGadjet
I agree with all you've said. And getting a glimpse into what you do reminds me of how humbling it is to even read this forum (and many others). So many fields of expertise. So many amazing people, all in one place, brought together by one common thing we're trying to learn and get better at.
Initially I joined this forum because I got a Mini and wanted to learn more than what is in the manual. And I wanted to see what others are doing. And then I see these incredible videos people have produced, and I'm just in awe.
We have technical expertise in operating a drone. Then while doing that, they're keeping in their mind the story they're trying to create. And they're being camera dolly operator as well as the cinematographer all at once. Then they edit their footage and put it to music. This is NOT trivial stuff!
I'm happy if I can successfully fly the drone and not crash it. If I can get some video or stills, that's great. Heck, I flew one of my only daytime outdoor flights, and apparently wasn't even able to know when I was shooting video or not! I think i've got that figured out now, but it reminded me of some video we shot when we took a family trip to DisneyWorld many years ago. I got a nice tape where I had the video running while walking with the camera, and then shut it off for the actual scenes I wanted to shoot, then turned it on again while just walking along carrying the camera, then off again for the actual scenes I thought I was shooting!
Push on, push off. Damn! Give me a two position switch so I don't get those nice shots of the inside of a camera bag, man!
And then I see the well conceived, written, choreographed, location-scouted, timed-for-the-light, well-designed, storyboarded, planned, flown, videographed, edited, scored videos people produce, and I know I have a HUGE amount of learning, practice, practice, and more practice ahead of me if I want to achieve anything remotely pleasing!
Heck, I'll be happy if I just don't crash or drop it in the water, actually! ;)
Dirty Bird:
I hope we're on the same page about a lot of this. I think we share a lot of the same feelings about a lot of this stuff. And I have to say that I always like your posts. Maybe because I'm a gun-totin' redneck from Wyoming here.
Pretty much EVERYONE here knows more than I do about drone flying. That's for sure! I always hope I can offer some insight related to my personal experience, but I probably just annoy a lot of the folks here who already know what I'm trying to say, or know why what I'm suggesting is flat out wrong.
120ccpm:
Again, someone whose posts I enjoy, and with whom, i tend to agree a lot!
oldhasbeen:
Right on! Technology outpaces our "wisdom", that's for darn sure!
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I hope this thread isn't a negative thing. I'll admit that I was getting more frustrated seeing a lot of harsh tone taken in various posts here. But that doesn't mean that I don't respect everyone who posts or that I don't value their expertise.
Again, I figure if we met up face to face, we'd likely hit it off well. It's often SO hard to understand how something we see written was intended. I have a hard time with that, for sure. And I can take offense when none was intended, so that's my fault. I probably did that when reading a post by Hallmark a few days ago.
I particularly appreciate seeing the analyses of the flight logs that people are able to provide. That's always great. It's like having the NTSB check out the flight recorders after a crash as well as do a forensic analysis of the scene, and then finally, give everyone the answers they need. We NEED that sort of analysis here.
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