26/06/01 – What Makes a Camera Worth Smashing?

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Here’s this week’s letter and question:

If you could take a baseball bat to any piece of technology that has ever annoyed you, what would it be?

For many people, the answer is probably a printer. Office Space built an entire cult scene around that fantasy. My father-in-law, however, chose a Windows 10 computer. After one particularly frustrating afternoon, he carried it into the yard and beat it to death.

I’m guessing, though, that you probably wouldn’t select a vintage Leica to destroy. So when I heard that visitors to Belfast Photo Festival would be invited to smash cameras with hammers in a dedicated rage room, I wasn’t immediately horrified, I was mostly just confused.

The cameras in question are being described as “obsolete,” which is the bit that stuck with me because I’m not entirely sure what they mean by that.

For instance, I have my grandmother’s old film cameras at home, and I still run film through them from time to time. I can still buy film, I can still get it developed, and they still take photographs exactly as they were designed to. They’re older and slower than my mirrorless camera, but definitely not obsolete.

And who gets to decide what is and isn’t obsolete these days anyway? My photographer friend is still quite happily using her Canon EOS 5D Mark II to take portraits. It’s probably at least 15 years old, but it still takes great photos and does exactly what she needs it to do.

Now you can actually answer these questions I throw into the void by joining us on our brand new forums! Yep, we are going full circle and channelling the days of the earlier internet with real human connections! So what are you waiting for?
Unlike most pieces of technology, cameras don’t really become obsolete in any meaningful way that affects their ability to do the job.

A phone stops being useful when apps no longer run on it. A computer becomes frustrating when software outpaces the hardware. Even printers eventually cross that invisible line where they’re more trouble than they’re worth. But a camera just keeps taking photographs.

It might not have the latest autofocus system or the highest megapixel count, but the fundamental function doesn’t change. Light goes in, and an image comes out. That part has stayed the same for a couple of hundred years.

In fact, it almost feels like stills cameras have reached a kind of plateau in their evolution. Improvements still happen, but they’re often incremental rather than hugely ground-breaking. But the need is ever-present for brands to keep pushing out new cameras and lenses, almost at a frightening speed. It also might explain why some manufacturers are now making horizontal improvements, like action cameras venturing into interchangeable lenses and Canon going hard into video and hybrid bodies.

But even that shift isn’t really about cameras becoming obsolete, it’s more about manufacturers expanding what they are offering, rather than replacing what came before. At the weekend we shot part of a music video with an old digital point and shoot from 2004, all 4MP worth to get a particular vintagey look. I think this is also why the idea of “obsolete cameras” still feels slightly off. In photography, older doesn’t automatically mean unusable, it mostly just means different, and the idea of smashing old cameras feels really wrong to me.

I can’t even bring myself to get rid of my defunct Canon R body that fell in the sea in Iceland the other year, it’s now perhaps the world’s most expensive doorstop! But I loved that camera, we had some good times, and I would not want to smash it, even if its motherboard has given up the ghost and gone permanently offline. A printer, however, now that I could get behind.

Has a camera ever sent you into a rage? What would make a camera obsolete in your opinion? Tell us in the forums!

Now, put the baseball bat down and step calmly away…

Alex and the DIYP Team