I was just thinking about what kind of equipment I like.
After all, I had all kinds of cameras, lenses and other gear, and I do have my preferences. It’s just hard to put in a single statement, but if I had to, I’d say I love it when the gear isn’t fragile.
That doesn’t mean I bang my stuff up. In fact, I have a lens from 1984 that, according to my son, is in the best condition he ever saw for something anywhere near as old. By fragility, I don’t necessarily mean resistance to physical abuse, although I certainly prefer lenses and cameras not to damage easily with normal use. I mean the ability to use them within their full spectrum of nominal functionality with excellent results. This means that I can open the aperture and still get excellent sharpness and no stupid artefacts. It means being able to use the lens or camera in the rain, not because I would deliberately do so, but because I might get rained on by accident when I’m on a hike somewhere.
Guess how much water I had on both lens and camera here 🙂
It also means being able to shoot into the sun with the lens without flare ruining the shot. That’s what I mean by fragility, or lack thereof. A fragile lens will work great when everything is perfect, and fall apart when conditions are not ideal. I like working in non-ideal conditions; that’s usually where the best pictures are. If I have to baby the camera or the lens and use them only where they are comfortable, I will get rid of them in short order. Sometimes I will walk in strong sunlight and the camera will get very hot; or I will shoot in frosty conditions, or I’ll get caught by persistent rain. I’ll have sunlight that causes flare, chromatic aberrations and all kinds of nonsense in lesser optics. I’ll take pictures hand-held in deep dark, with stars visible in the sky. I want the equipment to follow me there and not crack under pressure. When I need to crank up the ISO, I want the image to still look great after I process it. When I need to open the aperture, I want the corners to still be sharp. If the lens is f/1.4, I want it to be great at f/1.4. I hate having to have mental markers, such as “don’t use this lens at these settings because it’s shit wide open and it’s shit at the longer end”. Thanks, but no thanks. A lens that has those caveats is fragile. A tripod or a tripod head that loses rigidity with my heaviest lens on my heaviest camera is fragile. A camera that can’t do really long exposures because the image falls apart from noise, or I can’t shoot in strong sunlight because it doesn’t have a viewfinder and I don’t see anything on the LCD in those conditions – thanks, but no thanks. If I want some function that I rarely use, I want the camera to have it, if it’s something reasonable like long exposure noise reduction (in other words, dark frame subtraction). Entry-level cameras are notorious for omitting such features, which is why I don’t like entry level cameras. It’s not snobbery; it’s the fact that some things will be omitted from those models because it’s expected that the expected user base won’t need them. It’s not that I think that those cameras can’t make great pictures.
Olympus E-PL1
I made great pictures with Olympus E-PL1, which is the entriest-level of all the entry-level plasticky thingies. That’s how I learned that I don’t like fragile cameras, because that one was fragile. I would need something, and it wouldn’t have it. I would use some function like ISO 1600, and it would fall apart. There was no viewfinder, and I challenge anyone to try taking pictures without one at noon on the southern side of Hvar in broad daylight. If you can’t compose the image because you see nothing on the screen, let alone focus precisely, then what is the point? Aim in the general direction of the island and hope it works? I swore I’ll never buy such a camera again, and I didn’t. It annoyed me so much that I almost gave up photography. That’s why I roll my eyes when people show that entry level cameras can make great photos. I know. Been there, done that. The problem is, they make great photos when all the stars align just right – you can see on the screen, you can use base ISO, there’s enough light but not too much, or you can use a tripod… how about making great photos when I want to make them, not when the camera is happy?
Hand-held at blue hour, wide open.
Fragility means a macro lens that’s soft and terrible when focused on infinity, and a landscape lens that has terrible minimum focusing distance, and it’s terrible at those conditions. It’s the opposite of robustness. Robustness doesn’t mean the lens will be able to do everything, but if it’s rated as f/4, you can shoot it at f/4 and get good results, not blurry mess. If it’s 24-105mm, you can shoot at both ends and get good results. I don’t expect it to be as good at closeup as a macro lens, but it needs to do well enough for me to pull off a shot in a pinch and not throw it away in frustration at home, when I see what it actually looks like.
Shot with what I had, wide open.
I expect a landscape lens to pull off a portrait when my wife steps into the frame. I know it won’t match the 85mm f/1.4, but it needs to do well enough. If it’s rated at a certain aperture and a certain focal length range, and if it focuses from 30cm to infinity, you can bet I will use it at all those extremes, and I expect it to do a good job. That’s the kind of lens I like.
I’ve been forced lately to screen and understand the foundations of my behavior, which I think relates to this subject. It is mostly related to my job and interpersonal relationships. Basically, I have a problem with my attitude—toward myself. I feel that I should be acting "normally" and maintaining an "open" attitude, which would allow people to feel comforted and taken care of from my professional standpoint.They usually come to me in a very stressed-out condition, dealing with prolonged periods of pain, anxiety, PTSD, and other nasty stuff, so I feel I need to give them support just so they can start feeling better. Over the years, working with thousands of people, I’ve started to understand that I have much better self-regulation of my nervous system than others. I guess I can naturally do it much better than they can. I know how to differentiate the important from the less important. Sometimes, within minutes, I make spot-on diagnoses of highly complex cases that other doctors and therapists couldn't see in ages. I guess the biggest influence on developing these skills was observing you—how you work, react, and deal with things.
The biggest problem I missed, though, was that I was harming myself by acting this way. Here is why I think that is. While acting as described above would be normal when working in the God Realm where you are protected. Here, acting like this harms me. I harm myself by letting them fuck me in the ass and letting them cut my vertical alignment. It is absolutely harmful to act that way when people don't deserve that kind of treatment. I remember after "treating" Biljana, I felt absolutely fabulous for months. I remember feeling completely confused by what the fuck had just happened. I was like, "Ahaaa, this is the way one should feel after offering someone help." 😛 🙂 It was at that very moment that I started understanding this complex concept of "how Satan fucks you in various ways," and why I got messed up—losing parts my own soul by letting bastards "in."
It is absolutely harmful beacuse It steals my connection with justice and God thus making me the element of Satan's "happy little thoughts". Now that I've been tortured for days with various impurities regarding this matter, the shit just started making some sense. I started to get an intelectual concept of it and some understaning. I guess that now it is a time to purify emotions, thoughts and actions regarding the matter.
And why this relates to the topic? Because acting like me is a huge problem where I tend to seek God-Realm rules and relartonships within this shithole just like someone else will seek "perfections" in cars and technique. It is the sin because this is the way you end up stagnating in God Realm
This is very hard to comment, because whatever I say, someone is going to interpret it wrong. But, essentially, I see three layers. First, your actions shape you – by acting in a certain way, you are training yourself to be something. Second, your actions don't exist in a vacuum. You interact with others, and this interaction is complicated because the nature and motivations of other people need to be taken into account. And third, moral value of action doesn't exist in a vacuum. Helping a God, or helping a sinner with criminal intent, cannot be observed in abstract form of "helping". It's like multiplying positive or negative numbers. You can be karmically punished for doing good, if you're doing good to an evil person, enabling them to do more evil. You can also be karmically punished for harming an evil person if you're doing it out of wrong motives. As I said, it's complicated.
Essentially, energetically entangling yourself with others can be beneficial if the person you're entangling yourself with is a tulku of a God. In other situations, it will be anything but beneficial. However, if you energetically detach yourself you will probably not be able to do anything useful. But in some cases, having stricter criteria for choosing patients would be a good idea. I don't know what to tell you, because I had all sorts of similar issues because I worked with people who were all shades of fucked up in hope that they will learn. They rarely did, but I always had to suffer consequences.
I've been accused of chasing perfection and being annoyed by not being able to find it here.
But now that I think about it, I wasn't chasing perfection, I was running away from compromises which were the ones making me annoyed.
It is a question of when good enough is actually good enough and sometimes good enough comes very soon, like tee cup – does it hold a tee? It's good enough.
But sometimes it comes only at the extremes – it all depends how much we care about something.
I can get away with just about any tee cup, but I can't (or won't) do that with rifles for example. No rifle is precise enough because every imprecision on a target will translate into much larger imprecision in a hunt and error rises with distance. But even at extremes there are compromises. Just as you could buy big and heavy GM zoom, you will also buy a smaller version – not as good as a big one, but good enough because you will carry it when big one will stay at home.
Same here, I could buy VERY precise match rifle, but that thing weighs 10kg alone and it's very big, so forget about carrying that around. So, I need to step down into 4-5kg range and "chase perfection" there.
Thermals? Same thing. I could get away with cheaper thermal – when conditions are just right. But then you get a bit damp weather, not to mention rain or light fog – it becomes borderline useless and potentially dangerous (target misidentification).
Or for example, AV receiver. I did not want to go cheap – but also, HiFi is mostly snake oil business so I most certainly didn't want to "chase perfection". I settled for Anthem which makes really good sound, most certainly "good enough" – but – designers decided it's ok to put small, fast fans into device made to make better quality music.
And sure, it's fine on reasonable volume, you can't hear fans. But in evenings, I want to go quiet and still get decent music quality – but then, fans are the only thing you hear. And it's fucking annoying for multiple reasons. Now I am waiting for warranty to expire and then I need to give it to a guy how will tear it apart and replace those cheap no-name chinese fans with Noctuas – which should have been done in the first place in such device.
So yeah, I don't care about perfection, I just don't want to be constantly annoyed by bullshit.
How about good example? Speakers. They are perfect. Obviously, they are not perfect, but they are so good I don't even think about them, ever. They just work really, really well and they work beyond my ears capabilities to hear – so I don't care if there are 10x or 100x better speakers out there – because there obviously are, at least price wise 😀
It's always a compromise. Minimalism is good when you're getting rid of useless junk, and it's bad when you end up in an empty apartment. Having things is good until it becomes hoarding. Chasing performance is good until you forget to actually use the gear for the intended purpose and instead you keep reading reviews and obsessing over minutia.
For instance, I can state what kind of equipment I find annoying, and I will still have a few annoying pieces of gear, simply because annoyance is an acceptable compromise in some cases, for instance FE 28-60mm f/4-5.6 is an annoying lens, but it's very small and light and sharp for cases where I want to have everything sharp. If I know I'll have only those motives available, and I'll have a long walk, I'll take that annoying lens and it's going to be great. Will it be able to reduce the depth of field and make a closeup? No, at least not better than the iPhone. Is it a plasticky extendable thingy without aperture ring and af/mf switch? Yes. But if I'm walking through the town in daylight, it's a perfect street photography lens. I even made great town shots into the blue hour. Annoying is sometimes an acceptable compromise. Annoying is when you can't open the aperture without losing corner sharpness, and you're stuck at f/8. Useless is when the pictures are always so unsharp you have to throw them away. Useless is also when you turn into an audiophile who listens to cables instead of music. Obsession with performance can start as an attempt to get better results, and it can turn into a goal unto itself. Essentially, things that are reasonable in moderation can become dysfunctional if pushed to extremes.