Pros and cons of digital cameras and phone cameras

I’ve put this in ‘body and mind’ because it’s not a feature request for the Mudita Pure but more a general observation. I have a love-hate relationship with smartphone cameras or digital cameras in general.

I am a semi-professional photographer, mostly interested in fine art. But since I have children it is very appealing to take a lot of photos of whatever they do and wherever we are. The result is an overkill amount of photos and also less mindful moments with them, because I’m behind the camera. Especially the smartphone camera is a big offender, because of the ease of use and the attraction it has on the kids to afterwards take the phone from our hands and play with it. A separate camera does not have the same attraction to them, and adds a bit of purpose, too. You don’t take the camera out of your bag or pocket unless there is really a nice moment. But still: too many photos. I do have a few analog film cameras which take photos with incredible warmth, but my manual focus skills often miss the fast-moving kids :slight_smile: And also I want to avoid using those analog cameras as long as the kids are too small, because of the risk they open them and ruin the film - or worse - the cameras.

Having photos does not add much to our lives. Humanity could live without photos for thousands of years. On the other hand, it is really nice to go over some photos again after a year or two and see what we were up to. Time passes quickly and our memory is no longer what it used to be because of lack of sleep etc.

Hence, I do understand hence why the Mudita Pure does not have a camera and should not have one. But.

My primary phone is a Doro 6050 dumbphone ‘for the elderly’. I like a lot the ergonomics of a flip phone, the big buttons, the loud ringtones etc. I also has a crappy 2MP camera. A 2MP camera with a cheap chip and plastic lens is not really useful for family pictures, it doesn’t ‘distract’ me. But there are certain valid uses, especially to replace a notebook.

  • White boards after a meeting
  • Km counters for tax purposes
  • Taking a picture of a van of a construction company to have their phone number, or similarly business cards
  • Taking a picture of the radio when they play a song you’d like to search afterwards

Thoughts?

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Mudita’s lack of a camera was a big part of the appeal for me. I’ve always disliked having a camera on my phone as I don’t use them and am really too much of a bumbler not to accidentally press the camera button when trying to check messages. And it’s ridiculously hard to find a phone without a camera!

When I got my first digital camera I was still in my 20s and I did go through a period of taking overwhelmingly more photos than I could possibly print or even look at. Now I rarely take photos at all and only keep what I print. I’m glad for the photos I have but there just isn’t a strong drive to take new ones. I’m not an artist so my motivation for taking so many photos was something more like “capture this feeling for later” or “preserve this moment” and on reflection I found that most of my photos didn’t really do that.

I know some people who do that! (take pictures of things as a way f taking notes). Clearly it works for a lot of people. For me, it would feel like a needless extra step as I’d have to later retrieve the picture and transcribe whatever it was I’d snapped. Plus I’m more likely to have a pen on me than a camera or a phone.

I don’t agree that having photos hasn’t added much to our lives! Any new technology is going to have complex effects, but people clearly love being able to see the faces of their absent loved ones without having to learn to draw or pay someone to paint a portrait. There are lots of things humanity has lived a long time without that are nice to have all the same.

It might be worth it to bring out the film camera every now and then, if you really love the pictures it produces! It shouldn’t be too much of a risk if you bring it out in a bag or on a strap around your neck, take some pictures, then stash it in a safe place. My parents took hundreds of photos of us with film cameras when we were unruly small children, and probably lost a roll or two in the process, but no serious damage was done. (Missing the fast-moving kids can be part of the charm).

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Why are there suddenly so many bot replies?

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@john_dumpling I think the Mudita Forum has become really popular. :smiley: Here’s a FUN FACT, for the first time EVER- last month the pageviews of the FORUM exceeded that of the Mudita.com website. I think that this might have something to do with it.

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