Own Your Knowledge to Own Your Stuff

It must have been a decade ago when I'd written a blog post, on a now-deleted blog, entitled "Computer Problem? It's Your Fault." It was a scathing and humorous piece inspired by the people I knew who would call me up, expecting me to put aside my dinner or whatever else I had going on, to announce to me that their computer seemed to be broken – when they weren't knocking on my door, laptop in their arms, expecting me to be available to lay my hands on their sick babies to heal them. The essay essentially said that if your computer has a problem, it's because you may have caused it; but even if not, it's because you don't understand how it works, and you haven't taken the time to learn how to pre-empt or to troubleshoot and resolve such problems – and, at the heart of the matter, when you'd gotten a computer, you'd signed-up for whatever it brought along with it and the nature of the beast that it is.

How many times have I been in the middle of a musical project, or in the midst of really cookin' on a song, and some software problem occurs? It's artistic coitus interruptus. But it's up to me to get it back up and jamming again. Two days later, I'll find that it was because I'd overlooked some setting in the DAW, and I feel like a doofus, with no regaining the heat of that lost moment. But at least, I sigh to myself, "I got my computer back."

Since I've gotten back into photography – and, by extension, video – I've noticed a similar phenomenon among digital camera users. People are goaded by YouTuber photography vloggers (who, given the near-pornographic degree of their apparent means and leisure, are on par with the "van life" lifestylists) into purchasing expensive and complicated cameras on the basis of how cool they make the cameras look and how "kewl" their their lingo sounds. The photo vloggers' B-roll clips look adventurous or edgy, but after one gets the camera in one's hands, one ends up walking around, bored, trying not to take photos of the same old things, or not having the time to go out and find new images to capture, or having to sell it off because one lost one's job or the kid needs dental work. If not that, one is in the midst of an inspired photo-walk, when suddenly the custom-image menu is messed-up, the auto-focus won't focus within 10 feet of the camera, or the camera keeps over-exposing by three stops – and one has to lose a half hour, cursing and mumbling to oneself in public, before realizing that the problem had been, all along, due to some simple thing that one should have known or remembered.

The truth behind the YouTuber hype of digital cameras is that technology as advanced as that of enthusiast- or professional-grade digital cameras entails a complexity of information and details of which one should have a working grasp in order to make a sound decision as to which model to select. I myself do research for a week or two when considering a new camera, or a particular lens and its alternatives. It's not just that this stuff costs real money, it's that its usability or its being appropriate for how I'll use it is contingent upon its particular technical aspects. For example, I based my decision to not get the Fujifilm X-T5 upon its 4k video's being downsampled from 6k with a 1.23X crop, whereas the X-T3 and X-T4 have un-cropped full-sensor 4k video downsampled from 6k, forcing no effective narrowing of the lens's angle of view. It took me some time and effort to sleuth that out, because no YouTuber was mentioning that, no one on DPreview was bringing it to attention, and only some obscure camera-comparison site out of Wales would have taken the interest in pointing-out those details.

The reasons to get this or that model of camera are a lot more complex than, say, “This one’s good for ‘shreet’* photography, this other one is suited for videographers, and that one’s adequate for taking photos of your two-year-old.” There is just too much technical detail in these cameras for that. In learning how to use the camera I have, I've had to make the effort to know which of its features I shall never use and should ignore (and try not to select accidentally). I roll my eyes at every Reddit post asking strangers “Which camera should I buy?” when the poster has done zero research on which technical aspects would either befit them or amount to inscrutable clutter in the menu. It's like saying, "I don’t know how to drive. Should I buy a sports car, an SUV, or an armed personnel carrier?” C’mon, people, own your knowledge, in order to truly own your stuff.

(*) It's the "kewl" thing now to not pronounce the "t" as an "h" in words such as "street" and "straight" – or to forego the "r" altogether, and say, "sheet" and "shaight" – although it may actually be due to poor parenting, if not to an educational system more interested in teaching kids how to use dildos and butt-plugs than in teaching them how to wield vocabulary, punctuation and grammar.