Simplicity is good, but not always

Photography can seem very complicated, so cameras made for non-experts are often highly simplified.  This can make them difficult to use.

Our photographer writes:

Once people know I still use film cameras they’ll often pull one out of the dusty storage room (or the closet, or the basement, or whatever) and give it to me: “Here, see if you can use this.”  That’s the way I acquired the Polaroid Automatic 100, a type I had little experience with.  Leaving aside the question of whether instant prints are Serious Art (certainly some artists who sound serious use them), it’s clear this camera was designed for the general public.  That has made it sometimes difficult to use.

Photographers are used to thinking in terms of film speed (sometimes discussing the arcane difference between Weston and ASA), f-stop and shutter speed, focal length and depth-of-field, to say nothing of developer vs. film type.  But to someone who just wants a snapshot all this appears pretty complicated.  So Polaroid doesn’t mention any of this in the user’s manual.

Instead, the various steps to taking a picture are numbered.  Instead of focusing the camera, you’re told to press button 1 until the two images coincide.  Instead of pressing the shutter release, you push button 2.  Instead of cocking the shutter, you press button 3.  There are three different adjustments for exposure, all with directions on what to do, but no mention of which might be shutter speed or lens opening.

This was fine when the camera came out, in the Swinging Sixties.  But Polaroid stopped manking film for it long ago.  The film that is available is not mentioned in the user’s manual.  One can guess at the settings to make, and my guesses haven’t been too far off, though not exactly on by any means.

And knowing what shutter speed the camera is using is important for, among other things, how blurred objects in motion will be; the lens opening determines what distances will be in focus.  Polaroid making it easy at the beginning has taken away the creative control I’m used to.

Kodak, also, sought to make picture-taking easy.  The Vest Pocket Kodak wielded by an artist friend of mine allows some adjustment of lens opening, recommending #1, 2, 3 or 4 depending on the general brightness of the day and what film was in the camera.  Unfortunately film type NC has not been made for a long, long time, and it takes a remarkable bit of research to work out how it might compare with modern types.  Verichrome Pan is harder, since it appeared in several versions.  Then there’s the question of what, exactly, is the f-stop of a #3 lens opening.

The answer, of course, is to experiment.  Some general guesses and a roll of film (a few prints, in the case of the Polaroid) gave me enough to go by.  And doing exact work in film photography has always meant testing things (cameras, film, chemicals) anyway.  It isn’t completely without cost, as it might be with a digital camera, but it is part of the process.

No doubt it’s quite unfair to complain about this.  The two cameras worked very well for their originally designed function, and neither Polaroid nor Kodak ever intended them to still be snapping away in the twenty-first century.  But I invite you to consider generally: what is being made easy now, that will only make things harder later on?