It’s a long time since I’ve read anything on DPReview’s forums, but in a fit of insanity, I’ve read quite a lot of posts on there recently. Why oh why oh why did I bother? The place is full of idiots finding non-existent faults on cameras with thousands of images betraying appalling technique but no sign of the alleged fault, who call anyone who can’t see the invisible defect an “enemy of progress”; or people who stick a camera into fully auto mode, hold it over their heads, and then blame the manufacturer that nothing is in focus; or those who shout out abuse of the manufacturer for things they’ve not yet actually resolved; or - well, you get the drift – absolute nutters. Why can’t they just get out there and take a few pictures instead of spewing inanity and insanity?
Archive for the ‘Rants’ Category
Oh golly gosh…
Wednesday, June 9th, 2010The Fanboy
Wednesday, February 17th, 2010If there’s anything more irritating in online forums, I’ve yet to find it. The fanboy – and he’s always male – is almost exclusively the owner of what might be termed a minority camera system, to whit Olympus or Pentax. His grasp on reality would most charitably be described as wafer-thin, and he is marked by an utterly unswerving loyalty to his chosen marque to a degree that is positively risible. Any comment about that marque that is not in the most glowing terms possible, and language so simple even the fanboy can understand it, is given as evidence of “bashing” the marque in question. Any magazine that dares to suggest that the cameras are in any tiny way not quite as good as those of Canon or Nikon in particular is thoroughly dishonest and has been bribed by the Evil Two. Anyone who chooses to buy any camera other than the fanboy’s favourite is a brainwashed buffoon who has been swayed by overwhelming marketing. Honestly, it’s almost funny, if it wasn’t so pathetic. The truth, of course, is that these people are desparately trying to live with their own buyer’s remorse, and failing fairly dismally, and their own insecurity is what makes them lash out. There is a rather related phenomenon, the “inverse fanboy” – this guy is actually a user of Canon or Nikon, but is forever complaining that the other marque is far better and that his chosen brand has let him down badly by not providing a particular function the other brand has – generally without actually understanding that function or having a need for it. People, eh?
Oh dear…
Wednesday, November 26th, 2008This week, my target is those who don’t have a clue, but always have an opinion. Whatever the subject, they have some sort of rumbustious opinion based on prejudice and ignorance, never on facts and understanding. You can’t reason with them, because they’re so stuck in their prejudices; it would be nice to ignore them, but that’s not always possible. Goes without saying that they’re as thick as pigshit. Spare us from such people…
Oh hell
Tuesday, November 11th, 2008My laptop is broken. The video card has failed, and it’s certainly not worth having it fixed. So that means it’s new laptop time – or at least it will be when I can afford it. In the meantime, I’ve managed to get my ancient laptop going again – it’s a Celeron 550, with 192MB of RAM and a pathetically small hard drive – and a completely knackered optical drive. It runs – well, crawls – XP. Time to see if Damn Small Linux will make it run any faster as a temporary browsing machine…
Insanity and the big brewers
Wednesday, November 5th, 2008They just don’t seem to get it, do they? Carlsberg are to close the Tetley brewery in Leeds, home since 1822 of Joshua Tetley’s finest. OK, it’s far from the greatest bitter in the world, but it’s as much part of the fabric of the city as the Corn Exchange, the Town Hall or Leeds United. Well, probably more so than the Whites, actually… but the point is that for all that it’s a national brand these days, it remains a local brew. Never mind that those brewers who actually promote cask beer don’t have declining sales. The decline in sales is probably more to do with the marketing directions Carlsberg has taken and the fact that they’ve ignored the local and regional importance of Tetleys as anything – rebranding the brewery as Carlsberg was never going to be anything other than cultural suicide. So now they intend to finish the job. Tetleys brewed in Northampton? Who would want to drink that?
Utter, utter madness.
I think I want to be…
Monday, October 13th, 2008…the Ken Rockwell of photography. 
There’s a very funny skit at DPReview that’s well worth a read, but what is it that gets people so wound up about Ken? I personally think his site is pretty amusing, but then I don’t take much of it at face value – as he warns visitors not to. But some people really take umbrage – my pet theory is that Nikon owners don’t have much of a sense of humour, but if not, why do they use Nikon cameras in the first place?
The EOS 5D Mk II and the sad bastards…
Thursday, September 18th, 2008This week’s “Fuckwit of the Week” award is presented jointly to a bunch of sad arseholes who don’t have a fucking clue what they’re talking about.
Canon have launched the EOS 5D Mk II – sure, it’s not the perfect camera for all uses, but then such an animal doesn’t exist. Instead it’s a camera that offers exceptionally high resolution, with specs upped in all areas from the frankly brilliant 5D, my favourite camera of all time. Including Rolleis…
So what are these twats saying?
“It’s not very exciting.” Really? A camera that brings the highest level of resolution to a much more affordable price point. A camera that offers HD video as a little extra – not exciting? Well fuck off to Alton Towers, pillock.
“3.9 FPS isn’t fast enough.” For who? How many people shoot regularly at higher speeds? Sure, there are some, and this camera’s not for them, but for most people, it’s more than fast enough, surely? Except those who are more worried about the size of their equipment than what to do with it…
“It’s too expensive / a rip-off in the UK”. Well, it’s not a cheap camera, for sure, but it’s less than the 5D was at launch and about the same as the D30 was all those years ago – and it’s a lot more camera than either. It’s also pretty competitive with the Nikon D700 and the Sony A900. And above all, it’s a fucking “recommended price”, not what it’ll actually sell for. How hard is that to understand?
And there’s more of very similar. Yet how many of these wankers were actually in the market for a full-frame DSLR? None, of course – they don’t have a fucking clue what they’re talking about.
FIA = Farce In Action?
Monday, September 8th, 2008It takes a rare talent to cock up such an excellent race as yesterday’s Belgian Grand Prix, with thrilling racing and plenty of incidents. But it seems that the FIA have an embarassment of riches when it comes to such talent, and they’ve totally fucked up what should’ve been a golden opportunity for the sport to recover from recent negative publicity. There are those who insist that it’s all down to Hamilton not driving a red car, but I always prefer to believe in cock-up before conspiracy. In this case, it’s a sodding great cock-up in that it has reinforced the conspiracy theories amongst thousands of F1 followers, and can only do the sport immense damage in the long run. So my inaugural Fuckwit of the Week award goes to the FIA race stewards.
What has the internet brought us?
Wednesday, August 27th, 2008It should be a source of information, and thus a better-educated public. However, it appears that the internet has become nothing more than a sounding board for ill-informed comment – and that’s not just in blogs. 
Yesterday I posted something about the new Canon EOS 50D, and hinted at my surprise at the reception the news had in certain quarters. But then looking at some of the comments, it becomes clear that (a) half of those commenting hadn’t read the full story, (b) many of those that had didn’t understand it, and (c) the majority of the rest have absolutely no understanding of the realities of the industry. Fuckwits, the lot of them.
Paraphrasing some of the comments, we have some pillocks who see this camera as a rushed response to Nikon’s D300. Really? I’m sure Canon would be delighted if they could turn out a new DSLR in that sort of leadtime. It’s entirely possible that certain aspects of spec may have be altered for that reason, but the whole camera? Cloud cuckoo land, and those that believe such a thing possible are fucking cretins.
Then there’s some arsehole who clearly hasn’t got the faintest idea what the fuck he’s talking about who thinks that the idea of “gapless pixels” is marketing speak designed to “make socially inept photographers drool”. Hello? Excuse me, fuckwit, but would you mind waking up and smelling the coffee? That’s actually potentially the most significant thing about the camera, the possibility of getting greater resolution whilst not losing out on the noise front – in fact Canon claim it’s better than the 40D. Well, this sort of twat may not see the difference, but then I suspect he’s got many more problems than simply being “socially inept”. Plain fucking “inept” will probably do for starters. Given that he also talks about dropping the camera from “waste height”, I can only assume he uses the camera like he talks – from his arse. And this is the crux of it – people without a fucking clue spouting on as if they knew what they were on about. The internet? It’s just a bunch of blokes down the pub, talking bollocks as ever – except that now the whole world can listen in. Scary.