Opinion

Less than a month after Acme marketed what they unofficially considered their finest camera ever, I was having lunch with a particularly accomplished professional photographer. “I just got the camera,” he said. “I love it! It’s amazing! I can’t wait to see what Acme’ll do next!”

The high-profile photo organizing app, Carousel, was recently put on the chopping block by its developer, the popular online storage service Dropbox. By next March, the iOS and Android apps will be killed (although users’ photos will be safely stored in Dropbox.) In a blog post, Dropbox declared users data will remain secure, but many of the features that attracted photographers to the product -- shared albums, Flashbacks, etc. -- will stop functioning.

Thanksgiving is that magical time that happens only once a year. Thank heavens. It’s a time for peace and love and opening our hearts and homes to relatives we normally don’t bother with. It’s the season for vapid overindulgence—stuffing ourselves with turkey (bird meat that’s usually reserved for Club sandwiches, frozen weight watcher entrees and an occasional tasteless, low-fat burger). Football—lots of football—and couch naps are the order of the day, while the exotic foods that are eaten only at this time of the year (marshmallow-encrusted yams, slippery cranberries and that dried-up bread stuff—what is it? Dressing?) vie for domination of our glutted stomachs

After 140 years of photography, camera design has reached something of a pinnacle with today’s DSLRs and mirrorless cameras. But along the way to our digital era there were lots of false starts and dead ends. These were unusual cameras that had their brief moment and then simply disappeared.

I can’t understand the current love affair between photographers and drones. Like all kids I made paper airplanes which I anonymously launched toward unsuspecting substitute homeroom teachers, sure. Sometimes with uncanny accuracy. Is the current drone rage the ultimate technological evolution of the balsawood P-51 Mustang? Or are we channeling our inner Wright brothers? 

The camera market is in a constant state of flux these days thanks to a still volatile economy and the popularity of disruptive, non-traditional imaging forces including smartphone cameras, GoPros, drones and a host of other wirelessly connected, social sharing-focused digital doohickeys. So it was not a complete surprise when a rumor started making the rounds of the photo blogs recently that Samsung was planning to exit the camera business.

This question has been bugging me since I first looked into the waist-level viewfinder of a Yashica D twin-lens reflex camera more years ago than I care to admit. I haven’t been more than three feet away from a camera since then, and clearly I am neither artist nor scientist. Explore a couple differing points-of-view with me and then please leave a comment and share your opinion.