In the 1980s, I worked in a professional camera shop, selling expensive cameras with no end of manually controlled knobs and dials.
Despite this, we always told our customers that the real secret to photographic success (Photography's "business plan") was the old rule of thumb known as "F8 and be there !"
To be prepared for that sudden unpredictable life-changing shot, a wise photographer equipped their elaborate SLR camera with moderately wide (40 to 35 mm) lens, set an F8 aperture, with a 1/125 second shutter speed, pre-focussed on a mid distance of about 15 feet, put in a roll of moderately high speed film (Tri-X or its colour equivalent) and pre-cocked the release.
Then they could even afford to take that sudden shot, casually, from a camera resting at their waist level, tilted slightly upwards and pointing at the general direction of the crucial action.
(Because jumpy riot police might shoot anyone suddenly aiming something shiny and metal at eye level.)
All this advice was great for professional photographers.
But we camera store staff didn't feel like carrying our big heavy expensive SLRs around all day everyday, risking loss or theft or getting it wet in rain or snow or its battery dying in the Canadian winter.
So we retained the F8 rule but focused on the 'be there' part, carrying around the modern equivalent of the old box camera, which was always preset, at the factory, to the F8 rule.
Kodak had recently perfected, in the mid 1980s, a way to mold-inject super sharp, tiny, one piece, plastic, aspherical lens for mere pennies.
Placed in an inexpensively priced water-resistant one-use disposable cardboard box camera, pre-loaded with moderately fast film, it took excellent to acceptable pictures in all weather and all light levels.
Small, light, cheap, instantly ready to use, it went everywhere with me.
Almost like a modern day smart phone.
Because todays's equivalent of the F8 rule, is the statement, so often heard, that "the best possible computer, camera, video camera, ebook reader,game player, music ipod, scanner is the one in your hand".
Already even in the most advanced countries, the majority of news accessing is done on smart phones, not on desktops, laptops and tablets.
Ditto for music, games, video, Google searches,Facetime and Twitter - on and on and on.
Media publishers and advertisers are scrambling to change their business plans yet again.
I resisted, because I still saw the need for free public domain pre-imposed downloadable PDFs of small pamphlets or tracts, printable on ordinary computer printers and hand folded, unstapled, into 48-64 pages in a tiny A6 size.
That is a book smaller enough and thin enough to fit any pants pocket or shirt pocket, successfully concealable information in countries where the internet was now tightly controlled.
I was wrong.
The poorest and most remote parts of the globe don't have ready access to reliable mains electricity, computer printers or even paper but they do have smart phones.
In about five years, every single village in the entire world will have a few families with modern smart phones with cellular access to the outer world via the internet.
An all-powerful dictatorial government is only powerful if it keeps up with the technology of the day. Even in the recent past, no dictator that rejected modern mini skirts thought to reject modern mini mills (for high tech steel making for weapons making), for example.
States that too sharply restrict mass smartphone use can still exist today - but they just can't be efficient - and that means no modern weapons and no happy citizens and they aren't likely to survive long on either count.
So I have decided that my book will actually reach more of the world, no matter how poor, remote or repressed, if it is free (PD), native to the web in HTML form, in a mobile-friendly single narrow column scrolling format.
Just like the blog you are currently reading ...
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