Now, here’s a professional cell phone…
It’s a funny thing with the cameras.
The small cameras are regarded as ‘toys’.
Only the big cameras are ‘real’.
This is contrary to how we think about every other piece of digital technology.
No one looks at a wafer-thin laptop and says, “that’s not a real computer. That’s a toy. I mean, its fine for Freecell, but if you want to write an article for say, The New York Times, then you better use a mainframe”.
When it comes to cell phones, we are always eager to pull out the latest, fastest and smallest. Look at how small my cellphone is!
When it comes to cellphones, we don’t scoff at small cellphones and say ‘well, that’s fine for the amateur, but when it comes to making ‘professional’ calls, I use this’, and take out one of those brick sized things from the 1980s. No one in their right mind would say, ‘well, your blackberry is fine for calling your mother, but when you have to talk to The White House’, you better use this rotary dial big black phone.’
All that would be insane.
But it is just that kind of insanity that permeates the ‘bigger is better’ thinking at television stations.
Yesterday, we watched a ‘reality show’ on ITN in Britain.
It was a dumb show, and part of it involved people running into their homes, up the stairs and into a closet to find some piece of junk that had been hidden there. (I am sure it will soon appear on US TV somewhere).
In any event, each time the players ran into the house, they cut to a ‘hand held’ shaky camera that chased the person up the stairs. In one of the iterations, they held on the first camera long enough to see the second camera chasing the player up the stairs. This poor bugger was running up the stairs with a ‘professional’ camera the size of a Volkswagen! What is the point???
Coming into Brussels last night, we passed the display above.
Now THERE is a cellphone the camera pros can really sink their teeth into.
Throw that onto your shoulder and you can feel like you are making some real important phone calls!
Me, I am sticking with the blackberry.
Thanks,
