The other day when I was looking at CD photos from the film developing company we have been using, I noticed that the photos were no longer high resolution. The quality had been reduced but the price had not.¹

This morning I talked with a digital camera salesman. I learned that, although well over 29.5 and all that stuff, I already know a little about digital photography. I know that a good film camera takes better pictures than a low-quality digital camera, which -- not being an expert on digital photo stuff -- I believe includes most digital cameras now sold.

During a web search this morning, I learned there is so much different about digital cameras from film cameras I'll probably never learn most of it.

I only know about "good" pictures, because I was taught photography (the old-fashioned film way) when I was a reporter. During that career time, I once calculated I was pushing the shutter 5,000 times a year. Do digital cameras have shutters? I don't think the actual techniques of taking good pictures has changed with digital cameras, except that I suspect it's a lot easier -- no clutch, oh, no, wait, that was my old Plymouth, not my old camera.

I understand in my over-29.5-way that a digital camera also allows you to save around 500 pictures on a "memory card," and you need only print or have printed the photos you want.

Soon we will have to change, when we buy our new iMac desktop. We'll then buy a digital camera. Not because we're enamored with the latest technology, but because it is going to be harder to get film development and other film work done as time passes.

Ah, time passing. There's technology I understand.

I paid about $600 for my present Minolta film camera when I bought it in the mid-1990s, because I needed it for my work as a print news reporter. That camera has two lenses, giving me a range from 50 millimeters to 180 mm for closeup and distant work. I seldom use higher than 70 mm. and find it hard to hold the camera still enough for a good shot when zooming at the upper range.

I've seen ads for new digital cameras that cover the same range as my Minolta, but starting down around 20 mm. for about $800. These digitals also boast an image stabilization program in case you get the shakes while photographing that moose which has decided to charge you.

But they don't prevent wildlife from disappearing, as happened to me yesterday during a walk down the road to a bridge over a brook. I saw a large snapper turtle sunning itself on a rock, and after I walked home I returned in the car with my camera. As I got out of the car, I heard little kids screaming and then saw their mother ignoring them while she sat on a boulder near the stream.

Surprise. The turtle had left. So did I.

We're not quite ready for that high-tech digital stuff. We'll keep our two high-quality film cameras for awhile, because they work and because we can't afford a good digital camera at the moment.

Another reason for stalling and remaining old fashioned with my photography is because our two computers are quickly becoming antiques. Our ten-year-old iMacs each have a little over 3 GBs of storage space -- whatever that means. New iMacs have, if I remember since I haven't seen one in some time, somewhere around 80 or more GBs. I still don't know what that means, but it must mean more room in the trunk.

It also means our antique iMacs probably can't handle all the doodads that we will have to install when we go to digital photography. I understand that with film photography, no matter how good the camera, the quality of the pictures depends on whoever processes the film and produces the CD. With the right expensive gadgets, you can do digital processing yourself and even "burn" your own CD.

Hey, I must be getting there. I know what a CD is. It's that little round thing the processor mails me that I can put into a slot on my antique iMac and see the pictures on the computer. That technology -- there's that word again -- also allows me to e-mail pictures, at no extra cost. Cost is old fashioned enough for me to grasp.

And I know how to work both of our out-of-date film cameras as well as our antique computers.

I have become higher (not high) tech over the years. I remember those Brownie box cameras when I was a kid. (Yes, I was a kid. No, I'm not a kid.)

I also remember other stuff, such as shoes I wore as a kid that had leather soles. Anybody reading this ever seen a leather sole? Today's high-tech soles -- and shoes -- allow me to not slip and fall on rocks or mud or other challenges we face on the Appalachian Trail. And I don't even have to polish these high-tech shoes or boots.

The first time I climbed Katahdin, I wore my leather-soled shoes. The soles came loose a week later, that is, a week after by some miracle I hadn't slipped and broken my neck because those soles were slippery on mountain boulders. Then I graduated to leather boots with rubber soles of some type, such as the pair I wore while walking the Cadillac Mountain South Ridge Trail -- the pair that hurt my feet so much on all that rock it made me cry.

My current high-tech low-top hiking shoes are light, comfortable, and non-slip.

I still trip if I don't watch where I'm going.

Speaking of high-tech, our antique computers are pretty high-tech compared to other ways of writing I recall from my low-tech past. When I went off to college, my father bought me an Underwood, which was a manual typewriter that didn't have "save," or "print" (actually, it printed while you banged away on those keys), or "send."

"Send?" Had my father mentioned that, I would have called him a dreamer.

Now I "send" every day.

Next stage of tech climbing. As a brand-new reporter we used electric typewriters. Wow! They were fast -- faster than the Underwood, that is, but a heck of a lot slower than our antique iMacs. We typed onto a tape, which we then fed into a computer that took up the entire inside of a room. Eventually we saw newsprint, which we had to paste onto the pages.

Each press day -- for the first weekly -- I would leave the building after we had "put the paper to bed" and find a capital "B" or some other letter stuck to my thumb. Um, which sentence in this week's edition was missing a capital "B?" Tain't done that way no more. Now it's all by computer, and nobody carries a capital "B" away on their thumb.

That's high-tech.

I used to phone "hot" stories into the first paper for which I wrote, the Bangor Daily News, and a hot shot typist would type them word for word. Later in history, we went --with computers -- to a special number the computer would dial to enable us to send our stories. Then came e-mail.

Thank God for e-mail and our antique iMacs.

You think I'm old fashioned. My brother is still learning to use his "new" word processor, you remember, the one that was not a computer and didn't send anything anywhere.

I know one day I won't be old fashioned. You'll know when you meet me on the trail and see me fumbling with my nice new digital camera or looking for my memory card, as my daughter once did when she left hers on a trailside rock. A kind tourist returned it to her when we returned to the trailside rock, after my daughter's soft memory helped us find that rock.

That day when I am no longer old fashioned also will be the day you see me climb into my electric or hydroelectric-powered car for the ride home.

And later that day, when I am home, you'll see me cutting grass with my new electric lawnmower. No wait, that day is here. Have one, love it. To make it go, you lightly squeeze a "dead man's switch" such as engineers have on trains. No old-fashioned yanking those high-tech starter cords on those gasoline-powered, polluting lawnmowers.

But the really high-tech day will be the one when you see me at home, relaxing on a high-tech lawn chair because I have figured out how to keep our yard nice looking without having a lawn. No lawn to mow at all.

That will be high tech.

Maybe then I'll have time to figure out how to work that darned high-tech digital camera.

¹ Vermont Color responded to my questioning e-mail and told me they had had a problem with their main processing computer so temporarily switched to a backup. They hadn't realized their backup system was producing CD and print photos with a lower pixel count than normal.² The company offered to redo our order for free, but I thanked them and declined because none of the pictures on this particular CD are any for which I would need high quality. I would need high quality to submit a photo to a magazine or book publisher.

There are companies which produce photos, CDs, and even offer to keep your pictures on-line at half the price of Vermont Color. But I like those high-quality photos and CDs Vermont Color produces from either my old-fashioned film camera or that new high-tech digital one I'll one day try to figure out how to use while relaxing on my high-tech lawn chair.

² Pixels are the little dots that make up the picture. The more pixels, the better quality the picture. They have nothing to do with those pictures I used to scribble during Miss Nuts boring, boring, boring American history class.

Milt Gross can be reached for corrections, harassment, or other purposes at lesstraveledway@midmaine.com.

Milton M. Gross Copyright 2009