

Why I really, really hate Instagram - bkudria
http://seldo.com/weblog/2010/11/03/why_i_really_really_hate_instagram

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jsdalton
This is akin to complaining that Impressionist paintings don't look "real" and
therefore are not as good. I suppose we should be deploring the fact that
we'll never, ever know what that starry sky in Arles really looked like
because Van Gogh mucked it all up with his swirling colors.

What the author fails to understand is that most people, like artists, use
photography (and many other recording media for that matter) to create or
communicate a certain mood or feeling, not to document reality with the
highest fidelity possible.

~~~
seldo
This is pretty different. Impressionism is creating art from scratch; this is
taking art that has already been created and stamping it with a cookie-cutter
filter effect. It adds no creative input at all, and in fact takes away from
what is already there.

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thisisblurry
All of his complaints aside, is he aware that Instagram allows you to save the
original photo (in addition to the filtered photo) to your Camera Roll?

~~~
seldo
This is not the default behaviour, and the setting is not available from
within the app -- you have to exit, go to general settings, find the app in
the list, and change the setting there. I would love to know how many
instagram users do this, but I bet it's a tiny fraction.

~~~
thisisblurry
A number of apps work in a similar fashion, such as Facebook, Gowalla,
Twitterrific, and Weatherbug...

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BoppreH
Wanna know what kind of photo data loss really makes me angry? Timestamps.

Big, yellow, irremovable timestamps covering a chunk of the photo.

All the time data you could possibly want is already embedded in the file.
Want to print it? Ok then, go ahead and put a timestamp on the corner if you
really want to. But please don't destroy the original.

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GHFigs
_Go back in your hard drive and look at photos you took with your cellphone 5
years ago._

Ha ha, oh wow. No single sentence underscores the author's misapprehension of
why people take most photos better than this. What's astonishing is that this
is _after_ he correctly grasps the concept of Instagram:

 _...it connects you to your friends, and it provides a way of sharing content
with your friends that keeps you coming back to the app._

The astute reader will note that this doesn't sound like a solid data
preservation strategy. But neither does connecting with friends sound like
something particularly deleterious to the formation of memories. Quite the
opposite: sharing signals memorability. If that comes at the expense of
"destroying" the photo's accurate representation of the color of your couch
cushions or the oiliness of your skin, so be it; those things are not
memorable. The photo is not the memory.

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jonnathanson
This commentary assumes, as its driving premise, that most users of apps like
Instagram really care about data fidelity or picture quality as measured on a
scale not immediately perceptible to them. I would wager that they don't.
Furthermore, I take issue with the assertion that putting a cute filter on a
photo is "destroying" its quality. To the users of Instagram, they're
_finishing_ the photo by doing that. It's part and parcel of the final
product. The photo is not destroyed or degraded with the filter; it's _made_
by the filter.

Not everyone (and, in fact, and perhaps a bit unfortunately, most people)
cares about quality. They'll take fun and convenience every time. This is why
you see people still using MP3s or lossy AACs on iTunes, for instance, and not
filling up drive after drive with lossless rips directly from CDs. A lot of
folks just want ease and fun and sharing, and there's nothing wrong with that
in principle.

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ascott
What about all the people who shoot in jpeg instead of RAW? Also the camera
manufacturers who don't enable RAW on their cameras, they are stealing our
data! Revolt!</sarcasm>

I was a professional photographer before becoming a programmer. I think apps
like instagram and hipstamatic are fantastic. Not everyone can to take the
time to learn photo editing software, and filters add a new perspective on
ordinary subjects.

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mattdw
This just in: some people hate hipsters.

(I am not entirely convinced that faux-polaroid effects are a tragic loss of
data as he suggests.)

~~~
studioprisoner
This guy makes it like it's the end of the world, the end of photography... Oh
no...

Instagram have made a great app, and can give anyone the chance to do
something neat with their phone...

and become a hipster :)

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bradleyland
"I'm not a photographer."

That much is apparent.

There are a couple of reasons the Instagram affects appeal to me, and I'm sure
this applies to more people.

Nostalgia is fun. Memories have a way of distilling events down to their
better parts. It's a natural adaptation. No one wants to remember the fight
they had with their family on vacation. They want to remember the time that
mom was startled by the bear that walked in to camp and went screaming in to
the camper flailing the grilling instruments over her head. Mom, not the bear
:)

Not everyone looks good in photographs. Maybe I don't want my likeness
archived in high fidelity. When I recall fond memories, I don't remember my
pale complexion and baggy eyes. I remember where I was, who I was with, and
the good time we were having. This much is apparent by everyone's expression.
And here's the cool thing, humans don't require a high-fidelity photograph to
guess the disposition of the person in a photograph. We require very little
detail. That's the great thing about our brains. It fills in the blanks very
well. Personally, I prefer to fill in the blanks a little bit.

Cameras -- even film ones, and even big view cameras -- can't reproduce the
full spectrum of color and dynamic range that the human eye can see. The
result is that photographs often look "flat" in contrast to our memory of an
event. When you look at photos taken by these old, vintage cameras, they have
a certain warmth and color palette that doesn't match reality, but _feels_
more interesting than a flat photo in some cases.

~~~
seldo
The whole point of my article is that _real_ nostalgia _is_ fun. However,
faked-up 1970s polaroid nostalgia is just fake. These are real photos and over
time they will accumulate real nostalgia; you can't shoe-horn it in right from
the beginning by using a digital filter.

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ra88it
I'm starting to wonder if stuff like this gets upvoted so people can watch it
go to the top and get thoroughly trashed.

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shawnwall
Perhaps all artists of any sort should abandon all forms of media except the
most recent technologies. Who needs oil paints, or working with woods, metals,
etc. Let's go purely digital so everything can be absolutely perfect.

The reality is everyone thinks they are a photographer these days because
everyone has a camera in their pocket. Most people take awful, horrid photos,
and tools such as hipstamatic and instagram can make even bad photos visually
pleasing. If it makes the user happy, it's fine by me. It's their phone/camera
and their life.

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mynameisraj
Odd. I set Instagram to always send my original (unedited) photo to the Camera
Roll. What's wrong with that?

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Poiesis
You know, this totally reminds me of my view on games like Guitar Hero [1].
"Why spend all that time learning how to press buttons when you could learn
the real thing!" I would complain. I finally came to my senses one day and
realized that the game was _fun_ [2] and that I had rather been missing the
point.

[1] I know there's a version out that teaches you the real thing. Hope it does
well. [2] It's still not my thing--too much time required--but I'm not going
to spoil someone else's fun.

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heresy
Technology isn't static, there will be a time when the quality from a phone
camera is "good enough" that the whole first part of the diatribe becomes
moot, arguably for most people it's already at that stage.

My Olympus digital camera from 2001 was a 4 megapixel item, flawed though
megapixels are as a measure of quality, at those levels it did still matter,
now my phone camera one-ups it in that department.

The problem is more, how and where do you store your photos so that you still
have them, 40 years from now, which he does touch on to some extent. Somehow,
I doubt Instagram will be the "system of record" for this, and for now, it's
providing a service that some people find useful.

~~~
alexyoung
I think phone cameras have been at that point for a while.

I took my iPhone 4 and digital SRL on holiday this year, and my best shots
where taken with the iPhone 4 simply due to serendipity.

At first I was actually annoyed when my friends and family preferred most of
the iPhone shots on Flickr, but then maybe my SRL skills aren't as good as I
thought they were!

~~~
danio
At on-screen viewing sizes of web-shared photos (currently <1MP) you are going
to struggle to see the better image quality that an SLR can provide. With
prints of 10x8" or larger you will start to notice lack of sharpness and
chroma noise.

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DrJokepu
So does the author also hate people who rather buy records on vinyl instead of
mp3?

Some people like old technologies, or simulated old technologies. It makes
them feel nostalgic, escaping to allegedly simpler times for a quick moment.
It's about emotions, not technology. I get it, the author doesn't like doing
that, but why judge people who do?

~~~
frou_dh
Odd that you mention MP3 as the high-end because that is famous as a lossy
encoding. He makes it clear that his beef is with wiping out detail that is
already in hand.

So my dubious music analogy is scratching up your new CD so that it skips a
bit.

~~~
GHFigs
_He makes it clear that his beef is with wiping out detail that is already in
hand._

...like ripping a CD to a lossy encoding, or taking a digital photo in JPEG.
There really is no way make the complaint about data-degradation without
counting these things. The author's real beef is with the aesthetics.

~~~
frou_dh
The degree of harm (if it's considered that) caused by these cameras saving in
JPEG is no where near that of heavy filters.

Though I don't think the author's tone is justified. Some people are just
having fun and rightly don't care about archival.

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kevinelliott
You can still be a geek and destroy the data in your photos. These funky photo
apps give people who might ordinarily terrible at taking photos and gives them
an edge. It's like a golf handicap. It adds a bit of flair and artisticness to
what would otherwise potentially be some nasty looking photos of your friend's
friends.

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zalew
It's funny how people use a lot of modern, often expensive, technology just to
imitate effect of a 20yr old camera you can buy for like $50.

Archeologists one day will wonder 'why did they do that?'

~~~
ceejayoz
> It's funny how people use a lot of modern, often expensive, technology just
> to imitate effect of a 20yr old camera you can buy for like $50.

I think it's funny how you've already forgotten just how expensive it was to
have film developed and printed.

The camera may cost you $50. The three good photos you get out of your roll of
film will cost you $5-$10, and the photo CD with digital versions will cost
you an extra couple bucks.

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webology
This reminds me of the rants akin to Twitter's 140 character limitations back
in the day. Instagram is useful and _fun_. I suspect Instagram is going to be
just fine!

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bl4k
"You are fucking up your photo."

500,000 users disagree

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mariani
ah, I get it, this is being upvoted because it's funny _few_ I thought there
for a minute we where going to go all eternal September

~~~
jasonlotito
I spent a minute trying to figure out what you meant by saying "because it's
funny few I thought..." when I realized you actually meant "because it's funny
_phew_ ".

I'd also mention something about the punctuation, but frank, it was the
few/phew slip that really confused me. =)

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JereCoh
Instagram is the page curl of 1997.

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kmak
The best camera is on you have in your hand at the time. I don't see a problem
with letting people use whatever they have -- the technology will presumably
get better if it is what is demanded by the market.

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lachyg
I stopped reading it when I realised he hates Instagram because the iPhone has
a poor camera...

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_neil
u mad.

Images need to be uploaded. My iPhone uses T-Mobile with Edge. I do not want
to wait for a 12MP photo to be transferred, ever. That is a prohibitive user
barrier. Besides that, in the future they will be able to just say "ENHANCE"
like in Blade Runner and this won't even be an issue.

Based on his other articles, this guy is either being intentionally
inflammatory or should probably be medicated.

