Friday 7 February 2014

Are "old" stuff obsolete?

    If you watched my Youtube channel lately, you might see that my last 2 videos were focused on using old gear for getting the job done. To me, the biggest reason anybody would do that today is price. Old things get cheaper by time...(exceptions: Leica cameras and vintage stuff). At the same time, technology evolved so that, theese days, you can manage an entire Youtube channel from your phone. Just imagine... Film a video at 1080p on your smartphone, edit in, you guessed, on a smartphone, upload it and interact with your community from your smartphone.

    In the video above I'm comparing two cameras, mostly focusing on what an older camera (year 2004) can and can't do. Now think about this. You're in 2004. The first iPhone came in 2008, so we can't really talk about smartphones. If you wanted to show somebody your images on the go you had to allways carry a printed book with your portfolio, or be at your computer. The workflow was just so much more complicated back then. 
    Going back to the overall "theme" of this post. Theese old things I'm talking about won't make your job easier. Not even close. For example, in the video below I see how does an old microphone help your video production. To actually get to the point where you have the audio in your editor you have to: get batteries, turn it on, select the recording mode, plug it into a PC or Mac, open a sound recording software and then you finally have your audio track. Let's take a smartphone... Unlock smartphone, start an audio recording app, you're done! I don't think I have to say which is faster. 


    Theese days, the quality of almost everything has decreased. This applies from food to, why not, content. Technology helped more people produce content, but that doesn't mean it's quality content. Take google play store, for example. 85% of all apps in the play store are crap. Sure, the rest 15% is great, but compared to the crap apps out there, the quality ones are just a few. This is the exact situation of Youtube, but google's video sharing service has much more crap then the Play Store. And if you have two videos saying the exact same thing, the person watching it behind the screen will allways choose to see the one that has better audio/video quality.
    This old tech might help you produce more quality content. I really think theese days, in order to get noticed, you have to do quality stuff, not just stuff. Of course, technology advancements, lets say in the audio recording area, helped a lot of people create better content. But one thing that still keeps people from using that technology is price. If you look on it on paper, a ZOOM H1 costs 100 dollars. Might not seem much, right? If that was your only and most important expense, that audio recorder looks quite cheap for what it can produce. But many people can't justify 100 bucks for something like that. Here comes old technology.
    At its time, the microphone I present in the video above, probably costed a couple hundreds. Now, you can get it for 10 dollars. Now 10 dollars is way less than 100, right? This is a product that more people can afford and that helps improve content by a lot. 
    This was a clear example, but the same formula can apply to many more domains. To me, theese old devices can help improve quality. While the workflow will get slower, the bump in quality is huge. Of course, if you're a company producing this content you'll allways want to use the latest and greatest, which is perfectly justified. But if you're not, like most of us, you have to find ways to improve, no matter by how much, what you're doing in order to aspire to be the best at what you do.

If you liked the videos, please give a try to my youtube channel.My Channel

Thanks if you got it through the post, leave a comment to let me see what you think about this subject...