My Mom is visiting and I’ve been taking advantage of my unemployment to tour her around some of Vancouver’s tourist spots. Where you find tourists, taking pictures. With everything from fancy high-end cameras to iPads. Yes, people do use tablets as cameras. But... only women.

I have no explanation for the unsubtle gender bias. [Update: Over on Twitter, I got vigorous pushback on the gender bias; many report seeing lots of men do this. Vancouver thing? Also, a suggestion of age bias: Mostly older rather than younger people. [The world is complicated.]]

And once you get over the shock of seeing people waving these things around, it starts to make sense: as in, What You See Is What You Get. Whether or not an iPad is a good camera, it’s a terrific social photo-sharing device; and when the photographer composes her shot of the waterfall or tulip-bed or boyfriend, she knows exactly what the people she’s showing it to are going to be seeing. Also, the iPad is no more awkward than the swollen high-end CaNikon SLRs the “real” photogs (both genders) are hoisting.



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From: Jarek (May 02 2014, at 15:18)

> Al­so, the iPad is no more awk­ward than the swollen high-end CaNikon SLRs the “real” pho­togs (both gen­der­s) are hoist­ing.

I'll have to disagree. Watch people struggle to zoom, let alone make any other adjustment while holding an iPad or even a bigger phone. Awkward to carry, sure. Awkward to use, not so much.

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From: Gord Wait (May 02 2014, at 17:07)

Funny I was just thinking about iPad photography this week.

When I saw the Apple TV ad I was thinking it's a bit goofy to use an iPad.

I don't think it's so dumb anymore. If I had an iPad to carry around I'd probably use the camera on occasion myself.

I've recently gone from a Canon point and shoot with a Wifi card to a Nikon SLR (which has an image file size too large to make the Wifi card practical) and now I'm missing the quick transfer from camera to my compute devices.

There is enough friction to getting images off my SLR and into my corner of the cloud that I tend to use my cellphone camera for instant cloud gratification..

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From: Peter (May 12 2014, at 11:09)

I think it might also be a usability question. The iPad has a big sharp, bright, screen. Older folks with aging or otherwise impaired eyes might benefit from such a big viewfinder rather than using a tiny optical or a small video viewfinder.

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author · Dad
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May 02, 2014
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