The Standard Of The Industry

The phrase " Standard Of The Industry " is wonderful. It has the sort of authority that is slowly slipping away from the rest of society. Time has eroded the power of the religious authority figure, the holder of civil power, the educator. A century of propaganda and counter-culture has made us doubt everything...so it is darn comforting to think that someone, somewhere, is correct. Mind you, when the standards of the industry lose their shutters, splash oil about the insides of their cameras, bang their mirrors off the pivots, get spotty sensors, and generally expose their feet of clay ( sometimes up to the knees...), it is awfully comforting to have a two-year warranty. And a lot of the standard firms of the industry do have these. It is a little less comforting to look at the smaller players and wonder what happens at the 23-month mark. Is this an unfair speculation? Is it making us hidebound when it comes to choosing a maker to support? Are we unfairly penalising the smaller players in the game? Well, you'll have to figure that one out for yourself, because I don't know the answer. The best I have been able to do is view the situation like a trip to Gloucester Park on a warm night. In addition to the sausage sizzles, the bar, and the trotters, the place used to have two other wonderful sights; the totalisator machine and the crowds of desperate punters. I'm talking about the mechanical days, before the thing went digital airport display. Waaaay long time ago*. The sausage and the beer attended to, the next order of business was seeing if you could receive more money than you paid out. Picking the trotter to bet on was aided by a race book and the touting advice of un-named experts - rather like reading the net now and trying to pick a camera. You could go round the back and look at the horses and carts and form your own opinions, but most of these had no scientific basis at all. Like cameras. The actual betting was either done with a man with a Gladstone bag and an expression so hard that it had a Knoop number, or a bored lady behind a cage at the tote board. I have no idea which of the two was big business and which was governmental interference. It made little difference. The money was paid over , the race was watched, and only rarely was money paid back. It was not necessary, as the whole point of the evening - the sausage, beer, and warm night buzz - was there for all. Was that a standard of its own industry? It probably was. It might still be. It lets you see what the phrase might be in terms removed from men in white lab coats clutching clipboards. And you can turn that speculation upon yourself wherever you are in the photo game...are you a standard of the industry? You might be - and if you are, please let us see more of you and show us what you do to occupy that position. We'll pay - we'll attend seminars and workshops and lectures and we'll pay for the information - just make sure that you really are a standard by which we can measure ourselves. And be aware that you can only be the standard for a certain period of time - someone will raise it someday. By all means be great but prepare yourself for one day being the late, great... * Elvis. Dinosaurs.