The next camera will fix all the problems with your current camera — the ones that are keeping you from taking great pictures, or making great films.
Definitely don’t shoot anything until the next camera comes out.
Certainly ignore that fact that great photos have been taken, and films made, with (blech) already-available cameras. Possibly even the one you currently own.
When the next camera finally does come out, refresh this page.
Maschwitz's Law is an admonition to camera manufacturers to enable the maximum feature set supported by their hardware, lest their users do it for them.
Or, put simply:
First appearance here, where I wrote:
What I love about the new generation of cameras, such as those from Blackmagic, Red, and even GoPro, is that they all give you everything they’ve got. They’ll give you the highest image quality they can, in the smallest package possible. They’ll compress images as much or as little as you want. They’ll max out their resolution at the expense of frame rate, or vise versa—whichever you like. And they’ll pack their best dynamic range into any format they can record.
Filmmakers are smart, and have access to a lot of information about what's possible with existing technology. If you break Maschwitz's Law, they'll notice:
Or they'll take matters into their own hands. Examples of users extracting functionality from cameras that had artificially held it back include Magic Lantern hacking raw video out of the 5D Mark III, and Cinematographer Paul Ream hacking his Sony F5 to enabled internal 4K recording.
Synonym for hijinks.
When we read something on the internet, we tend to apply the General Interent Filter. Here’s how it works.
First polarize the sentiment expressed in the writing to its most extreme.
Then assume it was written specifically about you.
Often new technologies seem like a better idea than they really are, because they are fun and exciting when sampled in small doses, but become less pleasant with prolonged exposure.
It’s like the first time you tried cream soda, and you though, “This is amazing! Why don’t we drink this all the time?” And then you realized you couldn’t finish the bottle.
Stereo 3D, High Frame Rate cinema, and HDR presentation are susceptible to the Cream Soda Effect. People often watch short demonstrations and enjoy the novelty, and then spuriously extrapolate that they’d like to see a whole movie that way.
In a group ordering situation, there is never enough pepperoni pizza.
This is because we order with our heads, but we choose slices with our hearts.
In a voting situation, the person who votes for pepperoni will consume almost exclusively pepperoni slices. But the person who votes for Vegan Veggie Lover’s Self-Flagellating Delight will probably also grab a slice of pepperoni.
Stu’s Pizza Constant = 1.75. Estimate how much pepperoni pizza you require, then multiply by this number.
See also: Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert. This excellent book contains revealing studies about how we are terrible at predicting what will make us happy.
As in, preemptively retired. A state of self-unemployment where retirement and work are seamlessly integrated.
It’s easier to write a long email than to read one.
No one reads your emails.
A chronic condition of feeling the need to emphasize one’s point so far beyond necessity that not only is the point lost, but the listener/reader is actually more likely to reject it.
