Fading gently

Fading gently

A couple of things have made me think about the adverse effects of time on both machine and man… Last year, I realised that some of the batteries I have for my older Alpha 7 bodies don’t hold a lot of charge: they spend hours on the charger, but go flat over the course of a couple of dozen shots. I bought some new ones and I’m in the process of identifying and recycling the ones that are terminally short-lived.

And an awareness that my left eye had got significantly more short-sighted took me to the optician on Friday, where a lengthy process led me to new lenses (for only the second time in a couple of decades: the last time was two years ago) and my first pair of reading glasses. And I shall eventually need an operation to deal with cataracts.



Now, my eyesight and I have always had an interesting relationship with photography, as being short-sighted used to mean that I could examine negatives without needing a magnifying glass – as the accommodation (the ability to change focus) deteriorated from my mid-forties this changed. Now, I can do it once more. It’s not all bad.

I was asked whether I have problems with bright lights – the answer is not really any more than when I was young. I could never read books or papers in direct sunlight, and I’ve always been keen on clean glasses and windscreens because of the flare. I think I’m actually fussier about that than my camera lenses.



Apparently, the lens in my left eye had hardened, yellowed, and changed refractive index. That’s why my prescription has changed, and the new lenses will disorientate me when I first wear them, as my eyes will form different size images and it will take my brain a while to learn to sort things out. It will, though: test subjects wearing glasses that inverted their view saw things upside down for a couple of weeks – and then their brains flipped the view, so that it became normal. Eyes are wonderfully adaptable.



We forget this at our peril when we take pictures. Human brains are adept at making up for the shortcomings of the eyes they use, and adjust the view to make sense, and provide the best picture of reality. Cameras lack this facility… They won’t adjust colours, move around to get extra detail, Gestalt together highlight and shadow detail for a perpetually and unconsciously HDR view of the world. Let’s have a round of applause for our personal optical systems, and the way that they perform.