Monstrous metrics

Monstrous metrics

In 2022, I’m wondering about taking off the Fitbit I’ve worn for the last four years, and relying on the sense of needing to move around that it’s instilled in me instead, plus at least a short daily walk, even if I’m not going anywhere special. I’m wondering if the worry of hitting the multiple goals adds more stress through guilt than it relieves by making me fitter…

So something that is genuinely helpful in many ways has some significant downsides. Can that happen elsewhere? Of course it can! And I’m thinking of those lovely camera reviews that we all read – here at EPZ, in magazines, or on YouTube.

My fitbit has helped me get into the habit of walking round the block on days that I don’t do anything else: and it helps me move around a little during the day when I’m feeling soporific – it buzzes on my wrist at ten minutes to the hour if I haven’t clocked 250 steps since the last hour, all day. But when I find myself pacing up and down the hall with a film on pause on TV, maybe the tail’s wagging the dog?

My bugbear in camera reviews is a fixation with high frame rates and modes. I need the ability to fire a frame every time the flash units recycle: around every two seconds with most of the units I own. I can achieve that with any film camera I have, except the specially unergonomic Exaktas, and more isn’t worth anything to me. I don’t shoot sequences of action often enough to need the ten frames a second my Alpha 7R III offers (how on earth do you edit that many files?)

Modes? My Contax RTS has Aperture priority and Manual, and I rarely use anything else on any other camera. I acknowledge that sports and wildlife photographers need more speed and one more mode, but that’s all, really. If you are a serious photographer (someone who wants to polish every frame in editing), I suspect it’s the same for you.

Weatherproofing? How often do you shoot in torrential rain? Two cards? It was never an issue until people started writing about it in reviews. Certainly, cards occasionally fail, and one loses pictures, but not often, and recovery software means you usually get most of them back… But to demand two cards on any ‘serious’ camera is silly. Especially for those people who don’t back up their files on an external drive!

So I’m arguing that too many metrics mean misery, and often push you towards a solution that’s not the best you can have, by giving you ‘red lines’ that have no reason to exist. And maybe I’ll leave the Fitbit on the bedside table – I’ve worn it more consistently and more continuously than I’ve ever worn a watch. And at the same time, I’m grateful for what it’s done for me.