Yesterday, as I sat relaxed at my home, nostalgia swept over me as I mentally went through the technological advances in everything photographic over the years. I remembered my early fixed-lens rangefinder camera where I had to struggle to focus on contra-jour lighting. Thankfully, then came the SLRs and the ones I used had split-image screens with a microprism ring around it. Focussing became much easier but compared to modern cameras, they all were very slow, and photographing subjects like birds in flight required quickness and skills that very few possessed. The arrival of autofocus seemed like manna from heaven, but the early autofocus cameras still lacked speed, accuracy and consistency. Today it seems like we are in a golden era of autofocus that can easily track fast-moving subjects with much-improved speed and accuracy and even detect the type of subject (Subject Recognition). What’s the future going to be?
Rohinton Mehta
