I've been a member on this forum for about a year and a half. In that time, there are some words and phrases that through overuse / misuse have grown really irksome. Here, in very specific order, are my selection.
Portrait Lens
As in "what is the best portrait lens for a K-5?". Now, while there is such a thing as a "macro lens", there is no such thing as a "portrait lens". Some use the long end of a telezoom, others use a wide angle close up, while others believe that only an 85mm F1.4 is the right tool for the job (probably because of the BOKEH). Here's the thing: a portrait is best done at something like F8 / F11. This means that most of us have a perfectly good "portrait lens" already (hint: it's a zoom that goes from 18mm to 55mm and manages a whopping F5.6 at the long end). What makes a good portrait is the quality of the light, be it natural, artificial or a mixture of the two. So the correct question is not "what is the best portrait lens?" but "what is a reasonably-priced lighting setup and how do I position it for optimal effect?".
Street Photography
As in "what is the best camera / lens for street photography?". By "street photography" as opposed to plain old "photography", I'm guessing you mean those horrible, voyeuristic pictures of homeless people on the pavement looking miserable or old people in cafés looking, well, old. And then converted into grainy black and white to make the unwitting subjects look dirtier / older / more wretched than they already are. Or do you mean crazy-angled shots of random passers-by "shot from the hip"? And converted into black-and-white, natch. Either way, the pursuit is both artistically bankrupt and morally corrupt. You're either shooting close up with a wide angle, which makes you obnoxious, or you're stealthily snapping using a telephoto which makes you both obnoxious and creepy. And what really gets me: if you're spotted by someone in the frame, that's considered a fail! Whatever happened to good manners and asking people whether they mind you photographing them? Interestingly, if you watch the "pro photographer, cheap camera" challenges on Digital Rev, the professionals
always ask. Maybe that's one of the distinguishing characteristics of professionals. And people who photograph beggars on the streets of London / New York / wherever: I very much hope that you have the residual decency to put some money into their begging cups to feed whatever wretched drug habit drove them there in the first place. Otherwise, you're just getting off on looking at poor people. Utterly hateful.
Crippled Mount
Once upon a time, you had some kind of mechanical widget that closed the aperture when you pressed the shutter release. This meant that you could select an aperture but still compose wide open. Then thirty years-or-so ago, you had the technological wonder that was electronic aperture control. Instead of having to manually select an aperture with the aperture ring, you could control it from the camera body itself. Wonderful. Some time later, Pentax removed the mechanical widget - perfectly reasonable since it was obsolete. However, according to the CRIPPLED MOUNT brigade who fetishize their 1970s lenses, Pentax are obliged to support them forever, hence the perjorative "crippled" apellation. What you're saying, in effect, is that someone else should do something that benefits you, not them, because YOU WANT THEM TO. Childish.
F1.2
As in "Post your ƒ1.2 Photos! (ƒ1.2 ONLY!)" (oh, and nice trick to use "ƒ" rather than "F" so that I had to hunt down the thread rather than having it come up in my search results). Gear snobbery at best, competitive at worst. Now, I have an awful lot still to learn about photography. Now once upon a time, your SLR might come with a 50mm F1.4 and if you were rich you could upgrade to a 50mm F1.2. But your camera also came with a tripod, a honking big flash and, at best, ISO 400 film. The point of F1.4 was to give you a little bit of leeway before you had to dig out the tripod or blast your subjects full in the face with brighter-than-the-surface-of-the-sun light. These days, when modern sensors have a three of four stop low-light advantage over film, the original rationale for ultra-wide apertures has gone. Now it's all about the BOKEH.
Canikon
As in "I'm so glad to be a Pentaxian rather than part the Canikon herd". The basic idea here is that there's no distinction between Canon and Nikon: all their products are crappy and the people who use them are sheeple. Do we really believe that you can become market leaders by selling crap? It's just snobbery. I'm personally not a fan of their market segmentation, but Canon and Nikon are orders of magnitude more successful than most other companies in the business through a combination of good engineering and good marketing. Live with it, I say, and stop carping from your self-imposed ghetto.
Toy Camera
As in "the Fuji X20 is a toy camera". Typically used by FULL FRAME fetishists about cameras that you don't have to make a special effort to take out with you, seemingly because they're not that great at BOKEH, which, of course, is the distinguishing characteristic of a camera that isn't a toy. Confusingly, the term is also applied to cameras that are perfectly good at BOKEH, such as micro four thirds and Sony NEX. Seemingly here, the distinguishing characteristic of the toy camera is lack of a "proper viewfinder". Even more confusingly, it is rarely applied to cameras like the GRD series that aren't very good at BOKEH, but which are popular among STREET PHOTOGRAPHERS.
Equivalent
As in "yes, but that Panasonic-Leica 25mm F1.4 is only equivalent to a 50mm F2.8 on FULL FRAME", the persistent bleat of the FULL FRAME fetishist. Equivalent in what way? Any why not "equivalent to 300mm F22 on 8x10"? You would be just as accurate to say "50mm F1.4 on FULL FRAME is only equivalent to 200mm F5.6 when you stand four times further away". Correct, in a trivial way, because the resulting image will be similar but utterly meaningless. How much hot air has been wasted on this pathetically pointless argument? Disappointingly, the otherwise-respectable Photozone commits this offence against common sense when they quote meaningless "35mm equivalence" figures. I asked earlier "equivalent in what way?". I know
exactly in what way the F1.4 four thirds lens and the F2.8 FULL FRAME lens are equivalent (in the mind of the person belabouring the point at least). It is, of course, the BOKEH, which brings us to...
Bokeh
As in "look at that creamy bokeh". This, seemingly, is the primary purpose of your camera-lens combination. It's a classic n00b error to believe that the purpose of an expensive camera is to take sharper pictures, with greater dynamic range and, yes, some tasteful subject isolation. Nonsense! It's all about how much BOKEH you can pump out. For the true worshipper, the BOKEH is also the defining characteristic of the PORTRAIT LENS. I just don't get it: you get excited reading the MTF figures of your most prized glass and then you go and waste all that sharpness on taking pictures full of blurry stuff. Look at real, professional photography outside of journals for photography enthusiasts. Sharp from back-to-front with barely a hint of bokeh to be seen. Mercedes ain't going to pay you if only one headlamp is in sharp focus. As for "bokeh" itself, it's a silly word. No wonder Kai pronounces it in a funny voice in the Digital Rev broadcasts. I propose "blur", which is not only accurate but, more to the point, English.
Full Frame
Did you see this one coming? Frequenting this forum has made "full frame", the one, true format against which all others are to be compared and belittled, my very most hated phrase of all. It's just so arbitrary: that a debatably obsolete film size should be the photographic yardstick for all time. If FULL FRAME is so all-it's-cracked-up-to-be, then why aren't the fetishists using medium format? Because by the same measure, it's got to be better hasn't it? And while you can't get a FULL FRAME Pentax camera, you most assuredly can get a medium format one. It's not even a meaningful term. I'm guessing it was originally a marketing term to say "look, ours is bigger", but that seems to have been forgotten. In what way is a four thirds camera not also full frame? Do the pictures come out half with-something-in-them and half black? Of course not! The supposed advantages of FULL FRAME (be it low noise, dynamic range, whatever) are transient: they are obsoleted by the very next generation of APS-C / MFT sensors, sometimes even the current generation. So to keep that supposed advantage, you're trapped in an endless cycle of upgrading. Nice for the balance sheets of CANIKON, of course, but not so great for your wallet. Any by sticking a 1kg lens on a 1kg body not so good for your back either.
It tickles that there's someone on the forums going by the name "36X24NOW" (manners! "36X24PLEASE" would be better). Should Pentax bring out the mythical FULL FRAME, do you suppose he'll change it to "THANKS"?
I'm probably on a hiding to nothing here, but FULL FRAME has become such a debased term that something different is required. I propose 35mm (as in film) which is both accurate, neutral and illustrative of the format's historical origin.
So, there you have it. Anyone else have some clichéd, tired phrases that have come to really annoy them?
Last edited by MRRiley; 05-15-2013 at 04:53 AM.
Reason: removing vulgarities
Originally posted by top-quark 
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