An Open Letter to the Mayor

Dear Mayor Bloomberg,

The overuse of flash is possibly the biggest mistake made by the tourists to New York. Whether they need a flash or don’t, the average tourist has a point-and-shoot camera with a long zoom lens and no matter what the outdoor lighting conditions are, I have noticed that they always fire the flash. Sometimes I sit at a ballgame, during the bright summer months, and watch camera after camera flash. No matter how far they are from the action, or whether the New York sun is beating down on them without mercy, the camera is set (it comes this way from the factory) to flash and so it does. This is not only a useless exercise, it is a misuse of energy, and is only contributing to global warming since each flash heats the atmosphere.  Sure, only a tiny bit, but with thousands of these flashes each day – believe me sir, it adds up.

It’s not just that flash generally ruins whatever natural light was placed there to help them make a beautiful picture of our fair city, but that half-time-time, there’s even a delay because to counteract the flash, red-eye reduction is also set, and this causes the camera to pause and fire twice. It’s a horror to watch subjects asked to pose, and wait with frozen grins while the camera fires a pre-flash and frankly, when these tourists return home, they have images of our city that don’t do it justice.

It’s not entirely the fault of the tourist. They are sold cameras based on the magnification of the lens. You see, this camera has a 20:1 telephoto lens, and it costs less than $100. They aren’t told that the longer lens means that more light is needed to get through the tube that’s filled with bits of glass and plastic, or that the f-stop is f5.6. After all, who can expect these tourists to know anything about an F-Stops. Even many of our own citizens have smirked at me when I used the word F-Stop – as if it were some sort of dirty phrase.

So for reasons that appear to be beyond our control, the world gets filled with harsh, overly-lit images of our city that never do look right.

I know that you welcome tourists to the city, as we all do, for their money, but if you visit a tourist site where there are hundreds of people with the latest point-and-shoots taking pictures in bright sunlight of the city-block long museum, you will see many flashes on this bright sunlit day. It is a waste of batteries that end up in our landfills and are hard to properly dispose of, and worse – if I may make a pun – it shows our city in a bad light.

There should be a way to stop this daily atrocity but I’m afraid that short of asking tourists to read the manual that was packaged with their camera, I don’t have a solution.  What do you think of the idea of testing tourists to see if they know how to turn the flash off?  Could you issue a ticket for incorrectly used flash?  If you assigned our traffic police to this duty, it would greatly increase the city’s treasury (something I see you are already doing with parking tickets that are given out willy nilly).

The Sunday automobile driver is perfectly happy knowing that the gas pedal makes the car go faster and the brake is used to prevent the car from crashing into the neighbors’ house. And I don’t believe that we are asking the visitors to our city to know much more than that about their cameras. What I’ve always liked about you, Mr. Mayor sir, is that you are open to new ideas, and that you have a decisive, almost dictatorial attitude towards your responsibilities.

Yes, I would suggest that we ban the zoom lens on the point-and-shoot, (or at least require a test of some sort, like a drivers license test) before selling a camera with a zoom lens and a tiny built-in flash; and I would only sell lens that opened to at leaste F2.8 rule. I would insist that the only time that flash fires in automatic mode, is if the subject is within range of the emitted light, and I would have to remove all red-eye reduction pre-firing from these cameras. In other words, as Dictator Dave, I would forbade the use of flash unless the user could prove that it was being used as fill-flash (that is useful) or that the image could not be taken without flash.

For those found transgressing these edicts, they would be fined heavily and then forced to view a selection of 1000 images which were ruined by flash.  If an individual continues to transgress the no-flash law, they will be forced, like in the old wild west, to check their cameras at the city limits and not get them back until they leave town. With these rules in place, we would greatly reduce the number of bad shots taken, as well as conserve battery power which would result in less harmful chemicals polluting our landfills. All in all, this would be a win-win situation.

I look forward to hearing from you about this blight upon our city.

With all sincerity, your humble servant,

Dave Beckerman

p.s. I noticed many flashes at the last press conference you held.  Possibly this would be a good place to announce the ban.