[phillryu]

Part of the article's characterization of that camera as a toy seemed to be how simple it was to operate and designed, and that's what allowed a non-photographer astronaut to make use of it, or the engineers at NASA to remix it days before the launch for their priorities. So at least it makes some case for the value of 'toys' while it might simultaneously look down a little at them. The toy-like approachability and simplicity is what enabled these people to play with it and have space photography taken seriously as a result.

[ben7799]

Well the idea they might look down at John Glenn or think a fancy camera might be too challenging is absurd too.

The article misses that John Glenn was himself an engineer who had an exceedingly good grasp of operating exceptionally complex machinery. Of course he could figure out how to use any camera on the market.

There are lots of people in photography who are not technically inclined but pretend they are cause they can use a camera, after all being technically inclined is not what makes you good at photography.

It's totally possible John Glenn & the other engineers bought a whole bunch of cameras and did exposure tests and ergonomic tests in terms how easy their modifications would be and then selected this camera as superior to what the Petapixel guys might have thought was the superior prosumer camera of the late 50s.

[Forgeties79]

>bring technically inclined is not what makes you good at photography

I think you would be hard-pressed to find anybody who asserts that is the primary skill/inclination needed to be a good photographer, but as I said, in another comment, I wouldn’t necessarily frame being technical as useless or particularly secondary. It is as integral as “having an eye,” which frankly is just another way of saying somebody understands the technical aspects of how to frame a photo, even if they don’t know how to articulate it (which they will eventually have to if they actually want to be good at photography). Even affordable prosumer digital cameras require some technical proficiency if you want to get the best results out of them.