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 p.3 #20 · Dismal Outlook for Mirrorless | |
justruss wrote:
Eh, I don't get all the whining about the public's/a relative's/a friend's image quality tastes. To whit:
1. In the vast majority of cases, in my opinion, the technical aspects of a photo are at the bottom of importance.
2. The decadent crap we all post-- including 99% of what's on here, a so-called enthusiast's site-- is just pretty crap (landscapes, "street," etc) without any meaning anyway, and higher quality gear just allows us to make prettier versions of the crap more easily.*
3. Why does every stupid image of someone's kids, yet another sunset/mountainscape/car/beach/etc-- need to be shot with a higher end camera? What's wrong with the smartphone image? Who wants to "buy their memories" from someone else?
Ultimately, I think #3 is the reason-- and I support it. I'd wager that at least half of what's posted on this Website would be just as well produced on an iPhone. I bet 99% of the images here will never get viewed larger than at ~800 pixels height over a lifetime... and only on screen. An iphone-based image of a waterfall that a family hiked near, or of a family's kid the time he found a worm in the sandbox, is going to look just as good in most display mediums, including prints at 8 x 10, as anything they'd produce using any other camera. Compared to the old film SLR, or instant camera the family had... it's going to look much better.
The funny part to me is that I think the argument that the public has bad taste in images is made from some sort of pseudo-artistic/quality standpoint. And yet, I'd call it almost entirely a consumption-based, consumer-driven argument masquerading as a false sense of being better than the Philistine family member who is plenty happy with his iPhone images of his toddler. You think you're happier as a result of having high res, low dof images of your kid vs. his iPhone snaps? You think there's some value to having your family portraits shot with a Zeiss lens and a 5D3/D800 vs. his iPhone snaps? You think your images are more powerful, or tell a stronger story, or will somehow avoid the fate of nearly every image ever made-- viewed a couple times, forgotten, and eventually lost beyond a lifetime and considered meaningless after a generation or two? Naw, you've just bought the decadent consumer marketing BS that having the latest, greatest, highest-resolution gear is anything beyond a pursuit in itself, or that your images are anything besides mediocre snapshots gilded by technicolor coating.
No, in this sense I think the consumer herself is right. She's saying: "Enough. I don't make images thinking I'm the next coming of AA. I don't need to chase the technological dragon. I like having a couple images to post online, or to put in a small frame next to my bed-- and I like the act of taking images when I'm someplace, or being able to periodically show friends what I did last vacation when I take out my phone at the bar. That's good enough. That is all the value I need." She's totally right.
A DSLR is not a Picasso painting to an iPhone's Thomas Kinkade. Most of what's produced by people who think they know what they're doing with a DSLR on enthusiast sites like this IS the Thomas Kinkade. I'd put almost all of what I see here into that category, including most of my stuff. The medium, and the tool, and the technical quality of output does not make us in any way superior.
Somehow the so-called masses have started to figure this out. Photography is mostly a consumerist sport played by folks who think they're somehow cultured.
*That doesn't mean I think I'm holier than thou. I too produce this crap, and I too am overly-attentive to what's new technologically. And this rant-- phew, what a rant!-- isn't directed at anyone... beyond myself, perhaps. ...Show more →
The Picasso/Kinkade analogy doesn't work, because the difference between Picasso and Kincade *isn't* really technical quality, but artistic merit. No one is saying that smartphone images can't have artistic merit: they clearly can. The issue is that more full-featured cameras are reflective of an attention to craft, and to me, that craft is worth preserving, irrespective of artistic merit. If all cameras become more automated and simpler, we'll lose appreciation for many of the subtler decisions made in a photograph: DoF, motion blurring, exposure, focus selection. I want to live in a culture where people recognize those distinctions, because it's richer and more interesting.
I'd make a food analogy: traditional cooking involves attention to a lot arcane detail that many would argue today is outmoded and unecessary, and it's true: no one anymore needs to make their own chicken stock or make their own cheese every day. But when a vast majority of the public has *never* made their own stock or cheese, then as a culture we start to believe that the stuff that comes in cans or prewrapped slices is just as good, and our society is poorer for it.
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. I like to have a proper display and not some tiny thing to look at, and walking around with a tablet and taking pictures with it is not ideal either. I must be old, I guess, but I fail to see how people can spend so much money on something that does everything but nothing right, including phone calls and pictures.