Should there ever come a day when I stop loving photography, please go ahead and shoot me on the spot. I know I’m old and kinda creepy looking and not as much fun to hang out with as when I was younger, but I still love photographic imagery. I love what is possible now. I have so many more ideas floating about in my head now than I ever did back in the film days. I miss shooting every day. I miss working with fantastic creative teams. And yeah, I miss walking into restaurants with a hot model on my arm. Those were absolutely the best of days and I long deeply for them to return, though I know I’ll never be up to being what I was 20 years ago.
While I may have stopped shooting three years ago, I haven’t stopped caring about my images. As the technology for processing them improves and as I think of different ways to present them, I fill at least a portion of almost every day going back and rethinking many of those images. While advancements in AI have opened a lot of doors, which makes it easier to change my mind about an image, there’s a lot it still can’t do. One of the big issues is high-end resolution. Bottom line: the higher the resolution of the RAW image, the more flexible it is when we start tearing them apart and rebuilding them.
My first digital camera, purchased in 2003, was a three-megapixel (MP) Nikon. I was amazed at what it could do, but it was basically only good for online images. Printing anything larger than 5×7″ was out of the question and even that was stretching the technology a bit. Late in 2004, I jumped up to a 5MP Canon. The difference was phenomenal and I could now print 8×10″ images and my biggest worry would be color matching (I spent a lot of time in print shops in those days). Over the years, we graduated to 13MP, then 18MP, and finally, 27MP before health and finances made me stop. At 18MP and up, I can get a decent 20×36″ print, and looks incredibly sharp hanging on my wall. So, everything’s cool, right?
Not at all. You see, once you start messing with a digital picture, you impact the depth of its quality. When you save a photo in JPEG (.jpg) format, you roughly half its resolution. You lose half of the information that was available to you in RAW format (BTW, if you’re not shooting in RAW, you’re an idiot and shouldn’t call yourself a professional; you’re a hobbyist at best. I may be retired but I still have standards). When you crop an image, the relative number of MP goes down. If you copy/paste portions from a RAW image into a new image, you only keep a fraction of the data that created that image. Your quality is compromised and if you’re not going for quality, then what the hell are you doing? While MP isn’t the only consideration in creating quality images, it’s still a pretty damn important consideration.
Let’s chase a rabbit for a second. The RAW image on which the picture above is based measures 4272×2848 pixels at 28.38MP and a bit depth of 14. By contrast, the image you see above is 6000 x 4000 pixels (20×13.3″) at 24MP and a bit depth of 8. We used Adobe’s Firefly AI to change the background and create the image of the camera in the foreground, The background image was barely 4MP and the camera rounds out to 3.5MP once the background was removed. That low resolution required some careful upscaling to work in the final image. However, I feel confident that we could pull a full-sized print and it looks presentable. [BTW, the censors at Adobe are apparently all Republicans. I had to go outside of Photoshop to create the background and camera because it said our base image violated its terms of service, ie, too damn close to being nude. Generating the AI in image would have avoided the need for upsizing.]
Okay, getting back on topic, what sparked this post in the first place was I got an ad on Facebook for an event introducing Canon’s new C400 Cinema Camera. I clicked on the ad because, yeah, the subject’s interesting. I’m never going to need one, but it’s still interesting. That led to me getting an ad for Canon’s EOS R3 mirrorless. With a retail price tag of $4,500+, you’d think this baby would be a beast of a camera. But while it has a stupidly high ISO range of 102400 and can shoot continuous 12 FPS (30 electronic), it’s only 24MP! WHY? The EOS R5 has been at 45MP for a while and only has a price tag of $2,900. Why the fuck are we paying more to go backward? Am I the only one who sees that as an absolutely stupid move? Explain this to me, Canon!
Of course, you know how Facebook works. Once you click on one ad in a group, all you get are competitive ads within the same group. Scroll down, and there’s an ad for Nikon’s new Z6iii. Their electronic shutter goes all the way up to 120 fps! Native shutter speeds go all the way up to 1/16,000 sec! I guess everyone’s trying to catch hummingbird wings without a strobe now. That’s about the only thing that requires those speeds. The $2,500 price tag beats the hell out of Canon’s R3, BUT, it’s still only a 24.5MP box! The older D850 has 45.7MP and the price goes down to $2,300! So again, why are we charging more for a lower-quality result?? This is making absolutely NO SENSE. Dear Nikon: explain this to me like I’m 5.
Almost immediately, an ad for a Sony event pops up. What do they have? Their new Alpha 9 iii. Coming in heavy at $6K (WTF?) They’re touting a new global shutter full-frame image sensor that I’d have to see in action (eg, hold in my hand and shoot under challenging conditions), 120fps “blackout-free” continuous shooting, and a max shutter speed of 1/80,000 sec. Again, what the living fuck are you folks shooting that is so damn fast? Comets move slower! And what about the quality of the fucking images? 24.6MP! I can get that from a ten-year-old Alpha 7! Back in July of 2019, five years ago, Sony introduced the Alpha 7RIV at a whopping 61MP! However, that camera has been discontinued! They came back with the Alpha 7RIVa at a price of around $2,500. Yes, the back screen is lower quality. Why the fuck do you need a back screen in the first place? No, it’s not as fast. But goddammit, the difference in quality is more than double! There’s no point in asking Sony for an explanation because even they admit they don’t know why they’ve not continued to improve that line.
The story is the same across all the various lines such as Fuji and Pentax. All the new boxes coming out would rather play with extremes that maybe .01% of photographers need or even have a clue how to use than give us cameras that can capture images so astonishing you’d swear they were real. I don’t fucking get it.
Yes, there are cameras that blow the top off in terms of megapixels available. Among those:
- Hasselblad S2D 100 C 100MP on a mirrorless medium format camera. $8,199.00 and beats the hell out of anything listed above, Sony.
- Phase One IQ4 Infinity platform digital backs, paired with Phase One XF platform bodies. 150MP digital mirrorless medium format. $55,990. Out of most people’s price range, but you’ll get one helluva picture.
- Fujifilm GFX 100II mirrorless medium format at 100MP. This is possibly the most versatile medium-format camera on the planet. Most retailers price it around $7,500.
Those are all medium-format cameras, though. Medium-format is typically a studio-only camera, or, at the very least, one you pack around with extreme care. I’ve traveled with Hasselblads back in the film days. Their cases were so carefully constructed that you could have carried the Queen’s crystal in those boxes without worrying about nicks. I don’t expect any medium-format camera to not be fragile. You don’t take them out into the marsh. You don’t stand with one in turn one of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. You don’t take one to the summit of any mountain that has snow on top year-round. They’re not built for rugged outdoor shooting.
I question, though, whether contemporary photographers are built for rugged outdoor shooting. Maybe the issue isn’t that camera companies have lost their minds and their drive. Maybe it’s something closer to the fact that photographers today are lazy. They want more bells and whistles on the camera so that the camera does most of the work for them. They want the camera to focus on multiple faces. They want the camera to calculate depth of field for them. They want the camera to choose the optimal settings. They want crystal-clear 120fps back screens so that they don’t have to put their eye up to a viewfinder. They want to be able to put the camera on a tripod, walk away, and use a remote control to take the picture regardless of what changes in the environment.
More than anything, though, contemporary photographers don’t care about print quality. Their images are digital and temporary. They don’t care that they’re not going to be able to find them in five years. They’ll still be somewhere online, right? Probably reduced to a pathetic 72dpi because on screens anything higher doesn’t matter. Who wants to see pictures ten, fifteen, 20 years from now, anyway?
Yeah, about that… If you’re not taking pictures to preserve a moment for all time, then why the fuck did you pick up a camera to begin with? What makes photographs valuable is that they’re timeless. The photo I take today can show my grandchildren (if I’m ever so lucky) how I changed as I age, how chemo changed how I look, how I dress, and the activities I engage in. And for those photos to survive twenty, forty, or 100 years into the future, I need prints. Good, high-quality prints. And while there are multiple factors to getting good quality prints, it all starts with a good quality camera at the highest resolution you can afford.
So, why on earth would you spend $6K on a toy, when you can spend less than half that and get a camera that produces better pictures? Why would anyone sell a camera that makes a lower-quality picture? Why are they not trying to improve the quality of the picture, not how easy it is to grab a photo of your food?
I don’t understand. And if there’s a camera company out there that needs me to demonstrate to them how the less expensive camera produces a higher-quality image, my email address is charles@charlesiletbetter.com. Sponsor me. I’ll pack my chemo pills and we’ll do a five-year project going around the world, then we’ll do a three-year exhibition of the photos. You’ll be amazed at the quality of the images. I promise you. I may be old, but I’ll outshoot anyone working with a brand-new 24MP camera.
[BTW, in 2009, I shot the Indianapolis 500 with a 13MP camera whose back screen didn’t function. Screw the back screen. We sold every image.]