Looking backwards. Looking forward. It's all good.

 

Ben. Circa 2008.

I've been cleaning out hard drives today. It's amazing how much stuff accumulates in those anonymous metal boxes over time. I've tossed away at least a terabyte of old, unneeded client files but also at least two terabytes of personal junk. Many, many repetitive "test shots" of downtown street scenes, multiple tries at graffiti documentation and many, many old videos that were a blend of personal art projects and also videos made for non-profit clients who were aiming squarely at social media. I tried not to trash photographs of people unless they were included in project files for clients who have fallen out of favor or whose companies disappeared at some point in the last five or six years. But I can't bring myself to cull out very many images of people I like or people from companies that I still work with. Just can't feed everything to the little trash can. Not yet.

The image above, viewed at the end of a year that was good for me (2022), reminds me that we don't need much at all to do images that we can really like and cherish. This photo of Ben was done a long time ago. It was done with a flawed digital camera and a cheap, consumer MF lens. The lighting was one 1K tungsten light aimed through big layers of soft diffusion and nothing else. A classic one light portrait. 

The camera was the ill-fated Kodak DSC-DSLRn. A 14 megapixel, full frame camera that had more firmware updates than I have cameras. The lens used was an ancient Nikon Ais 135mm f2.8 manual everything lens. It was small and had a wonderful focusing ring but it was sure a pain in the butt to focus on the SLRn camera. The focusing screen in that camera was definitely in NO WAY optimized to make manual focusing either easy or accurate. But in the end the combination of trial and error and persistence worked. The eccentric lighting worked. The weird sensor worked and was actually really good for portrait work. Sadly, that was one camera that fell apart in my hands. I don't mean that it physically disintegrated. 

No, it was more discreet than that. It would just...hesitate and die from time to time. Then, after a while, it started randomly introducing artifacts in the files. Then... well, you get the idea. After a while Kodak figured out that they couldn't fix it or wouldn't fix it and so after two years of my use they bought it back from me. I was glad to see it go; from a business point of view. I was sad to see it go from an artistic point of view because the files really were nice and it did have one superpower. It was the first digital camera that used focus stacking/image processing to create super resolution, super low noise, low ISO (down to 6) files. 

I did a series of 4x5 foot, point of purchase, color prints with the camera using that low ISO mode and they were super sharp, bereft of any visible noise and had perfect color. Now...they did take a long time to shoot and everything you shot had to be very still and the camera had to live on a stout tripod. But hey, most of the photographers in my age and proficiency cohort cut their teeth on 4x5 view cameras in the beginning so it was hardly unmanageable. 

But then again, the darn camera did stop working after a while. 

I think about things like this on days like today which inspire both wish lists for the future and assessments of the past. I've watched a few videos on YouTube where well know Tube-O-graphers talk breathlessly about Sony adapting the new AI AF module into the next generation of cameras. How Fuji must MUST update their product line to stacked sensors and then turn around and update all the lenses to match the resolution of the new sensors.... How Leica will shortly introduce either an M series body with an EVF or a Q body with interchangeable lenses. God, I hope they are still L mount lenses for that mythic interchangeable lens Q3..... but I'm sure not holding my breath.

But the conjecture is so tiny and weak. The merchants of lust are talking small potatoes updates and tweaks but nothing that will really reach out and punch you in the face as being new and super exciting. We're in the mature stage of digital now. Time to deal with that. 

And, the photo above reminds me that we supposedly got into this racket because we loved making the photographs. If that's true and we've already squeezed most of improvements we "needed" out of camera technology then who will lead the charge back into the thrill of making wonderful photographs?

Or will we all just become really diligent camera collectors?

My message to reviewers, blogger and internet "experts" :

Show more work. Not less work. Every blogger and YouTuber should have to prove their work to their customers/audience. Prove that they know what they speak about and what they write about. Show me the work. Not the camera but the work. And once I've seen that you know what you are talking about...then you have permission to show me the camera. No more empty influencers. No more last century experts. No more golden agers. Just show us what made that camera you are reviewing better.

But mostly show us how it helped you make better photographs. That's supposed to be what we're interested in.