View single post by TomOC

Posted: Mon Nov 11th, 2013 18:50

Joined:	Thu Apr 12th, 2012
Location:	Sausalito, California USA
Posts:	616
Status:	Offline

Digital, especially smartphone digital, has made photography a part of almost everyone's life. Digital SLRs opened the floodgates of "high quality" photography to everyone...but few actually took great photos, and most of those folks trickled back to smartphones once they were able to produce outstanding 4x6 prints of web photos of almost any size. That is a whole segment that has dwarfed "real" photography by magnitudes (I've seen it stated that more photos will be shot on smartphones next year than have been taken on all cameras an phones combined).

Just flip through a few Instagram categories and you will see some of the worst and best photos imaginable - imagination reigns!

None of this is to say that there will not remain a viable market for people who want the highest possible quality...as always understanding compromises between convenience price will be the drivers that place you in a category. Even today, no one on the planet would argue that a well exposed and process image from a D800 can equal one equally well processed and exposed with an 8x10 view camera, but none of us drags an 8x10 monster on our vacations or even regularly into a studio.

I love change...but don't always take advantage of it. I'm still madly in love with the Fuji X series, but haven't seriously even considered a GoPro. I've owned 3 different video cameras...took about 30minutes of video with each one and sold them on ebay after a year or so of sitting on the shelf. I still have a shelf full of Nikon glass that probably should go as well, long replaced by newer versions but for some strange reason, I like seeing them sit there (note to self...get over it).

Much as I love the Fuji's, there are still times that the Nikons are the only thing I consider using - really long shots, fast moving subjects (dogs, birds), or times when they are already set up and there is no "carry" price or inconvenience. In many situations, the fuji is producing images every bit as "good" as the nikons would/could and that makes me happy (because they fit in my jacket POCKET not a camera backpack) !!!

So, though I haven't moved too far on the current evolutionary scale, I'm happy with the way it's all going. We will all benefit. As with many Apple products, you buy the new one because you have GAS and then you say, Geeze was this really worth it...should I have upgraded? No, possibly not, but you can't even imagine going BACK to the older model :-)

That's where I am...

____________________
Tom O'Connell

-Lots of people talk to animals.... Not very many listen, though.... That's the problem.

Benjamin Hoff, The Tao of Pooh