diptych # 52 ~ coming to one's senses
Wednesday, October 30, 2013 at 09:20AM 
R.I.P. dslrs and those who love them ~ Au Sable Forks, NY - in the Adirondack Park • click to embiggenThe recently concluded PhotoPlus Expo in NYC has apparently ignited a kerfuffle (V23) replete with a new round of accompanying wailing and gnashing of teeth. The results are in and, as a result of the fact that sales of mid>top-tier dslrs and lower-end P&S cameras are dropping like the top of a 170 million year old rock formation in Goblin Valley State Park, the end of "traditional photography" is right around the corner, or so some might think.
However, IMNSHO, that thinking is pure poppycock supported by little more than a bathtub filled to the brim with flapdoodle and green paint.
While there is little to dispute regarding the idea that sales of mid>top-tier dslrs are in a sales tailspin from which they most likely will never recover and that the low-end of the camera market is being driven to an early grave by camera phones (or is it "phone cameras"?), what if anything this has to do with an impending photogeddon, "traditional photography" ("TP") wise, is beyond my scope of comprehension or gullibility.
A big part of the specious reasoning (if that word is appropriate here) behind the end of "TP" (as embraced and loved by a quite literally dying breed of graying old coots - you'll have to pry my full-frame dslr from my cold dead hands) is that the younger twitfacetumblr social network picture making crowd (aka: young whippersnappers) just plain don't give a crap about IQ (Image Quality). After all, who needs a billion megapixels or the machines which make them if all you're doing is making with, sending and looking at pictures on your smart phone or some other electronic device?
OK, taken at face value I can get down with that fact, but to use that paradigm as the foundation for the demise of "TP" is ridiculous. To buy into that reasoning, one must also accept the idea that the hordes of analogue/film snap-shooting picture makers, toting their Brownies, Instamatics, Polaroids, and other such "amateur" cameras (not exactly high IQ picture making machines) were, in their day, also destroying "TP" because, quite frankly, not a whole lot of them gave a crap about IQ. And, if they were tearing down the hallowed halls and walls of "TP", then it's a wonder how anything resembling "TP" ever made it to this late date.
In either case, I am not all that certain that, percentage wise, the number of defilers of "TP" vs practitioners of "TP" is all that different from what it was in the "golden days" of "TP". The number of casual picture makers have and always will vastly exceed those of the more dedicated / serious persuasion. And, just as Kodak did, the big boys, camera making wise, will always pursue the biggest market segment and leave the smaller segments to the boutique camera makers.
The fact that many of those boutique camera makers are currently facing shrinking sales - which, I might add, is very different from shrinking markets - has little to do with an assault upon, or, at the very least, an indifference to "TP". IMO, the diminishing sales have much more to do with the fact that the dedicated / serious picture making crowd has come to the realization - IMO, rather belatedly - that one does not need to climb to the top rungs of the picture making machine ladder (nor does one have to pay the price of walking around with the camera equivalent of a millstone around one's neck) in order to make pictures with a remarkably high level of IQ, technical wise.
For a large segment of the dedicated / serious picture making crowd, the megapixel race to the top has run its course and camera makers need to come to that realization as well. The boom market for mid>top tier digital picture making machines has ended. The majority of serious / dedicated picture makers who wished to move from film to digital have done so and have subsequently settled into a gear paradigm with which they are quite content and no amount of "innovation" will motivate them to keep on spending-and-getting in pursuit of the next big thing.
IMO, it's that simple. There will always be a very small market segment that demands ultra-high IQ - advertising picture makers, IQ obsessed amateurs, and fine art pictures makers whose stock in trade is 40×60 (and up) prints - which can only be delivered by ultra expensive picture making machines and related gear. For the rest of us dedicated / serious picture makers ... well ... unless one is a status conscious boob who needs to carry around a high-end camera for some kind of personal image validation or is still clinging to the idea that bigger is better, there are lots of mid-level picture making machines which, if one is honest with him/her self and has a grip on her/his actual picture making needs, more than fit the bill.
After all, if making pictures is one's goal, how much "innovation" can there be re: the bedrock fundamentals of picture making? Think about it - aperture, shutter speed, focus, and shutter release. What else does one need?
FYI, my 2 dslr behemoths have sat, mostly unused, on top of a bookcase in my living room for the better part of the past 4 years. Not unlike my 2 Nikon F-series film cameras have (on a different bookcase) for the 6 years preceding that. I jumped onto the diminutive µ4/3rds train within a few months of the introduction of the Olympus E-P1 and I have never looked back.
About the only time either of the dslrs are used is when I have a new client shoot and I bring them along only to "prove" I am a pro picture maker even though I always end up using my Oly Pens for the assignment.
Long live traditional photography. All the rest is just window dressing.
Reader Comments (3)
I've been away for a long time, but truly great post as in telling it like it is.
Thanks for this writing. I like your occasional posts about gear very much. You are one of the rare wirters who shows me what's possible with what I have. I'm more than happy with my pen.My low end dslr is seldom used. No need to buy something else.
But most of the time I'm looking for your pictures.
Christine
Amen to that!
I recently "botched" a job by forgetting to reset camera ISO from 1000 to something reasonable for studio flash. And was shocked when I got my rather large prints back from the lab that I could not see the difference. At all. And no, no full frame pro gear either, but an older Nikon crop DSLR.
There is a lot to like about this:
a) Cameras for the sort of result most people would want to have (e.g. below one metre or three feet or something) are truely affordable today.
b) Making pictures is in most scenarios no longer about the gear but what happens in front of the camera (or inside the photographers head). That scares quite a few people, I think.
c) No, "traditional photography" is not dead, just because it does not need huge investments or geeky thechnical skills. I get the impression this "still photography is dead" meme is created by people wanting to sell new stuff (for video or whatever), after everybody has got a perfectly fine still camera.