Where does the rapid evolution of photography leave us

[AgX]

Maybe, we're just getting old.

Or just refusing to.
By sticking to obsolete cameras, music. You name it.

youtu.be/2YymGJKhGgY

 

[Wallendo]

The new technology is only "bad" if you are making your living doing wedding photography.

The reasons people in the past didn't take multiple photos at weddings were technology related. The need for flash, limited cropping options, color temperature issues, etc. Smart phones with high ISO cameras and automatic settings, instant cropping and sharing get around many of those limitations. In addition, many people just want a memento of the event, not an expensive professional print. It is the obligation of the photographer to use his expertise to transcend the images taken by wedding guests. Those who can do so will profit, those who can't will not.

 

[NB23]

“I do highest level, in-your-face candid work, and am the world leader in circular fisheye and infrared flash street photography”

Wow, you must be legendary.

Intergalactic, also?

 

[Vaughn]

Painters still use paint, guys. Photography has been with us for less than a couple centuries...constantly changing the entire time, constantly evolving. Pick your tools and use them.

“I do highest level, in-your-face candid work, and am the world leader in circular fisheye and infrared flash street photography” Wow, you must be legendary. Intergalactic, also?

I know the world's leader in fisheye infrared photohraphy and it is not slackercruser...but then the fellow I know does not use infrared flash, so there is room on the top.

 

[NB23]

Painters still use paint, guys. Photography has been with us for less than a couple centuries...constantly changing the entire time, constantly evolving. Pick your tools and use them.


I know the world's leader in fisheye infrared photohraphy and it is not slackercruser...but then the fellow I know does not use infrared flash, so there is room on the top.

For a second you got me worried. What were the chances for this diabolical combo to actually exist besides our very own living legend?

 

[warden]

.... he's driving it because there is nothing more fun than driving a simple low powered "slug bug" you can fix yourself ( with a book " ... for the complete idiot " ) that gets you from point a to point b and puts a smile on peoples faces as you vroom by them. its the same sort of thing. chemical photography is just puttering along the same way, with out a book called " how to make photographs for the complete idiot"...

OT: My dad (he's 78) is shopping for a new car. He is not a happy shopper. One of the brands offers, if you buy their car, to provide a free class at the dealership to teach you how to use the myriad of features available on the dash. The man has been driving for sixty years and doesn't want to sit in a classroom to learn how to program the "f**king touch screen", which he sees as a combination of amazingly powerful and idiotic at the same time, requiring you to take your eyes off the road to do pretty much anything. Basically he wants a normal vehicle from the past that no longer exists. He'll get a new car soon and learn how to use it properly, but still. Cars are not cameras, but technology creep is an issue with both.

OT#2: The book you mentioned is a classic and I purchased copies for my teenage sons even though we have no VW.

https://www.amazon.com/Keep-Volkswagen-Alive-Step-Step/dp/1566913101

 

[Andrew O'Neill]

It is not for me to wonder. Just happy that I can still get out with my large format camera with loaded film holders.

 

[Pioneer]

It is not for me to wonder. Just happy that I can still get out with my large format camera with loaded film holders.

Yes!

It is my own evolution as a photographer I am most worried about. Besides, it is the only part of the equation I have any control over.

 

[jtk]

chemical photography is just puttering along the same way, with out a book called " how to make photographs for the complete idiot"...

Kodak and Ansel Adams both wrote those books.

 

[jtk]

One of the features of the postmodern, if I remember my notes correctly, was simultaneity of past and present rather than the new replacing the old, which had been the convention. The web has been one of the enablers of pluralism, connecting enthusiasts for the arcane and forgotten through cutting edge technology. Ironically the very digital technology that killed the film camera in the mainstream, was the one that maintains it in the margins. Flatbed scanners and DSLR negative conversion, with web scans for the remaining darkroom printers. A language shared through time zones and culture.

As I steeped myself in a new off-camera flash system yesterday, I pondered the fact that exhausting its functions would have comprised a skilled job for someone 50 years previously. Now we're expected to accommodate its numerous possibilities between tea and supper. The biologist Rupert Sheldrake proposed the idea of "morphic resonance", the notion of inherited and evolving memory. Thus, the birth pangs of a new idea, a crystalline form, a skateboard trick, rats avoiding a new poison become unremarkable and infants delve into computer programmes without inhibition.

Yes. Plus a bunch of mostly-old-men (Photrio) injects a lot of ignorance and attitude into a process that's arguably far ahead in other places.

 

[blockend]

Yes. Plus a bunch of mostly-old-men (Photrio) injects a lot of ignorance and attitude into a process that's arguably far ahead in other places.

Speak for yourself.

 

[Sirius Glass]

+1​

 

[faberryman]

OT: My dad (he's 78) is shopping for a new car. He is not a happy shopper. One of the brands offers, if you buy their car, to provide a free class at the dealership to teach you how to use the myriad of features available on the dash.

He could buy a good used car. My gently used 2010 Honda CRV has 111,000 miles on it, runs like a top, and doesn't have anything touch screen on it. It did take me a minute to figure out how to reset my clock this weekend though. Kind of like buying an old film camera.

 

[Andrew O'Neill]

I, the interplanetary leader in telephoto images of crustaceans, agree with the OP. We're headed in the mirrorless direction, for reasons of economy and quality.

I've been working with mirrorless cameras since 1993. Ones a 4x5, the other's an 8x10.

 

[warden]

I've been working with mirrorless cameras since 1993. Ones a 4x5, the other's an 8x10.

Very nice.

I'm reminded of a quote from Chuck Close that I can't find anywhere, where he basically said photographic equipment hasn't improved much in the past hundred years or so, and I think there's some truth there.

 

[jtk]

He could buy a good used car. My gently used 2010 Honda CRV has 111,000 miles on it, runs like a top, and doesn't have anything touch screen on it. It did take me a minute to figure out how to reset my clock this weekend though. Kind of like buying an old film camera.

Your 2010 CRV is almost totally electronic compared to the machines of yore . No points, no carb...probably even tells you when your tire pressure is low, a door is open, and your seat belts aren't secure. It's almost a robot with a human passenger.

 

[jtk]

Speak for yourself.

How about shared your own thoughts? I shared mine.

 

[jtk]

Yes!

It is my own evolution as a photographer I am most worried about. Besides, it is the only part of the equation I have any control over.

Interesting use of "evolution." IMO that's not the same as "change." Darwin said something about survival of species...which entails constant change as well as death of some things that can't change. The "best" doesn't necessarily survive or dominate. Me, I miss certain films and I mourn the survival of certain photographic aspirations.

 

[warden]

He could buy a good used car. My gently used 2010 Honda CRV has 111,000 miles on it, runs like a top, and doesn't have anything touch screen on it. It did take me a minute to figure out how to reset my clock this weekend though. Kind of like buying an old film camera.

Yep, and he and I have been having a good time researching places that rebuild and warranty interesting and simple cars with some years on them. And there still are a few simple vehicles available - I drive a '17 Jeep with wind-up windows, manual transmission and no touchscreens and he likes that a lot. His current vehicle has sat nav and a screen but it's an early enough version of that technology that the car can be operated without it. It's not a big deal and he'll find something used or new that he likes soon enough. I keep telling him how much he's going to like back-up cameras, which I think are wonderful.

All this tech on cameras doesn't amount to a hill of beans to the general population, but tech on a 4,000 lb vehicle that makes you take your eyes off the road really makes you wonder, so I do see his point.

 

[Vaidotas]

Well, evoliution is not so rapid as some claims.
If we talk about optics.

Meniscus
Lens groups
Cementing elements
Multicoating
Zoom lens
Aspheric lens

Thats it - in almost 200 years

 

[jtk]

The new technology is only "bad" if you are making your living doing wedding photography.

The reasons people in the past didn't take multiple photos at weddings were technology related. The need for flash, limited cropping options, color temperature issues, etc. Smart phones with high ISO cameras and automatic settings, instant cropping and sharing get around many of those limitations. In addition, many people just want a memento of the event, not an expensive professional print. It is the obligation of the photographer to use his expertise to transcend the images taken by wedding guests. Those who can do so will profit, those who can't will not.

My impression locally (midsized city) is that the prospering "wedding photographers" shoot video. They normally have assistants that shoot digital stills.

 

[Vaughn]

Interesting use of "evolution." IMO that's not the same as "change." Darwin said something about survival of species...which entails constant change as well as death of some things that can't change. The "best" doesn't necessarily survive or dominate. Me, I miss certain films and I mourn the survival of certain photographic aspirations.

A better way of looking at evolution is not that organisms change to meet changing conditions, but that some organisms were lucky to already have the adaptations needed to survive the changes in the environment. Otherwise, organisms would not adapt fast enough to survive the changing enviroment.

So if you do not already have it in you to survive the evolution of photography -- its too late!

 

[Maris]

The original premise that photography is evolving is false. Photography, like oil painting, marble sculpture, etching, engraving, etc claims it's own identity with its own parameters. In particular it's a method of making pictures out of light sensitive materials.

What is evolving rapidly is the way people make pictures to share with others. I predict that for the near future pictures on monitor screens viewed with the eyes will be the most popular method. For the more distant future I predict that pictures will be beamed directly to the mind bypassing the eyes entirely. And as sure as anything there will be an ingenuous cohort still calling this photography.

 

[Paul Verizzo]

The post-modern philosopher Jacques Derrida coined the term "hauntology". I'm not an instinctive post-modernist, but he was definitely on to something. Basically it's the sense that something is neither dead nor alive but continues in a kind of deferred state. In a photographic context someone might recall APS film, the advertising, the promise it held, the design of the cameras. Although the film format has been consigned to history and the cameras are mostly paperweights, the idea of APS lives on as a thing. The same is true of so much technology, even quite recent objects which have been superseded too rapidly for our minds to make sense of them, and for reasons over which we have no control. Compact audio discs, tape camcorders, old computer games, once fashionable sports shoes, the music heroes of our youth still have a gravity that won't be dismissed by time or commercial redundancy.

Digital cameras are suffering from this continued cycle of updating, to the point where Canon's CEO suggests the consumer digital camera may be in its death throes. This is partly because there's little perceivable difference between an image taken on a 10mp camera from 2006 and a 24 or 42mp camera from 2019 in normal lighting, and partly a weariness with the same relentless hyperbole at their launch. We have become jaded at the unfulfilled promise of more, faster, better, newer, and seek something that won't have disappeared between reading the brochure and mastering the menus.

APS is not dead. You can buy film, just like for 110. Back in business.

The digital mp wars are over except for a few easily impressed. You are correct, in most cases, there is no advantage of sensor sizes over.......pick a number......10? mp. Only for extreme cropping or blowups, perhaps. I read somewhere that fine grain film and lenses top out at something like a 24mp sensor. If I remember and understand correctly, that means unless you have a NASA lens, anything over 24mp......and that's a best case scenario........is a waste. Except for bragging rights, I guess.

 

[Paul Verizzo]

Photography has always been evolving. I would say the big quantum leaps were:

From plates to flim
Reliable color with Kodachrome, ca. 1935
Digital

Phones seem to have better built in computerization than a lot of "real" cameras, in my limited observations. The ability to better match SBR, reaching into shadows w/o blowing out highlights. I'm more likely to get a quick, usable image with my phone than my Pentax DSLR. And the latter certainly is not quick.

The courts long ago settled the question of needing permission if one is in a public space. You don't.