An important read

Chasing pixels is definitely climbing up the wrong tree. But for landscape shooters the real potential of the D800 cameras and recent CMOS digital backs is tonal depth and dynamic range. MFDBs could achieve similar levels of tonality, but only at base iso. These cameras allow almost unlimited refining of your image in post up to iso 800, maybe even 1600.

But yes, I agree that it's always a decreasing returns to scale. Every year the "latest and greatest" is going to be enough for a new group of demanding photographers. And there are as many constraints on working with film as there are benefits - I was a 135 and 120 film shooter; I gave up on 135 in 2009 because too many of my preferred films were permanently out of stock, and very recently I gave up on 120 film in favor of a Pentax digital medium format.
 
The bottom line is that the markets and the technology change all the time. The way I see the digital landscape today is that the m4:3 cameras ARE the 35mm cameras of our time.
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I like the idea.

Thanks for posting.
 
It seems we are back to that simple Theory of figuring out .... 'whats Good Enough'
for You & your Client
 
Real technological advances enable man to perform tasks not previously possible. The small incremental improvements in sensor performance in the last 5-10 years, are only as important as the marketing departments are able to convince you, either directly or indirectly through "peer" pressure.

And yes, I count the "huge" leap from 12mp in the D700 to the 36mp of the d800 as such a small incremental step. I'm not making images with the D800 that I couldn't do with the d700. Sure there is lower noise in low light images, and the resolution is higher. But these are just incremental, and for image impact, non-essential improvements.

Moreover, it's not the general public or the customers who are forcing us to buy these new miracle machines. So why do Nikon/Canon/Sony get away with dropping new cameras every 18th month. Is it that the photographers are demanding them to do it, or is it just that the marketing departments are successful in convincing us that they found another silver bullet, and because everyone else is upgrading so must we?
Sometimes I feel like we are in a sinking ship, shovelling water with one hand and making new holes with the other one.

Sorry for the negativity, and come to think about it, if I missed the point I'm sorry for that as well. (English is not my first language, and the cognac I just had probably didn't help)
 
Interesting article. The "look" of an image is something subtle, not measured in the technical details of resolution, arbitrary calculations of DOF, not even in the obvious geometry of subject distance and field of view.

And, better gear doesn't always produce a better "look" in the image. Good food for thought. Thanks for posting the link.
 
And, finally, the best of the medium format cameras are the 4x5's and 8x10's of right now.
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For posting on Facebook.


Honestly, the article not so important. Maybe for some who are knew nothing about what is going on with photo gear for last five+ years.
And, yes, some blind people do believe digital crop is FF.
 
Camera brands have a serious problem right now.

On one hand their cash cows have been slaughtered by Smart Phone cameras. On the other hand the CMOS technology is approaching maturity as quantum efficiency and read noise levels slowly move closer to their practical limits.

These means the marketing hype must be more intense than ever before in order to maintain csh flow. And the WWW is a great way to deliver the hype. Human nature is easy to manipulate. It is relatively easy to contemplate new gear, debate those who have differ preferences or priorities and to spend time updating and upgrading. Most of us have fallen into this diversionary trap to some degree at one point or another. By contrast working on our craft and marketing ourselves is much more difficult.

Kirk Tuck's essay is an important voice in the wilderness of the hype. I'm grateful Bill brought it to our attention.
 
As Mr. Tuck points out, this is not a new phenomenon, it also held true in the film era. Cycles of new cameras were much longer apart then, so it usually manifested itself as a chasing after which ever major player had just introduced the latest wiz-bang, top-of -the-line "professional" model.

With the breakneck pace of technology now it is no wonder so many are caught up in the never ending spiral of trying to "keep current", and have "the best".
 
Thanks for posting this Bill, interesting read. I am not sure I fully agree with Kirk, and I kind of felt he lost his way a bit, going of on a tangent, about midway through. I guess I couldn't understand why it was important to match digital format to film format since they are so completely different. Whatever.

I am also not too sure he made much of a dent in the argument about what equipment, and which type of product, a photographer should or should not be providing for the client. For starters, the reason the argument seem to be ongoing with no sign of slowing down may be that there is no correct answer.

Photography is a business. A Professional Photographer provides a service to the client. In order to stay in business the photographer has to maintain a profit margin that continues to keep him/her in business. If they don't they will either change their business model or they go out of business, pretty simple.

Now, if a photographer believes that they need to use the best of everything to provide a product to the client that will stand up no matter what the client wants to do with the product in the future, and the client is willing to pay for that, go for it! Everyone likes to use the best of everything if they can.

But, if the expense of using the best of everything exceeds your revenue, then you have no profit. Eventually you will go out of business. If you don't change your business model your business will die. Worse yet, you, your wife, your kids may not be able to eat. The entire reason for the business after all is to support you and yours.

But...all the arguments on all the blogs and forums on the internet, no matter how well written, will not resolve that question. The client can resolve it, but not the forums and blogs.

Finally, to be blunt, a lot of people write a lot of crap on forums and on blogs. In many cases what they say has nothing to do with reality. From my experience the only people making money in the photography business now days are being pretty careful with their expenses.

In my case my old 5D and 1Ds are pretty well depreciated out, but I cannot afford to buy new because I don't make enough money right now. If either of them break, and they will eventually, I will be force to buy something. I would love to buy a new whiz bang Sony but I am pretty sure it will be another Canon. Why? Because it will be a real stretch to buy another body let alone new lenses.

Ooops. Sorry. But that is my reality right now, and probably lots of others as well. So no matter what Kirk feels is the "new digital 35mm", what really matters is what is most practical for my struggling business.
 
http://www.rangefinderforum.com/forums/showthread.php?t=143743

http://www.rangefinderforum.com/forums/showthread.php?t=143743

Kirk Tuck changes his mind and equipment,
faster than a teen on a first date.
If you are into more equipment, the newest,
trading up, selling off- this is Your place!

Kirk does a lot of "video" as a pro.
My interest in "video" is less than zero.
In fact Kirk remarked those posts are least read.

He is a sensible pro despite what i wrote,
but this change of gear, leaves me cold.

I don't add any new equipment.
My M3 since 1967.
The M6 since 2000.
The rest donations or really old gear when i was a pro.

The positive side: Kirk one of Precision Cameras best clients.:D
Negative side. His best shots done with Hassie and 150mm.
Kirks film stuff way better..
Like nearly all photographers i watch or used to..
 
Pioneer said:
Thanks for posting this Bill, interesting read. I am not sure I fully agree with Kirk, and I kind of felt he lost his way a bit, going of on a tangent, about midway through. I guess I couldn't understand why it was important to match digital format to film format since they are so completely different. Whatever.

I am also not too sure he made much of a dent in the argument about what equipment, and which type of product, a photographer should or should not be providing for the client. For starters, the reason the argument seem to be ongoing with no sign of slowing down may be that there is no correct answer.

Photography is a business. A Professional Photographer provides a service to the client. In order to stay in business the photographer has to maintain a profit margin that continues to keep him/her in business. If they don't they will either change their business model or they go out of business, pretty simple.

Now, if a photographer believes that they need to use the best of everything to provide a product to the client that will stand up no matter what the client wants to do with the product in the future, and the client is willing to pay for that, go for it! Everyone likes to use the best of everything if they can.

But, if the expense of using the best of everything exceeds your revenue, then you have no profit. Eventually you will go out of business. If you don't change your business model your business will die. Worse yet, you, your wife, your kids may not be able to eat. The entire reason for the business after all is to support you and yours.

But...all the arguments on all the blogs and forums on the internet, no matter how well written, will not resolve that question. The client can resolve it, but not the forums and blogs.

Finally, to be blunt, a lot of people write a lot of crap on forums and on blogs. In many cases what they say has nothing to do with reality. From my experience the only people making money in the photography business now days are being pretty careful with their expenses.

In my case my old 5D and 1Ds are pretty well depreciated out, but I cannot afford to buy new because I don't make enough money right now. If either of them break, and they will eventually, I will be force to buy something. I would love to buy a new whiz bang Sony but I am pretty sure it will be another Canon. Why? Because it will be a real stretch to buy another body let alone new lenses.

Ooops. Sorry. But that is my reality right now, and probably lots of others as well. So no matter what Kirk feels is the "new digital 35mm", what really matters is what is most practical for my struggling business.
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Maybe Bill could link to your post instead! :) Very well written, imo.

I am also of the opinion that Kirk Tuck does indeed revamp his gear a lot; I guess the pressures of being continually entertaining on a photo-blog is dictated in-part by a constant stream of gear flowing in and out.

As to everyone jumping down on 'redisburning', well, that's not really nice either, is it? Asking someone nicely to tone down the rhetoric a bit for the more sensitive among us is different from personally attacking that respective someone in turn.
 
Bill: Interesting read. A realization sitting behind Kirk's piece is that with the advent of digital, the product cycle for cameras greatly accelerated. For myself: I am an admitted gear-head. I just love photo gear - -like using it, like having options and so on. This is so even though my large format gear has been sitting, staring balefully at me from the shelf, for the past three years (sniff, sniff). Some of my work is for paying clients, but the vast majority of it is personal. So: an amateur in the real sense of the word. And until I got my Nikon D3 and my M9 I really felt caught in a must-upgrade-spiral (Canon Rebel to 5D to D3 and Epson RD-1 to M8 to M9). . .mainly because the early digital offerings wouldn't allow me to duplicate my view of the world. . . I needed good performance indoors at f:2 and ISO 1600 or better. They got closer and closer and finally with the D3 and M9, I just thought, "we're there." Having said that, I have felt the tug of the D800 just . . . well just because those medium format film cameras are sitting on the shelf and it is hard to get their tone with a 12 MP sensor -- even at base ISO resolution.

The digital cameras -- by their very nature -- also allow you to do things you couldn't before. Here is a recent stitched panorama (with some pretty clumsy photoshopping of "missing pixels" in the corners) that I made with the D3 and a Cosina/Voightlander 40mm lens (handheld, if you can believe it).

PrismPano%28small%29-Edit-X2.jpg


The original file is 500 MB, stitched together from six "overlapping" Nikon NEF files standing on their short ends (shot vertically); this is a much-reduced version for e-mailing to family and friends. Couldn't have done it with anything less than a 4x5 camera in the old days. And I am happy not to have lugged a camera all the way into Yellowstone to get the shot. In addition to adding trees where the stitching process left blanks, the image has also been extensively manipulated for saturation, contrast, and exposure. Because the D800 promises this kind of resolution out of the box, the allure is . . . well, alluring. But I have reached the point where my gear is doing what I need it to do. I would not describe myself as buying Kirk's argument hook-line-and-sinker as much as I feel that I have been beaten into submission by the upgrade cycle. I was spending too much time re-learning (new cameras, new menus, new versions of Photoshop, new printers, new curves, new papers etc. etc.) that I never had the time to master my gear and materials. THAT is really the difference between the "old days" of film and today. I was really pretty good in the darkroom -- I had a chef's intuition about how to get the results I want and I understood my materials deeply. Now: no. Just in a word: no. But once the megapixel gear got "there" in terms of quality, I could get off the upgrade cycle and take a deep breath. I still want the D800; I just don't need it. That little Sony A700 looks pretty tasty though . . . NO! Bad Photographer, Down Boy. Phew. All good now.
 
The various arguments of other bloggers that he mentioned in his blog post are most likely just that : Web arguments.
And I think, this mix up of other arguments with his own is a little bit a problem in this article.

The most realistic comment from Pioneer has the most important real world aspect:
The profit margin. If you can't afford the proper tools for your job than get different one :(. That's business not sponsored art.
Luckily I am not a professional photographer, I'm just in it for the fun.

The questions which "gear is professional" is pretty stupid to begin with.
Isn't the result that a photographer is achieving a professional work?
Choosing the best suitable tool to get the job done is professional and not buying the gear by specs.

Trumping the camera of the girlfriend of the mail room guy with better equipment ...
How bad are you as professional in customer education, if that's your reason for having the latest and greatest gear :p.
How about showing an impressive portfolio of work that's in line what the customer is asking for ?
LMAO :D
 
A very strong, technically proficient, and artistically and business-savvy argument.

But not one that certain gear-obsessed amateurs or digital camera vendors want to hear.

Also: as usual, willie_901 is on the mark.
 
Dave Jenkins said:
Just to stir the pot a bit, here's Zack Arias' contribution: http://dedpxl.com/crop-or-crap-math-or-moment/

Kirk Tuck and Arias are working photographers, not dilettantes.
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Much as I admire Mr. Arias' work, he is mostly a studio photographer and, as an extension, someone who has control over his primary shooting environments.

For us run-and-guns the DR and high iso performance difference between the X100 and, for example, the A7r is enough to make or break a shot. I shoot plenty of low light work, which also places a higher demand on fast lenses and large pixels - both of which the 135 system delivers better than anything out there.
 
Dave Jenkins said:
Just to stir the pot a bit, here's Zack Arias' contribution: http://dedpxl.com/crop-or-crap-math-or-moment/

Kirk Tuck and Arias are working photographers, not dilettantes.
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Looking at the 100% crop in the photo above shows me that every bit of detail that I need from a working camera can be achieved using an APS camera.
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:cool: My six years old consumer grade DSLR will give the same, if not better.

100 % crop IQ talks are for 100 % gearheads talks.
Since it is completely irrelevant for most of "end users" of picture.
Majority of them wants it around 8x10 size to be able to look at it and without magnifying glass.

What is this buzz about here? What some photogs could make their dough with croppers, instead of FF?

LOL! This is ten years old news, for us, DSLR users...
 
Zack Arias enjoys "most favored son" status from Fuji. Had he made an argument in favor of a Canon 7D over a Canon 5D Mk2 I would have found him a bit more credible.
 
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