SHOOTING WITH AN IMHO MODEL 1

By MICHAEL PERKINS

” OH SURE, I USE MY PHONE SOMETIMES“, you still hear hide-bound photographers grudgingly admit, “but when it’s important, I use my real camera.” This snotty, down-the-nose belief that only the cameras of one’s early experience can be regarded with any degree of respect or deference persists, runs against the grain of all reason. It’s a ridiculous statement, born of equal parts arrogance and ignorance, an insane notion that only some kinds of cameras can produce important images. Yeah, yeah, and only a Cadillac can drive you to the drugstore.

As the global dominance of the once-mighty DSLR recedes further into the twilight, it’s not even necessary to take sides on which piece of equipment is better, more relevant, more “real”. That’s falling into the same mental pothole of those who refuse to accept the mobile camera as a true instrument. Once and for all: shoot what you want with what you want. But please don’t pretend that the revolution isn’t happening. The very definition of what a camera “is” has been raging for nearly twenty years at this writing, and the weight of the evidence falls predominantly on the side of change, not tradition.

Big-time disclaimer department: I usually don’t cite current consumer stats in any of these posts, since blog archives are forever and ever-twisting trends quickly make liars out of all prophets. But in this case, I’ll just front-load the figures that follow with a few hefty qualifiers. The rankings below, listing the top camera brands and models for a very specific market, are extracted from user numbers for contributing photographers on Flickr, one of the biggest photo sharing sites on the planet as of the first week of November, 2016, which is when I compiled these abstracts. The list presented here lists the top ten most camera makes and models from that time. In order of popularity, then, the ten most used cameras by Flickr members this week are/were:

Apple iPhone 6

Samsung Galaxy S6

Canon EOS fD Mark II*

Nikon D7100*

Sony Xperia Z3

Motorola Moto X

HTC One

LG G4

Panasonic DMC-FZ200*

Fujifilm XTI*

The asterisks denote the DSLR cameras on the list. The other remaining models are cellular-phone based. All ten of these manufacturers have multiple models that were ranked among Flickr members’ most-used cameras, but what you see here are the top-ranked models within each brand. There were several venerable DSLR manufacturers that made the top 20, such as Pentax (#11), Leica (#16) and Ricoh (#17). As another point of comparison, the highest ranked mobile, Apple’s iPhone 6  accounted for over 518 million items on Flickr with over 19,000 daily users, with the highest ranked DSLR, Canon’s EOS FD Mark II accounting for 138 million+ items and over 3,200 daily users.

The number one selling camera, as I like to say, is the IMHO (In My Humble Opinion) Model 1. Brand loyalty for its own sake is beyond over with. So is format loyalty or lens loyalty. There is only what works. You can drive that Cadillac to the drugstore, but the Prius gets better mileage and may even boast superior crash specs. With cars as with cameras, drive what turns you on.

Just get where you’re going.