SIZE (STILL) ISN’T EVERYTHING
In photography, as in so many other things, one man’s luxury is another man’s bulky nuisance….
By MICHAEL PERKINS
THE HISTORY OF PHOTOGRAPHY IS AT LEAST PARTIALLY ABOUT barriers to good picture-making, and how they were overcome. This means that, when a solution to a longstanding problem is introduced, let’s say a technical or ease-of-use breakthrough, the new way of doing things is celebrated by someone saying that the old ways are now “dead”. Digital imaging? Oh, it’s the death of film. Better sensors? Well, that’s the death of lo-fi images. And cellphone cameras? Well, that’s obviously curtains for the compact camera.
On that last one….
Camera phones were an amazing bend in the road, redefining the traditional appeal of point-and-shoot with even more size convenience and eliminating the need for a separate, dedicated camera. The impact of cels was so huge that, initially, it even allowed us to overlook just how technically primitive the first generations of them were. The shock wave was most measurable in the shipment figures for compact cameras, which were nearly cut in half between 2010 and 2020, when the decline began to slow, and then partially reverse. An entirely new class of compacts, smaller in size but more expensive than their predecessors, began to lure customers back by boasting more fine-tuned control than point-and-shoots of previous years and specs and performance that rivaled DSLRs and even full-frame models. The tide was further turned by two simple words: Tik. Tok.
Again, the actual user universe makes the final decision on what photographic format or system is “alive” or “dead”, with Tik-Tok’s immense social media platform beginning new dialogues on whether cels or new compacts produced better pictures, along with a comparison on the experience in shooting this way or that. Shooters could go on TT and see side-by-side views of pictures of the same subjects taken with cels or one of the new compact superstars like, say, the Canon PowerShot G7 X and post their impressions. Will the pricey, sexy new compacts spell the “death” of iPhone photography? Not bloody likely, no more than the highly touted rise of cels spelled “death” for older compacts.
There will always be mega-millions who opt for a cel’s ease of use, which, paired with its rapidly advancing technical prowess, spells convenience that a separate camera often can’t deliver. But at least we can agree that greeting a new development in the art of photography doesn’t automatically render everything that went before it obsolete. No craft rooted in creativity can afford to be that close-minded, and we’ve seen far too many cases in which, in our very individual pursuit of pictures, we declare everything old to be new again.
thenormaleye 