Originally posted by ffking I don't know if I'm just going through and end of mid life crisis, whether it's just the dilution effect so many images out there, or whether I'm just getting jaded - but I find fewer and fewer pictures on Flickr (I don't operate on instagram or others) that actually hold my attention.
One possible explanation is the number of training courses and many free YouTube How To videos, which tend to lead to everyone going to the same places and doing the same things - which is an issue, but I don't consciously do that, and I'm also finding my own images less interesting. (
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I've also noticed that since being a regular browser of PF contributions, for better and worse, I've become much more kit aware.
What I am wondering is this: is modern kit so good that it's too easy to produce images that have an immediate impact, and does this too often stop us from going that bit further to produce something exceptional, meaningful - and memorable?
Any thoughts?
Great kit just enables one to up his/her game. When I shot film, I was pretty good with 35mm, and I decided to buy a Pentax 6x7 because it was "better kit". It immediately upped my game with no further effort than having to carry more weight (rather a lot, I would add). After shooting with the 6x7 for a few years, I was finding myself limited in several respects. As a landscape shooter, I was finding the 6x7 to be difficult because securing depth of field is not all that easy with medium format.
In the studio, the 6x7 was dreamy, in the field, not so much.
So, a decision had to be reached, and the hobby part of my photography budget decided that a 4x5 was in my future. I had never have been able to justify it in my professional work, although it turned out having the view camera opened several doors that I hadn't previously looked at, so in this case, hobby crossed into pro rather quickly.
However, I bought the view camera primarily to up my landscape game, which was the type of photography I did to relax. I did sell prints from time to time, but not enough to justify the 4x5 from a business perspective. At the same time, the 4x5 very quickly became indispensable to my pro work because of what it allowed me to take on.
What the 4x5 did for me was allow much greater control of depth of field. What had previously been impossible on 6x7, or possible with greatly compromised image quality on 35mm, was suddenly simple because of camera movements, and my landscape work became much better, though the learning curve was steep. I worked with Fred Picker of Zone VI Studios learning and tweaking his exposure system that was a huge improvement over the Zone System. It took me a year of hard work to become really proficient with 4x5.
So yes, great kit will improve your photography if you let it, but to let it, you have to be prepared to work at it.
I think the problem we are having with great kit now is that the end results aren't really being viewed in such a way as to show what a difference really good equipment can make.
On a web page, it's hard to justify a full frame sensor when something tossed out by an iPhone user looks just as good.
The internet and the image galleries on it are a two edged sword. The democratization of image sharing allows for everyone to showcase what they do, but the small size that images are shown at also democratize quality.
It's impossible to excel at 600x900 pixels. At that size, everything looks more or less the same.
Sure, better kit allows you to up your game, but internet viewing brings it right back into the gutter that is the lowest common denominator.
If you make prints, then suddenly everything changes. I have pictures on my walls spanning over 40 years of my own photography. I am still displaying pictures taken when I was in my late teens taken on 35mm. I have pictures shot on 6x7 and 4x5 film, as well as 6mp, 10mp, 16mp, 24mp APS-C format and 36mp full frame.
I can look at these images and see what the larger film format did for me, and with the move to digital, what more megapixels and a larger sensor did for me as well.
I also have pictures posted to the PUG from most of these formats and cameras at fairly small screen resolutions. If all I had to go by was my gallery images on the PUG, I would be hard pressed to justify moving past 35mm film.
My advice, if you are feeling jaded, is to make a conscious effort to stop looking at pictures on the web, and stop looking at your own pictures at web resolution.
Make some prints instead. Make some big ones and hang them on the wall.
That will tell you where your game is at.