4 ms·

Not going to say anything about the inflation figures. But the general tone of Petapixel is a perfect example of photography media still not getting it with th

Not going to say anything about the inflation figures. But the general tone of Petapixel is a perfect example of photography media still not getting it with the constant tone of "cheap things are toys" and fancy things are "serious tools". Nothing used to take the photos in space taken handheld can be a toy by definition, hindsight is 20/20 and yet they still make this remark. It's like no matter what happens people who write about photography can't figure out it's what you do with a camera that makes it a tool, not how much money you spend. Most of the people playing with toys are buying the expensive toys most of the time, but realistically there is no correlation between buying luxury camera gear and making serious photos.

estebank 4y ago
There are two axes for types of people in photography: technicians and artists. Some go all in on the technical aspect of photography, obsessing over numbers, features and functionality. Others see photographic equipment as a tool for art, they don't care about what they have in their hands, as long as it is in their hands when they need it to. All the best photographers you might have heard of fall on the quadrant of "competent enough to understand the mechanics of photography but cares more about getting the shot". You can use camera equipment from the 60s and still take amazing, beautiful, evocative pictures. Even an out of focus, blurry, improperly exposed picture can be amazing. The "problem" is that the technical features of these tiny, amazing machines can be quantified and argued over ad nauseam. Does it matter if a lens has worse fall off than another? If the chromatic aberration is high? What about the pinchushion distortion? If you are gonna print the picture in a fashion magazine, yes. Does it matter if your shutter speed is 2000 instead of 4000? Does it matter if your lens is f/1.2 instead of f/1.8? If you're a wildlife or sports photographer, maybe. But if you have a camera on you, that's good enough, and you have the basic understanding of photography, you can capture an event that would otherwise be lost to time. Cameras in cellphones have destroyed the market for point and shoot cameras, but brought the advent of completely popularizing photography at a scale that could never have been believed before. Of course this is no different to cars, or computers, or bikes, or...
- avg_dev 4y ago
  i really enjoyed this post. i have been pretty reluctant to take photographs in general. i do enjoy a nice photo for sure, and i have taken a few that i actually like too. > [I]f you have a camera on you, that's good enough, and you have the basic understanding of photography, you can capture an event that would otherwise be lost to time. i like this thought. and i will perhaps try to take more photos.
- bitwize 4y ago
  When I was in Japan, in America-mura in Osaka, I saw an exhibit by a local skateboarding-culture photographer. I had been carrying around a Nikon CoolPix point-and-shoot with which to take tourist pictures. It turned out that the photographer himself had been hanging around his own exhibit, and we got to talking briefly about my visit and my interest in his work (his English was pretty good). He pointed to the camera and said "Can I see?" I let him leaf through my camera's memory filled with photos from the trip, random things that caught my interest. He handed me the camera back and said "These are some good shots." I was really chuffed to hear this pro compliment my random tourist shots. He must have liked my eye and my composition instincts because the camera was rinky-dink by pro standards and didn't allow me fine-grained control over exposure, aperture size, etc. I know this sounds a bit like a "things that didn't happen for $400, Alex" story, but it totally did happen. Maybe he was flattering me, I dunno. But it helped me appreciate casual photography with cheap equipment as something with its own aesthetic merit. My brief time in Japan was amazing all around.
  - ben7799 4y ago
    He liked your photos because for serious photography the technical side is not as important as the subject matter or artistic, compositional, or journalistic aspects of the work. The technical side only needs to be "good enough" and the photo can still be great. The artistic sides have to be great to make a great photo. The whole "technician" side of photography often loses sight of composition & subject in the quest to have the perfect aperture/ISO/shutter speed and get maximum sharpness.
  - travisjungroth 4y ago
phillryu 4y ago
Part of the article's characterization of that camera as a toy seemed to be how simple it was to operate and designed, and that's what allowed a non-photographer astronaut to make use of it, or the engineers at NASA to remix it days before the launch for their priorities. So at least it makes some case for the value of 'toys' while it might simultaneously look down a little at them. The toy-like approachability and simplicity is what enabled these people to play with it and have space photography taken seriously as a result.
- ben7799 4y ago
  Well the idea they might look down at John Glenn or think a fancy camera might be too challenging is absurd too. The article misses that John Glenn was himself an engineer who had an exceedingly good grasp of operating exceptionally complex machinery. Of course he could figure out how to use any camera on the market. There are lots of people in photography who are not technically inclined but pretend they are cause they can use a camera, after all being technically inclined is not what makes you good at photography. It's totally possible John Glenn & the other engineers bought a whole bunch of cameras and did exposure tests and ergonomic tests in terms how easy their modifications would be and then selected this camera as superior to what the Petapixel guys might have thought was the superior prosumer camera of the late 50s.
  - Forgeties79 4y ago
    >bring technically inclined is not what makes you good at photography I think you would be hard-pressed to find anybody who asserts that is the primary skill/inclination needed to be a good photographer, but as I said, in another comment, I wouldn’t necessarily frame being technical as useless or particularly secondary. It is as integral as “having an eye,” which frankly is just another way of saying somebody understands the technical aspects of how to frame a photo, even if they don’t know how to articulate it (which they will eventually have to if they actually want to be good at photography). Even affordable prosumer digital cameras require some technical proficiency if you want to get the best results out of them.
stavros 4y ago
I have a $500 camera and a $5000 camera. They have a fair few difference, but by far the most important differentiating factor is one: The expensive camera has more buttons. That's literally it, the expensive camera lets me take photos without taking my eye away from the viewfinder, the cheaper camera has me fiddle with the menus to change things (I've missed photo opportunities because of this). If you aren't a professional photographer, the RX100 is a great camera. You generally don't need the expensive one. Hell, I've taken many of my favorite photos with my phone.

estebank 4y ago

There are two axes for types of people in photography: technicians and artists. Some go all in on the technical aspect of photography, obsessing over numbers, features and functionality. Others see photographic equipment as a tool for art, they don't care about what they have in their hands, as long as it is in their hands when they need it to. All the best photographers you might have heard of fall on the quadrant of "competent enough to understand the mechanics of photography but cares more about getting the shot". You can use camera equipment from the 60s and still take amazing, beautiful, evocative pictures. Even an out of focus, blurry, improperly exposed picture can be amazing. The "problem" is that the technical features of these tiny, amazing machines can be quantified and argued over ad nauseam. Does it matter if a lens has worse fall off than another? If the chromatic aberration is high? What about the pinchushion distortion? If you are gonna print the picture in a fashion magazine, yes. Does it matter if your shutter speed is 2000 instead of 4000? Does it matter if your lens is f/1.2 instead of f/1.8? If you're a wildlife or sports photographer, maybe. But if you have a camera on you, that's good enough, and you have the basic understanding of photography, you can capture an event that would otherwise be lost to time. Cameras in cellphones have destroyed the market for point and shoot cameras, but brought the advent of completely popularizing photography at a scale that could never have been believed before. Of course this is no different to cars, or computers, or bikes, or...

avg_dev 4y ago
i really enjoyed this post. i have been pretty reluctant to take photographs in general. i do enjoy a nice photo for sure, and i have taken a few that i actually like too. > [I]f you have a camera on you, that's good enough, and you have the basic understanding of photography, you can capture an event that would otherwise be lost to time. i like this thought. and i will perhaps try to take more photos.
bitwize 4y ago
When I was in Japan, in America-mura in Osaka, I saw an exhibit by a local skateboarding-culture photographer. I had been carrying around a Nikon CoolPix point-and-shoot with which to take tourist pictures. It turned out that the photographer himself had been hanging around his own exhibit, and we got to talking briefly about my visit and my interest in his work (his English was pretty good). He pointed to the camera and said "Can I see?" I let him leaf through my camera's memory filled with photos from the trip, random things that caught my interest. He handed me the camera back and said "These are some good shots." I was really chuffed to hear this pro compliment my random tourist shots. He must have liked my eye and my composition instincts because the camera was rinky-dink by pro standards and didn't allow me fine-grained control over exposure, aperture size, etc. I know this sounds a bit like a "things that didn't happen for $400, Alex" story, but it totally did happen. Maybe he was flattering me, I dunno. But it helped me appreciate casual photography with cheap equipment as something with its own aesthetic merit. My brief time in Japan was amazing all around.
- ben7799 4y ago
  He liked your photos because for serious photography the technical side is not as important as the subject matter or artistic, compositional, or journalistic aspects of the work. The technical side only needs to be "good enough" and the photo can still be great. The artistic sides have to be great to make a great photo. The whole "technician" side of photography often loses sight of composition & subject in the quest to have the perfect aperture/ISO/shutter speed and get maximum sharpness.
- travisjungroth 4y ago

phillryu 4y ago

Part of the article's characterization of that camera as a toy seemed to be how simple it was to operate and designed, and that's what allowed a non-photographer astronaut to make use of it, or the engineers at NASA to remix it days before the launch for their priorities. So at least it makes some case for the value of 'toys' while it might simultaneously look down a little at them. The toy-like approachability and simplicity is what enabled these people to play with it and have space photography taken seriously as a result.

ben7799 4y ago
Well the idea they might look down at John Glenn or think a fancy camera might be too challenging is absurd too. The article misses that John Glenn was himself an engineer who had an exceedingly good grasp of operating exceptionally complex machinery. Of course he could figure out how to use any camera on the market. There are lots of people in photography who are not technically inclined but pretend they are cause they can use a camera, after all being technically inclined is not what makes you good at photography. It's totally possible John Glenn & the other engineers bought a whole bunch of cameras and did exposure tests and ergonomic tests in terms how easy their modifications would be and then selected this camera as superior to what the Petapixel guys might have thought was the superior prosumer camera of the late 50s.
- Forgeties79 4y ago
  >bring technically inclined is not what makes you good at photography I think you would be hard-pressed to find anybody who asserts that is the primary skill/inclination needed to be a good photographer, but as I said, in another comment, I wouldn’t necessarily frame being technical as useless or particularly secondary. It is as integral as “having an eye,” which frankly is just another way of saying somebody understands the technical aspects of how to frame a photo, even if they don’t know how to articulate it (which they will eventually have to if they actually want to be good at photography). Even affordable prosumer digital cameras require some technical proficiency if you want to get the best results out of them.

stavros 4y ago

I have a $500 camera and a $5000 camera. They have a fair few difference, but by far the most important differentiating factor is one: The expensive camera has more buttons. That's literally it, the expensive camera lets me take photos without taking my eye away from the viewfinder, the cheaper camera has me fiddle with the menus to change things (I've missed photo opportunities because of this). If you aren't a professional photographer, the RX100 is a great camera. You generally don't need the expensive one. Hell, I've taken many of my favorite photos with my phone.