Chasing Specs
From the latest iPhone to the newest and biggest OLED television.We live in a world where we’re chasing “tech specs”.
That applies to the world of photography and videography as well. And while I’m not a video person in the creative sense, I watch a lot of them and have noticed that it applies there as well. So let’s discuss these.
The world we live in is increasingly more portable device driven, be it a mobile phone, and tablet, or a laptop/notebook computer. Every year we get further and further away from viewing things in printed mediums or on larger screens. So why are we, the creators, chasing these technical specifications?
As a photographer, I notice that the majority of people are just fine viewing photographs on their phones and have no interest in buying books, magazines, or printed photographs, as well as the fact that the majority of advertisements are digital ads that pop up in your Instagram and Twitter apps or as ads in a YouTube video. And as a consumer of video material, be it videos on YouTube, television shows or feature films, I very rarely watch any of it on a screen larger than 24 inches, and most often just use my 10 inch tablet or my 6 inch cellphone screen.
For the photographers: Can the viewer really tell that you used a Fujifilm GFX100 to shoot your photos instead of a Nikon D2 if they’re just looking at the images on their cellphone on Instagram? Can your client tell the difference? (I remember that there was a time when clients would place guidelines upon photographers that they would hire that stated that they had to use X camera AND X lens to be considered for a job.) Is that backside illuminated sensor really going to WOW your viewers if you’re shooting in a studio or outdoors in daylight? Do you really need your camera’s auto focus to nail EVERY shot that you take with a 24 frames per second burst feature?
For the videographers: Are you really “future proofing” your footage by shooting in 4K or 6K when no one is watching your work on anything larger than their hands? Do you really need face detection auto focus for talking head videos?
The world is constantly chasing way more than they need in an attempt to just say they have the latest and greatest thing. I see way too many people concerned about what camera they should buy because this one has this feature or that feature, or because the “new version” might be getting announced soon instead of picking up the gears and actually creating something with it. Photographic cameras have become fashion accessories or toys to brag about: People are taking more photographs of their cameras than they are taking with their cameras. Or seeing that someone else used a piece of gear and created something cool with it and decided to buy it not knowing what THEY wanted to do with it or how to do it.
But this, to me, is just the position we’re in with the Internet and social media now where it more about what you can show off and do what you can create in a space (photography and videography) that used to be about the creation, not the tools. Or seeing something that you like and just wanting to copy it. (Oh, the amount of “How’d they get this look?” posts I’ve seen on r/analog on Reddit; even been asked myself.)
Let’s just create! Let’s not worry about the equipment unless it just absolutely will not give you the results that you want; which is rarely the case with what we have today.