Cameras Were Solved in 2000

One of the weird things about a consumerist society is that a product is never simply pronounced 'mature' or 'completed.'

A case in point is the bicycle. By the 1980s the chromoly ten speed was perfected. Bikes were lightweight, the frame geometry was excellent, and the engineering in the derailleurs meant smooth shifting for years and years. Nobody ever rode a Univega or Puch and said, 'Golly whiz, I just wish I had more.' When it came to bicycles the job was done.

This is a problem for manufacturers. They constantly have to improve and sell the next thing and so they cook up a story like, 'An aluminum frame is lighter.' Right. I have an aluminum Trek and it weighs much more my Univega does. How about carbon fiber? Okay I guess. If you want to risk a fork snapping in half so that you could potentially go that extra mile nobody was looking for.

See the real problem is one of diminishing returns. For each dollar spent upgrading a product, you get less back on your investment. And when it comes to bicycles, simply put, nobody needed (nor wanted) to spend the next thousand dollars to take another pound off the bike.

Next thing you know the hobby was full of middle aged men in lycra bent over with their tail in the air going down the side of mainstreet pretending they are forever in the tour de France. I weep for their wives. The spectre of indignity will live on as a curse upon their children. A stain on their very essence. Always present but impossible to identify.

Cameras have the exact same problem today.

You pull up any youtube video of two neckbeards talking about this model vs that model and they zoom in with the mousewheel five times and start talking about pixel density and chromatic aberration.

Imagine if you will, the horror of theoretically finding a printer and medium that could print this image to mural size so that it would cover the entire south facing wall of your living room, only to discover that chromatic abarration is simply unbearable at that scale. Who could live with the shame?

And this is in a world where nobody looks at anything larger than a 4 x 6. Most people only look at pictures on their phone, which is, you will note, smaller than 4 x 6. Folks, we are living in a clown world.

A 20 year old camera with a mere 6 megapixels will comfortably render a sharp 8 x 10 which is all anyone ever wanted to do.

Am I being negative? I don't think so. I'm telling you to buy a camera, any camera, because you cannot lose!

Afraid you haven't the money to get into photography? Go buy a Nikon D50 for $40 and learn to shoot with it. You get those prints back and you tell me, 'Golly whiz, I just wish I had more.' Won't happen.

Does that mean that you shouldn't buy a new camera?

Not at all. There can be many compelling reasons to purchase a new camera. Just know why you are doing it. Start asking critical questions. When someone says to you, 'Oh that model doesn't have IBIS.' Give them a dead look into their cold, paper thin soul and ask, 'And when did we start needing that? We never had it before. How did we ever manage?'

But a mirrorless camera can have some real benefits. It is, after all, compact and lightweight.

I love my mirrorless camera because it can easily accept vintage lenses and that gives me the look I'm after in my photography. I love the color profiles that it gives me out of the box. These are practical reasons to get a new camera that go beyond Muh Specs.

However, mirrorless cameras also burn power like the large hadron collider and they run hotter than the nacho cheese at a gas station. It's because they have no optical viewfinder and that sensor is on all the time.

There's a real reason to get a DSLR. Charge up that DSLR and come talk to me 2000 pictures later. Use one charge during your trip abroad.

Are you seeing a pattern here? We cannot even say that new cameras are better than old ones. At most you can say they offer a different set of costs and benefits. A 20 year old CCD sensor can electronic shutter MUCH more effectively than a modern CMOS sensor made THIS YEAR! That's right, that Nikon D50 stomps a $5000 Sony mirrorless camera on this particular metric.

And then there's film. WhooWaaat?

The rumors of films demise are greatly exaggerated. In fact, film sales have been increasing over the last few years and not only is Kodak ramping up production, there are entirely new film makers entering the market. Pheonix II film looks amazing and I can't wait to try it.

Oh but you heard film is expensive. Adjusted for inflation, buying film and developing it is maybe 30% higher than in the 80s. Photography was never exactly cheap and nobody really cared. How many rolls of film are you going to shoot in a year? Actually run the math on that. Pobably costs less than your coffee annually.

You do you but I can tell you this. I will never look down on someone for the equipment they are carrying and anyone with a camera over 6 megapixels can take award winning pictures. Folks, the problem of cameras was solved a LONG time ago.

You want to shoot some pictures, go get a camera. Get any camera and I'll see you out in the streets.