I have been around a lot of photographers lately and some trends seem to be emerging.
Photography has always been a game of overcoming limitations, but sometimes you need to look at those limitations in context.
Shooting in low light has tended to reduce quality, but had several ways of being mitigated. You could use a larger film stock or sensor (bigger, more expensive cameras with shallower depth of field and lower magnification), a faster lens (also shallower depth of field) or faster film/ISO (lower quality).
So why at a time when we can comfortably say all of these have been addressed, do we feel the need to use all of these fixes at once?
Example 1. I recently shot a job at an airport in the main foyer. The light was ok, interesting with decent levels and the mix of natural and artificial was workable. I used my 40-150 f4 which has proven to take perfectly good files for fine art prints, let alone news grade or internet use. A hired shooter, someone I have encountered before, was switching between three G Master primes on a Sony A7r mk4. These cover the ends of a basic zoom (35/50/85), all at f1.4. In a previous conversation the shooter said he wanted to use two cameras, but could not yet afford another A7r mk4.
My thought, screaming internally, but not voiced, went something like this; “you don’t need edge to edge sharpness wide open nor even wide open for this light, which also brings you super shallow depth of field, which you also don’t need it as some context is appropriate even necessary, nor do you need the massive pixel count the camera offers, so why use any of this instead of a convenient zoom on a 24mp camera?
I know for a fact this presser was only going to go online. None of the gear used was going to be needed for the extreme use it was designed for. A $16,000au + kit to do what a kit lens and base camera could achieve? Even my M43 gear was overkill and I was not using my best stuff. You can buy and use what you want, but what information stream made this shooter feel he needed that kit for that job?
Example 2. Another newspaper shooter sitting next to me at an indoor AFL training camp, was sporting a single camera and lens combination worth more than my entire working day kit, but still complaining her lens was not long enough. The light was poor and I was lamenting leaving my 75 f1.8 at home, but got by with my f2.8 zoom. The other togs’ R3 and 85 f1.2L combination was too short, too good at low light handling for news paper work, but still with a DOF cost if used to purpose, but still did not offer a pixel benefit for cropping.
It was unbalanced for the job, but still cost 4x the actual kit needed and the massive lens was a pretty big deal to lug around “just in case”. My 45mm f1.8, the lens I would use for the same reason weighs as much as my car key. If I had that Canon kit, the 85 f1.8 would have been more than adequate and allow me to carry other options.
Low light be damned.
Sensor Size
The industry it seems, has done a real job on us and younger shooters in particular are right in the cross hairs. The relentless push toward full frame, something that was diluted when early DSLR’s ruled has become really cemented in mirrorless, right when it does not need to be. The industry is offerring both increased quality and more quantity at the same time.
Fuji and Olympus have taken another path, but Panasonic has caved and Fuji does medium format. Again, “crop frame” sensors, the name alone dooming them, have been pushed aside for the fallacy that is “full frame” or nothing.
Here is a better look at the real difference;
Lenses
The push for full frame brings with it a need to improve lenses for better edge to edge sharpness, otherwise why use the sensor size (and contrary 3:2 shape) or the pixel count? Some of this glass is getting massive, expensive and impractical and often in the face of the one actual benefit of full frame, lower noise and naturally shallower depth. The Nikon Z series even robs you of another stop of depth of field thanks to their super wide lens mount.
Shallow dept of field, often called Bokeh, but which actually refers to all depth of field transitions not just the super shallow ones, has its creative limits. Full frame f1.2 looks nice occasionally, but wears thin and is not overly practical in the commercial world. If you really need it, the average modile phone can fake it.
Super fast apertures are also not needed for low light with modern cameras and software, all factors considered.
F1.8 on a full frame 50mm. The same can be achieved with a 45mm on M43, or even shallower with a 56mm f1.4.
Most modern f1.8 prime lenses are near perfection and much easier to make, so you have to ask yourself, what are you actually getting that big, expensive lens for? Is it the rarely used performance parameters, the added prestige, a way of spending your obvious over abundance of funds or a need to have something that makes you feel like you stand out? A whole clutch of them? Overkill. Personally, I did not see a need even in M43 for their f1.2 lenses, let alone a full frame equivalent.
Pixels
More pixels have also been pushed for better quality like bigger film stock used to be, which was never a good measure. Not only is it very hard to prove the benefits of more pixels to the uneducated (i.e. the vast majority of people who will look at your images), but more pixels alone do not guarantee better colour, sharpness or more character, just bigger files. The potential actually has few relevant pathways of realisation. Ironically, when we needed more quality for massive prints, it was so very hard to achieve, but now that we have it easily, nobody needs it.
A decent crop off a low grade lens and older M43 20mp sensor.
ISO
There seems to be zero tolerance for high ISO performance issues these days. The fact is, most modern cameras get you most of the way, then software gets you the rest. Perfectly clean any-ISO performance is the ideal, but until that day, we can get the job done with what we have. What are we actually after? Absolute technical perfection, and if so, to what end?
A huge crop (about 10% of the original) from a middle-high ISO image off a medium pixel count, smaller sensor camera. The sensor, from an EM1 mk2 is a generation or two older than is state of the art, but C1 and ON1 No Noise combined for decent results.
The ends then, nullifies the means.
Internet posts and prints have limits, limits we have been exceeding in real terms for a long time. Very big prints can be made from very big files, but rarely need to be. The only time you can genuinely see the difference is when you get too close. The only real measure of massive pixel counts would be a huge, very hig resolution screen.
Viewing at 400% on a screen, standing feet away from a bill board etc will show some differences (and sometimes they will not, more often showing the limits of the medium), but only the obsessed do that and only when a direct comparison can be made as an exercise is for it’s own sake.
A 50% crop from a 20mp EM1 mk2 file, poorly processed in C1 (my first month), then shot on a cheap phone at dusk!
More, more, more, but with little accounting for real needs.