Cruising the internet for one of those elusive answers (video frame rates- mixing different rates with input/processing/output can be confusing), I came across a sample gallery for a new camera (Canon R something, which as you will see below, I find mostly irrelevant).

Boy, do we delude ourselves into thinking this stuff matters.

If a top photographer shoots anything, they will do a good job. I have seen amazing sample images taken on manual focus film cameras in the 80’s that look hauntingly similar to the samples offered from the latest super cams. This will make the cam look like the next big thing, but has that photographer never shot anything that good before?*

If an amateur or someone not trying that hard takes a bunch of images, if they are a poor or worse, irrelevant for what they are trying to do, they will be mediocre or misleading.

This is because, apart from extremes in ISO performance and decade long generational differences in AF performance, basically the camera does not matter.

If a 2000’s Canon 10D is compared to a 2020’s Z9 for AF, ISO and resolution differences, there will be a noticeable difference, but we are talking abut cameras 20 years apart, one coming from the first generation of usable digital cameras, the other a camera we could not have even wished for back then.

Comparing two images taken by skilled users and printed to a realistic size (12x16”, there may be little real difference. Most images are judged by normal viewers using non technical parameters.

Oddly, the “limelight” period for new gear is getting shorter and shorter, but the actual shortcomings of new cameras are becoming fewer and less relevant. Personally I mix old EM10.2’s in with EM1x’s, G9.2’s and others with little thought as long as each cam does the job it is delegated.

I have coincidentally also seen a few “nothing is changing” videos regarding camera tech and its seeming lack of advancement, Canon, Sony and Nikon copping the biggest slams.

Coincidence, or the new normal?

This is for three main reasons.

The industry is slowing and shrinking, becoming much more like it used to be in the 1980’s, a more them-and-us dynamic of real cameras being sold to professionals for the few reasons they need them and “compact” cams (now phones), being used by the rest. Even back in the day, we knew that our top of the line EOS # was overkill for many shoots, a decent compact doing a good enough job. The difference was the person, their skills and motivations.

Around 2005, everyone wanted a DSLR. This was the second big blip in SLR history, the first being the first “automatic” camera, the AE-1. I know because I was selling them, thousands of dollars worth a day. That is no longer the case. The improvement of phones, their ease, the shift to mirrorless, the similar shift to video have all diluted the pool and distanced “real” cameras from the average buyer. They are now a specialist tool again, as they always were, but more so.

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Secondly the tension between protecting the top tier of gear while selling enough of the good stuff to the average buyer is becoming harder to do and to justify. That buyer wants more, is better educated and more curious, but they also want it for less. This is something Canon and Sony in particular have been known for, sometimes to their peril.

Why give up everything the $20k plus broadcast camera offers in a $5k hybrid, just because that is what we, the customers want?

The consumer grade FX3 could film “The Creator”, so why buy more? Soon after the S5IIx comes out at half the price matching or exceeding many of the FX3’s features, so could a Hollywood block buster have been shot with an even cheaper cam and so on?

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Lastly, the cams we have are getting so close to perfect, that the amount of R&D required to gain even a 1% improvement (that we hardly notice, so we then whinge about) would have once doubled performance, because there was much more to improve and it was probably relatively easier to do.

Each generation could add sensor cleaning, stabilising, add 50% to pixel counts, face detection AF, stacking, mic or headphone ports, vastly improve video features etc. Once most of those have been accounted for, what next?

For many brands, repackaging the same tech in different forms is easier and actually makes sense some time, such as splitting a stills hybrid from a video hybrid with just a couple of top end features reserved for each to make sense of it.

Many of these improvements come incrementally in firmware updates anyway, so the actual camera we buy is really only the foundation of the future camera to be and the real limitations of it’s hardware are often a long way in the future.

In my world the G9 Mk1’s 2.0 firmware update released a beast of a video hybrid rather than just a stills cam that could shoot decent video, which enabled me to actually give it a go and that was a huge shift. Long after the cam seemed to hit its tech wall, the inbuilt processor showed it had more to give.

The original Canon R, Fuji X100 and X Pro mk1’s, Z6/8 Mk1’s, even the Magic Lantern 50D hack that revealed real video buried inside a non-hybrid camera, and many more showed us there is often more to be found with a little patience or curiosity.

So, back to the relevance of sample galleries? They are something to fill reviews and pages, very occasionally show the use of a very real feature and if used specifically to compare image “A” to image “B”, then I guess they can be handy, but otherwise, what are you seeing? A bunch of images of flowers or a reviews family with little context or point.

*95% of my entire photographic life was shot with less than 20mp, 50% on film, yet many of my favourite images are older, even dating back to last century.