I have been around cameras and photography long enough to have seen some repeating patterns.
The patterns tend to be related to the selling of new gear, the perpetuation f the myth that you, the photographer, cannot take images as good as the new camera release with your old camera.
The speed of this repetition changes a lot at different times, sometimes it is super fast, almost a twice yearly even (Sony a few years ago released more cameras than lenses for a couple of years), sometimes it seems a long time between waves, but it is always moving.
The reality is, if you can take a decent image with a brand new super camera, then you can take one with a camera from most eras.
In my photographic life, I have usually been behind in the tech stakes. Very rarely have I had the very best around and if I had, it was usually just before it was replaced. Owning this stuff did not make me better, but it often made me aware of gear cost to productivity pressures and my stress levels regarding the quality of that gear rose. Drop $3k+ on a lens and you tend to look for problems, while a kit lens, basically free with a camera purchase often surprises.
Periods of making it work while under equipped are plentiful. I remember working for my first school with only EM5 Mk1 cameras. Great cams for my personal passions, travel, street and a little landscape, but not professional by the top DSLR standards of the day (D750 Nikon and 5D3 Canon). I managed.
My sport shooting went back to old tricks from the manual focus era, with a little AF when able (which was surprisingly often I found). I had no right to represent mysef as a professional in that space at that time, but I did and it went well enough.
When I started with my second school, I had the benefit of an Em1 mk2, a camera still serving me today, over a million frames later, but still had amateurish glass. I remeber sweating bricks shooting football in the late winter afternoon as my ISO settings hit 3200 and my aperture wide open at f5.6.
When my mother passed a few years ago, she left me a small inheritance, some of which I spend on gear, not through indulgence, but more desperation.
I bought an EM1x, 300mm Pro and 8-18 and I bught back my recently sold 40-150 f2.8, all things that I felt I needed, even if I did not personally want them. They have saved me time and time again.
Taken by a friend with a reluctantly bought small sensor compact camera after a travel mishap. Could it have been used to sell the latest and greatest mirrorless (or holidays to Scandinavia)?
The EM1x also opened up another door for me, requiring Capture 1 to open the RAW files on my aging Mac. C1 effectively updated my gear a generation, especially in the sharpening-noise ballet Lightroom was known for.
A few years later, I went to the paper and my issued kit, much the same as the other photographers, was made up of well used, but contemporary Nikon DSLR’s and lenses. D750’s, D500’s, the f2.8 holy trinity and a monster 400 f2.8 af-s should have blown my mind, but I found the smaller, nimbler gear I had, with the use of C1 processing actually gave me the same results, I worked faster and never complained about gear left behind.
Getting back to the point.
The Sony wagon was going full tilt, Nikon was releasing the seminal Z9 (later issued to the paper and I used one a few times), Canon was getting their act together, Fuji also and even Olympus and Panasonic had released new gear.
Did I need a new camera as the ads said I obviously did?
No it turns out, I did not. I have actually since bought two more EM1x’s second hand and two new but dated G9 Mk1’s, the newer G9II is for video. Technically I am now three generations behind in Olympus camera, but still find uses for EM5 Mk1’s, EM10 Mk2’s, Pen F etc.
Smaller sensors in older cameras are plenty.
I am happy that base image quality is not a relevant concern.
The traps used to snare photographers money are many, some more real than others.
Image quality;
IQ is not down to pixels, dynamic range, colour depth, new model numbers nor indicated in any way realistically by a flash image in an add. That trick has been used since day one.
I remember years ago a major name brand being caught out using a film camera image to advertise their new digital masterwork. They only got caught because they had used the same image for the actual taking camera years before and in the days of magazines, we kept all our old ones.
What "quality" does this image have and does it have anything to do with technical quality. Well flogged EM1 Mk2, equally abused 40-150 f2.8, cheap SD card. Not "cutting edge" or even the best I have. Sometimes I get sick of perfect sharpness and clarity, but if you have it in abundance, you can always reduce it.
IQ comes down to taking a good photo of an interesting subject, technically well enough for the process to be invisible to the viewer and reproduced to the needs of the viewing media. Old film cameras could do this and still can. I have had cropped images printed on billboards and nobody complained.
The incremental advances in photography are so microscopically slight in most cases, even the best trained eye cannot see them. When the 36mp D800 came out replacing the aging 12mp D750, a seriously big jump in specs, people adopted them automatically. Nikon people had denied pixel envy, but as soon as a decent option was offered they jumped in both feet.
Many that I spoke to (customers of many years), found that only on close inspection or after massive crops could they actually see a difference and they often dropped the size down to save space, because nobody but they cared how many pixels were used. One user even used theirs in crop mode for sport, switching do a D500 later.
The really big change came with super sharp mirrorless sensors with reduced or removed AA filters, often at relatively low pixel counts. I was stunned my the clarity of the EM5 Mk1 images I made with tiny little lenses compared to my 5D2 and 5D3 “oily smooth” images. Sure the Canon’s had that characteristic colour, but the clarity and realism of the Olympus files were a revelation. It mattered little in reality and in hind sight, it was should have been other factors that made me switch, but I learned then that IQ and pixel count, sensor size and dollar value had little in common.
Video.
Video is a growing concern, but that is also slowing and with similar apathy by users towards resolution. Many aspouse the virtues of 4k, then happily output at 1080p. Like still photography actual practical needs and theoretical potential have little in common.
This image perfectly usable for most uses, is a lift from a 1080 video clip.
“Achieve the best in image quality and fidelity with camera X (or be damned?)” is an illusion as is an add for a car speeding across the desert floor at impossible speed, a pill that makes you fly through your day (legally) or a beer that makes everyone like you.
All that matters is content bought to life with skill and empathy.