Today’s Post by Joe Farace
…maybe not.
If there is one constant theme running through some of complaints that I hear from photographers is that there’s too much change. I believe it isn’t just what seems like a never-ending parade of new product introductions that concerns them but the pace of these changes.
How I made this shot: Camera was a Canon EOS 5D with EF 28-135mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM lens and an exposure of 1/30 sec at f/3.5 at ISO 400.
Just about the time you think you finally got the handle on all these digital doo-dads, along comes a new product or paradigm shift—like 4K video—to add confusion and indecision to where you thought you were heading. Brace yourself as 6K and 8K video are coming fast. Believe me I understand; it seems to me that when it comes to the introduction of new DSLRs and mirrorless cameras and imaging software, we’re traveling at warp speed.
My guess is that just about the time that photographers got the hang of the daguerreotype process, the glass plate negative was invented and these same kinds of gripes were heard at the neighborhood bierstube. Over the years we’ve changed from sheet film to roll film, to 35mm and even 25mm aka APS film and along the way dallied with 110, 126, and disc film (remember that one?) formats. I think that part of the problem of coping with change is that once we have a favorite way of doing things, we hate to make changes.
Many years ago I remember talking to a young wedding photographer and advising her to switch to 220 film instead of the 120 she’d been using. The thought of making this one small change freaked her out until her employer gave her a few 220 backs to use on her Hasselblad and after shooting one wedding with 220, she was hooked. “I wished I had done this sooner,” she later told me.
How I made this shot: Camera was a Canon EOS 5D with EF28-135mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM lens and an exposure of 1/100 sec at f/5.6 at ISO 800.
It’s like that with memory cards too. The PC card begat CompactFlash and then SecureDigital came along. I often refer to SD cards as Wheat Thins, because that’s what they look like and they’re just as easy to lose. But not as tasty. Now we have XQD cards. The main benefits of XQD are fast read/write speeds and a higher capacity storage limit, with a projected maximum storage capacity of more than two TB. Right now SanDisk, Sony and Nikon, with the support of the Compact Flash Association (who would otherwise having nothing to do) have gone all in on XQD. Nikon supports XQD cards in the Nikon D4, D4s, D5, D850, D500 and Z6 & Z7. Phase One’s XF IQ4 camera system also supports XQD. Any other takers? I’ll be interested to see if this is another xD-Picture Card fiasco that Fuji and Olympus adopted than later abandoned. And just like SD cards, you can’t eat’em.
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f you enjoyed today’s blog post and would like to treat Joe to a cup of Earl Grey tea ($2.50), click here.
Along with photographer Barry Staver, Joe is co-author of Better Available Light Digital Photograph that’s now out-of-print but new copies are still available from Amazon for $21.88 with used copies selling for four bucks. For some reason, the Kindle price is really high.