"Closer and closer": that is the thing. Before the maturing of digital technology, the distinctions between large, medium and small format were much greater. In film days (ah, the pungent smell of stop bath in the morning), 4x5 was standard (no pun intended) for architectural photography, medium format was a practical alternative for some situations, and small format was only occasionally used for this purpose. Now, serious architectural photographers can make their living shooting small format exclusively, although they will effectively create medium format images sometimes with stitching. That is a major change. It appears that even some architectural photographers who prefer medium format and use it as much as possible will use small format as a practical and less expensive back up. It seems to me that if demanding architectural photographers take small format seriously, that warrants some consideration in a sub-forum devoted ostensibly to medium format.
David Eichler
I've been pulling 3 to 4 am every night (morning) doing post production on this big end of the year rush project so sitting on an opposite desk is my TV. You know those nights where you turn it on some channel and you really don't have the time or inclination to change the station, mostly because of the fear something might come on that's interesting that will make you stop working, so last night it was on some cable's pbs station and the guy being interviewed on Charlie Rose was the CEO of Sirius radio.
I didn't really listen, just kept working until I heard this CEO say "the advertising model is not sustainable for media in today's world".
I kind of hit the brakes on that and thought for a moment, what's this guy talking about, then he explained that he was previously the CEO of CBS and came from the days of client's would pay 10's of millions to run a Super Bowl spot, not be able to track it's results, never know if it worked or not but we're always standing in line to write the check.
He said when Google came out they F__ked up the magic, because for the first time an advertiser could track to see if their promotion was working. (His words).
In other words he said they pissed on the parade.
That's what digital has done to Music, Photography, Art, Print, all forms of media. It has pissed on the parade or to be more pc it has changed our role as photographers and more importantly changed the tools we use.
Gone are the days that any camera you buy is a 10 year system and a photographer is hired to shoot One shot. In fact I don't believe there is any camera in the market that is exactly right for our new job description.
This year every photographer I know has complained about money, but the changes I've seen this year and most of last year was not the money available for a project but the time. We are now squeezing everything into hours not days, minutes not hours.
Yesterday the client had a change and wanted to add wedding rings to three advertising images. I sent a production person out to buy 4 rings, put them on white, shot 6 angles of each, built a gallery, send the raws to the retoucher, the gallery to the AD for selection the results to the retoucher and the finished images are out in 4 hours. 4 hours from shoot the rings to the client is downloading the finished images.
I guess my point of all of this in commerce, camera format is not that relevant and surely wasn't in my thought process yesterday when all I had was a few hours to change an image. Photographers may think so on the day of the shoot, or may like their favorite system, but once a project has gone through 5 stages of retouching, 6 different crops, people swaps, background changes, it just ceases to be any format.
In fact in the real world what is the format? A laptop, a 24" monitor, a dell, an apple, an Eizo or a printed page? Format really is the final destination.
So if any camera makers are reading this forum I suggest tearing it up and starting from a clean sheet. Forget about formats, ground glass (plastic) 2:3 or 4:5 crops, forget about all this legacy stuff and really step into today. Make a camera that tethers easy, has an EVIL viewfinder, movable crops, shoots video and stills, live view for critical focus and moveable iso.
Stop this proprietary, secret file format stuff and open the file up so people can write plugs ins and apps that go directly in camera to make any film the look you want. (See Iphone Apps). In fact allow me to embed my film look into a raw file that any processor will see (including photoshop).
Write some raw file compression schemes that allow us to get a project into the 500mb territory. Data storage, backup and delivery is a monster right now and since I'm sitting on hundreds of terabytes of images and each project easily goes to multiple terabytes per project I can't stress how important file size is. In fact in the last 7 days I've shipped over 2 terabytes of finished images on line through links.
Stop fooling around with almost video on a still camera system, almost stills on a video camera system and give us something that just requires a change of some module to allow our one system to work in both arenas. (see RED's wish list).
And most of all when you want information and feedback, don't go to the photographer's that will do anything to be featured by your camera company, go to the photographers and their clients that are producing work in the new real world.
In fact listen to this Sirius Radio CEO when he says Content Is King, because he's right and I can promise you he doesn't care if it was shot on a Canon, a Hasselblad a Red or a Casio. He cares if it get's ratings, good customer results and is unique because beautiful and/or unique get's attention. Of course he also cares about the bottom line and if any of those mentioned brands gets the desired result then he's fine, we're all fine.
In fact if you told this CEO or his ad agency that I contribute on a forum that only allows talk of one type of camera format his eyes would probably cross. I might as well tell him to forget satellite radio and go back to the phonograph.
So with all of this in mind it's not the camera I think of anymore unless the camera gets in my way and it's definitely not the format of the camera or the ability to produce micro detail under controlled conditions at 200% web crops. It's what I produce that gets us work and most importantly it's the final destination of the photograph that I think about . . . that and what's next ?
BC
