Cameras and Photography Explained

Fess up, you have a dozen lenses in your gear closet. You don't know why. 

If so, then I have the game for you: random lens choice.

1. Plan some photo sessions for the future. The number of photo sessions should equal the number of lenses you own. Moreover, the sessions should be specific as to where/what you'll be photographing. Write each session down on a calendar.
2. Go through your gear closet and write down each lens you own on a separate 3x5 (index) card. One lens per card.
3. Put all the cards in an opaque bag or bowl and shuffle them up.
4. Pull out a card.
5. For your next photo session, only use that lens. No cheating: you can't change your session to reflect what lens you picked in the previous step. If your next photo experience was going to be a day at the zoo and you picked the 26mm f/2.8 out of the bag, you're going to discover why you have that lens (hint: it won't be about animal closeups). 
6. Repeat Steps 4 and 5 until you've finished all your planned photo sessions.

This game is good for two reasons.

First, I made you schedule a bunch of photo sessions ;~). There's nothing like actually doing it. Just owning gear that sits in a closet doesn't make you a photographer. You know what does? Taking photos! Santa Claus tells me that some of you are getting lazy in this regard and that I should scheduling you for a lump of coal in the future. Or was it the Easter Bunny? I getting old and senile so I can't keep the creatures of my imagination straight all the time. 

Regardless, you get better at things by practicing. At least if you're paying attention. And I'm pretty sure Step 6 will make you pay some attention.

Second, since you had to pay attention, after each photo session you're going to have a lot more appreciation for what each lens you own can and can't do. What worked and what didn't. How the lens made you think about your subjects and your relationship to them. 

Also posted in Technique/Improving the photographer

Yeah, just like all the other click baiting headlines regarding Fujifilm X100VI orders, I made you look ;~).

The Internet Amplification Effect is going on here. Yes, Fujifilm themselves have said that the number of pre-orders surprised them. Privately, one manager told me pre-orders will significantly exceed what they're ready to produce (which is 15k/mo, which is itself double what the X100V was produced at). From the dealers I've talked to, they all say they've taken more X100VI pre-orders than they expected. 

However, the exaggeration that's running around in some fora and some sites is problematic. For example: "Chinese Weibo account Camerabeta reports that pre-orders for the Fujifilm X100VI in China have exceeded 480,000." [source:fujirumors]. Some sites say 580,000 or even 650,000 orders have been taken. That sounds to me more like some automated ordering robots kept trying to get into queues and reserve a product than a sudden larger rush to order product in a country currently having an economic slowdown. The source most often quoted is referred to in translation as a "lottery", so I suspect that China has now discovered the "get in as many queues in as many ways for pre-orders and then cancel everything else when you finally get one."

For what it's worth, if you want a camera sooner, you probably want to get in an all-black queue, not the panda (silver over black) queue. It's unknown what Fujifilm thought the balance between models would be, but I keep seeing information that suggests that the public wants four Pandas for every Allblack. 

Either way, it's likely that Fujifilm hasn't solved their "back-ordered" problem for this popular compact camera model line. Moreover, it probably can't if demand is as high as some say it is. Their image sensor order would have been predicated on that 15k/mo plan (and however they thought that might taper). Getting more 40mp sensors wouldn't happen very fast, and has implications on the other cameras that use it (X-T5, X-H2) or are likely to be launched with it (X-Pro4). So I expect the X100VI to be one of those few Internet-hyped products that does stay in a back-ordered status for awhile, maybe a long while (Sony A9 Mark III eat your heart out ;~).

As to why the X100VI might be very popular, I don't I think I have to state it, but I will ;~): 

1. The previous model was so popular it was always out of stock. The new model is a clear upgrade.
2. The market for high-performance compacts never went away, but competitive products of that type did.
3. 40mp APS-C is a new number to equal/beat. 
4. Remember the byThom XAD? Technically, the X100VI is about the closest thing to that, though much more feature laden and with (mostly) hidden complexity. I first outlined how a high-end digital compact needed to be designed back in 2006, and at present, only the Ricoh GR and Fujifilm X100 models really can say they're in that ballpark. Simply put: certain demands don't go away over time.09

I guess those things don't matter enough to solve. Maybe in the X100LXIV.ji9  

Is it me, or is there a trend going on that's trying to tell us something?

It starts with new products. In terms of new cameras, we're down from a peak of 21 new mirrorless models a year to something around 17 to 18. Coupled with no new DSLRs and very few new compacts, what used to be a vibrant "here's a new camera" followed by reviews of same seems to have died down to a faint whine.

Lenses aren't helping much. The camera makers (Canon, Nikon, Sony) have long trended at six to eight lenses a year, while the major third parties (Sigma, Tamron) are running at the same six to eight number. Moreover, many of those lenses are "new version, new mount" variations. 

Yes, the Chinese lens makers are quite active. Hope you want a 35mm, 50mm, or 85mm prime, because that's what a lot of those are (or the APS-C equivalent). Also, while we now have over two dozen autofocus lenses out of China, those are mostly just seeking to be a lower cost alternative to something already available, or at least similar (e.g. f/1.4 instead of f/1.8). 

But realistically, what in terms of new products in the last year has really been exciting and broken the iteration boredom? I can think of maybe four such products, which means that the other eight months of the year all we have to talk about is small things that changed. 

On the software side we have everyone wanting to be Adobe and everyone discovering AI in some form. In short form, what you're now being marketed is "subscribe to this and run your images through it and they'll all be magically better." Personally, I enjoy the craft of converting and editing, love dealing with nuance, and enjoy tools that allow me to tinker. I dislike giant Black Boxes that "create the latest trend in images." To me, taking, editing, and sharing a photograph is my personal expression, not some AI engine removing and adding things out of my control while applying the latest fad.

But more curiously, what the heck do you write about such all-in-one automated tools? There's not a lot to say about them. They either work or don't, and when they work they either create an image you like or they don't. Oh, and make sure your subscription is up to date, because the Black Box is always changing and you'll likely lose access to it if you haven't made the current tithe.

Meanwhile, Scott Kelby appears to be on an extended "creative pause", joining a few others that have gone from constant blogging to some more quiet form. He joins a number of others who have gone more quiet or no longer give you fresh insights and ideas. Two photo programs at the University level I have some knowledge of seem to be calcifying, too. 

Given the above, the rumor sites all now seem to be in a lather-rinse-repeat formula: (1) imminent release of a new product, then spill some beans, preferably bit by bit followed by pointing to all the YouTube videos that get created; otherwise (2) promote products with affiliate links (probably the latest subscriber version of that AI Black Box, or surely someone has a new bag or accessory to promote), or (3) dig around Kickstarter to find some project that pays commissions, or (4) republish some Google translation from one of the Japanese sites.

The net result of a more boring photography Web is that I find myself spending less time browsing the Web and more time working, so I guess there's a positive side to this. Still, I have to wonder at what point does this stagnification start to have real impacts on the overall market. Camera makers, for one, should want a healthy, lively, and interesting photography presence on the Web. 

Personally, I want the young to discover photography through their mobile devices and then be excited to learn, know, and practice photography in more advanced ways. There's so much craft, art, procedure, technical, and more nuance that should excite and encourage our future image creators. Without them, the camera makers will make fewer cameras, software will become a button you subscribe to, and information and discussion on the Web will present little of use. 

Since I'm in the middle of re-imagining my own Internet presence, all the above has me thinking about how I might do something different, something that brings back some energy and excitement to Photography on the Web (PoW). Yeah, I like that: we need more PoW, less YAWN (yet another wearisome narrative).

In doing some cleanup on my systems, I came across my old "100 ideas in 20 minutes" presentation about photography tech possibilities, particularly computational photography, which I first created for an imaging symposium at the turn of the century (and was last updated in 2005). 

While some of my future imaging suggestions will seem familiar—pixel shift and what some of the computational multi-sampling smartphones are currently doing, for example—some are still not yet done by anyone, which surprised me a bit. If I could think of things that could be done that still aren't available, how many other folk out there can come up with their own set of still undone ideas?

Of course, I shouldn't exactly be surprised. After all, I asked for stacked semiconductors back in 1980 at a big tech conference with all the usual suspects, and was clearly told this was not remotely possible by IBM, Intel, and other semiconductor makers. One thing I learned even before that, though, was "never say it isn't possible." So I just ignored them and kept asking. 

Why was I asking for stacked semiconductors? Well, it struck me from all the Cray propaganda marketing that speed was defined by shortest distance, so why would you restrict your layout to two dimensions? (Implicit answer: "because that's how we designed our equipment to be able to build things." Also: "we believe we wouldn't be able to dissipate the heat.")

Many engineers tend to be linear thinkers. They see how X is done today, so they immediately tackle a small, incremental improvement to X using known iteration techniques. I'd call that somewhat lazy engineering in high tech, as understanding Moore's Law tells us that incremental improvements cascade from that constantly with even only modest additional effort. Process size reduces? Chip complexity and/or speed increases. Speed increases? Data access increases. The list goes on and on. A lot of tech engineering tends to be just trying to keep up with Moore's Law, not taking new advantages of it or changing something else about how you're using it. The change from CISC (Complex Instruction Set Computer) to RISC (Reduced Instruction Set Computer), for instance, was a big one that's still having trickle effects, particularly in the GPU and NPU arenas. But such dramatic shifts tend to happen much more rarely than iteration.

Many of you know that Science Fiction has foretold many a technical advancement we've eventually ended up actually creating. Arthur C. Clarke, for instance, was telling us what we could do with satellites long before we had any. Science Fiction writers tend to be non-linear thinkers. They jump start themselves into a future where anything is possible and are not constrained by current capabilities, ideas, or limitations. 

Artificial intelligence has long been one of those Sci Fi possibilities. 

People ask me all the time about whether I think Artificial Intelligence is going to destroy photography. My answer to that would tend to be no. One reason came to mind as I was looking at my old presentation. While I hadn't done this in that presentation, I now see that there were some logical and distinct "categories" my turn-of-the-century ideas all fit into. For instance, abstraction, enhancement, and optimization. AI is mostly targeting the enhancement category. As most of you know, I'm an optimalist—as opposed to optimist ;~)—and thus I'm not overly excited about generative photo AI. But if AI can take an as-optimal-as-possible data set and find a way to enhance that without adding information that's in contradiction, I'm all for that. 

The painting world used to be about realism. And then it wasn't. So what we're seeing with generative AI and photography these days is often something similar: a camera-taken photo is "real" but a "generative AI" "photo" isn't. I don't have any issues with both existing, but I do want to know which one I'm looking at ;~).

Aside: a lot of what photo AI is doing is actually because you asked for it ;~). You didn't control your background while taking the photo and now have a distracting element you want to remove. But you also don't want to learn and spend time doing proper masking, let alone use restoration techniques on the affected area. Too much trouble, too much time, too much to learn. What you really wanted was a button to press to do all that automatically. Well, you got it. The reason why it has to be AI-driven is that there are quite a few decisions that have to be made, and you also don't want a button that, when pressed, then asks you a long series of questions. I call this "shortcutting." The reason why AI is getting so popular now in so many aspects of photography is that it relieves you of having to make so many decisions. 

Returning back to the presentation I found: it was prompted by a request for a paper on differences in how imaging might be done differently in the 21st century. Specifically digital imaging. After all, I had been doing some form of digital imaging since the early 1980's.

But it really doesn't matter when you create such a forward-looking assignment; At any given moment in time, what is possible 10 years from that moment is clearly different than what is being done at that moment, and that difference is increasing, not decreasing. The real question is whether you're open and looking for truly new ideas or not. 

Most of the people who are involved in looking to the future that I talk to about this seem to think that AI will be the primary driver for the next 10 years. I worry about that, but probably not for the reason you think. Machine Learning (ML) and Large Language Models (LLM) are the big AI pushes right now, but both of them tend to be backward-looking, not creatively imaginative and making unexpected forward leaps. (Yes, I know about hallucinations in LLM, but those aren't necessarily forward leaps, they're incorrect backward analysis.) Moreover, the trend in AI has been to replace or augment a real time capture with something conjured from existing work. Where are the future technologies that improve the real time capture abilities? 

We're actually in a period with photography similar to what happened in other artistic disciplines. For example, music. Music up until the multi-track recorder came along tended to be 100% real time. Even a recording was just a capture of a real time performance. But then we started creating overdubs, and then sampling and sequencing, and then auto tune and much more. The result was Kraftwerk and Depeche Mode—both of whose music I like, by the way—but this was pushing music away from real time performance to tech-augmented compilation. It's ironic that musicians have all found that they need to return to real time performance to make money, but to me this is exciting because it also means that they are having to play with real-time things to stand out. The Grateful Dead had it right all along ;~).

So the question I'm pondering today after my short trip down memory lane is this: as a photographer in the field in the year 2034, what will I be using and how will it make the experience of taking a photo different? Yes, I'm sure new technologies will be part of that, but note that I'm asking this from the photographer perspective, not the technology perspective. That's important, and I think it's the thing that often gets missed when companies try to come up with and execute a future product plan. What benefit does the user really get?

To finish off, I'm going to hint at one thing I believe will happen: Plogging. Not blogging, not vlogging, but plogging. 

I'll leave you to figure out what I think plogging is ;~). (No, it's not photography logging.)