What is the Future of Photography?

WestEndFoto

This article has me thinking. I have often thought that something else besides "the smartphone" was changing.

https://petapixel.com/2019/12/06/the-real-reasons-the-camera-market-is-shrinking-hint-its-not-smartphones/

What do you guys think?

NSXTypeR

My dream future of photography would be the merging of the two- smartphone photo processing and DSLR/mirrorless. No doubt the cell phone is more than enough now for casual photos, but I do miss the control and speed of a DSLR.

I was hoping the next move would be a combination of the two. Perhaps you wanted a photo with better dynamic range at night, so you can ask your camera to do an auto HDR in a darker environment. I was blown away by the Pixel 3 with its night sight capabilities. Imagine if a Nikon F mount or Z mount camera had similar processing power?

No doubt the need for DSLR and mirrorless cameras are waning, but there occasionally is a need for it. I alway like macro and the phone lets me down on that as it can't do close focus. I recently sold my 70-300mm AF-S, but my phone also can't do telephoto well either.

spraynpray

You would think that it would be so easy to combine the best of both worlds and come up with a real top seller. Quite annoying they don't do it.

henrik1963

If you cant take the photos you want with the cameras we have - Dont blame the camera.

The bloke in the video seems to think, that photography is stagnant. It is up to you to take pictures that are different than the ones your grandmother took.

NSXTypeR

henrik1963 said:

If you cant take the photos you want with the cameras we have - Dont blame the camera.

The bloke in the video seems to think, that photography is stagnant. It is up to you to take pictures that are different than the ones your grandmother took.

Yes and no. If you think it's as easy to take photos of a football game with a wet plate colloid camera as a D40 from a few years ago, you'd be sorely mistaken.

Yes I'm exaggerating a lot, but gear does make a big difference, and the technology can make it that much easier for you to get the results you want.

WestEndFoto

Yes, but almost all of us have something better than a D40.

spraynpray

henrik1963 said:

If you cant take the photos you want with the cameras we have - Dont blame the camera.

The bloke in the video seems to think, that photography is stagnant. It is up to you to take pictures that are different than the ones your grandmother took.

You are missing the point I think. The features such a camera would offer merely give more convenience, they are not great changes in technology that enable pictures not possible previously to be taken.

PB_PM

Gear matters somewhat, likely far less than many believe, but at least it helps. Gear doesn't change whether a person has the creative talent to take good images or not. I've seen a good share of people with D40's, and yes smartphones, that could out shoot wannabee pros with with D850s/Z7s; I'm talking about the actual creative talent and skill, not how many photography/art classes someone has taken.

snakebunk

I agree with PB_PM.

I can add that I stopped buying photo gear almost three years ago, because I wanted to see how the different brands of mirorrless cameras evolved before I made my transition from DSLRs. The interesting result is that I have almost completely lost my interest in buying new photo stuff. I much rather spend my money on travels or work locally on setting up temporary hides and things like that. Being in the right place at the right time is everything, exposure and editing is something, and improvement of already good gear is nothing (almost).

I think that sometimes when we talk about the future of photography, we actually talk about the future of the current photography industry. Photography in itself is not at risk and I don't think it will change much.

In regards to the link in the original post I think DSLR photography gear has reached "a plateau of sufficiency”, and mirorrless in general is still not good enough to make all DSLR users upgrade.

Ton14

@snakebunk Same here

Another thing, the RAW convertors become better and better. I dumped Adobe and bought Capture One (don't like subscriptions and clouds), when I saw my old RAW photo's from the D70, D200, D300 and D600 in the latest Lightroom version, these RAW conversions now gave me more dynamic range and new possibilities. After a month with Capture one version 20 it is even better.

The last 5 years i.m.h.o. there is so much done in software and there are more competitors on the market now, these fights are in our favor.

Now the focus is on A.I. for the main stream mobile phones, press the button and get a perfect photo, at the moment we only get more plastic looks, but with every release it become better.

For me the next 5 years is the combination of better glass and better software.

retread

I am still shooting DX and happy with it. I would like to move to FX but in no hurry. I have good glass, mostly FX.

Not sure if I will move to mirrorless or not just waiting to see what happens before making that decision. Old age is creeping up on me. It will be interesting to see how the next generation of DSLR cameras compare to mirrorless. After most have moved to mirrorless I may just move to the top DSLR's when the price has dropped or buy used.

I have just added Capture One to my tool chest so have a learning curve ahead of me.

For the immediate future I will concentrate on improving the photographer. There is a lot that can be done there.

henrik1963

The claim that photography as an art form is stagnant has very little to do with gear. You can make art with wet plate tech. Or you can use the latest MF camera with 100 MP.

Look at pictures taken in the different decades. They are different. Some times we have to wait for some time to realize that there is a trend in a periode. But it is there.

How we see the world will impact our pictures. Some of us are true masters others are just having fun taking pictures. It doesn't matter as long as you enjoy what you are doing. Keep shooting.

(I am not one of the master - but I am having fun

Paperman

The amount of activity/posts in this forum ( and any other forum ) should give an idea about the future of photography ( a dying art form ) , unfortunately

NSXTypeR

retread said:

I am still shooting DX and happy with it. I would like to move to FX but in no hurry. I have good glass, mostly FX.

Not sure if I will move to mirrorless or not just waiting to see what happens before making that decision. Old age is creeping up on me. It will be interesting to see how the next generation of DSLR cameras compare to mirrorless. After most have moved to mirrorless I may just move to the top DSLR's when the price has dropped or buy used.

I have just added Capture One to my tool chest so have a learning curve ahead of me.

For the immediate future I will concentrate on improving the photographer. There is a lot that can be done there.

Yes, I'm also shooting DX too and am happy with my gear. I plan to shoot with my D7000 for the foreseeable future and plan on picking up a D7500 or whatever that replaces it once Nikon discontinues DX bodies. I already own all the lenses I intend on shooting with so I'm happy where I am. Any change in mount would be a problem for me.

Paperman said:

The amount of activity/posts in this forum ( and any other forum ) should give an idea about the future of photography ( a dying art form ) , unfortunately

Part of the issue is the lack of newer forum members, but that's a decision on the forum creator. Another issue is that it's way beyond any new news from Nikon, so the forum naturally is dead because there just isn't anything to report on.

PB_PM

Some parts of the article were not wrong, for a while there everyone was jumping on board, it was trendy to go out and buy a DSLR/high end camera and take pictures of everything with them, now things are leveling off and getting back to normal. Causal shooters who were getting high end stuff have realized that maybe it's not worth if for them, while those who really enjoy photography are staying. Some of us, like snakebunk figured out that what we have is good enough for what we are doing, and that maybe newer gear won't always change or improve your photography. In many ways this transition period in technology, the mashing of smartphones, mirrorless etc, is also skewing what many people think about the way we doing things as photographers.

The amount of copying others photo styles, and outright stealing of images, has left us seeing the same thing over and over again. There are only so many things, and ways of photographing common and easily viewable subject matters. Sometimes the images we take also reflect who we are taking pictures for, if what people want is the style people are shooting now, who are we to question that? Such a huge subject matter that we have only just scratched the surface of.

Also, we cannot just look at this forum. Part of it is that Nikon is a weaning camera brand, one that is generally not seen as being innovate, right now anyway, so people are going somewhere else. At the end of the day, this type of gear forum is not where many photo enthusiast spend their time anyway. Lets face it, most of us here are very interested in the technical side of things, in addition to image making, so this really isn't the best community for talking about the real issues. The idea that photography is dying just because fewer people are buying fewer new cameras and gear is kind of silly if you really think about it.

sport

I would agree with the combining of smartphones and mirrorless would be awesome. I have a Moto Z with the Hasselblad snap on camera. It's a great concept with ok execution. If the camera were more responsive I would use more often.

A couple of things that were not quite on point with regards to the stagnation of photography:

- the shift to digital was sold on the premise that handling the pictures after they were taken was going to be easier than dealing with film. It's not easier just different.
None of the camera makers have ever fully dealt with making it easy for users to do something with the image once it's captured. This is why cellphones have taken some of the market because those companies understand that users want to do something with the images after they are taken.

- a lot of buyers of dslrs never intended to swap a lens or use a mode outside of auto. These users are going to move to the camera that works easiest for them. Cellphones are that move for them.

Lastly, photography is not stagnant, social media is stagnant.

NSXTypeR

sport said:

- the shift to digital was sold on the premise that handling the pictures after they were taken was going to be easier than dealing with film. It's not easier just different.
None of the camera makers have ever fully dealt with making it easy for users to do something with the image once it's captured. This is why cellphones have taken some of the market because those companies understand that users want to do something with the images after they are taken.

- a lot of buyers of dslrs never intended to swap a lens or use a mode outside of auto. These users are going to move to the camera that works easiest for them. Cellphones are that move for them.

I agree with both points. If you exclude the fact that you can use WiFi to transfer photos to cell phones, handling of photos hasn't changed for, about 22 years now since the creation of digital cameras and always involves you bringing the camera back to a computer to download photos. There hasn't really been a good viable way to offload your photos reliably and quickly at full quality.

Part of the rise of DSLRs/mirrorless was likely because they really were the only way to get decent photos in low light situations or take photos with reasonable response times back in the early 2000s. With cell phones being good enough, there isn't a good reason to stick with DSLRs or mirrorless anymore.

spraynpray

I have the Huawei P30 pro with the Leica camera lenses and silly amounts of pixels and I have to say that it is good enough for Facebook snaps but that is it IMHO. You will never see a print on my wall from a phone.

PB_PM

spraynpray said:

You will never see a print on my wall from a phone.

For many people this is a non-issue, because they don't make prints. Just another one of the changes that is happening in photography. Lets put it this way, there aren't very many dedicated print labs around anymore for a reason.

mhedges

PB_PM said:

spraynpray said:

You will never see a print on my wall from a phone.

For many people this is a non-issue, because they don't make prints. Just another one of the changes that is happening in photography. Lets put it this way, there aren't very many dedicated print labs around anymore for a reason.

Yep. And it's a bit of a shame, because the prints you can make now (even off smartphone) are far better than what most consumer type gear made during the film era, when people made prints because they had to.

spraynpray

When I started out in digital I though 'oh great, no more having to print' but after a while when my results got better, I started to print more enlargements than I ever did in film.

I don't agree about mobile phones beating 35mm film - especially transparencies - for quality though.

mhedges

spraynpray said:

When I started out in digital I though 'oh great, no more having to print' but after a while when my results got better, I started to print more enlargements than I ever did in film.

I don't agree about mobile phones beating 35mm film - especially transparencies - for quality though.

Oh they probably don't. But back in the film days most general consumers weren't using 35mm film, and especially not transparencies. They were using all kinds of smaller formats. Or if they did use 35mm it would have been on fairly crappy p&s cameras.

Ton14

spraynpray said:

When I started out in digital I though 'oh great, no more having to print' but after a while when my results got better, I started to print more enlargements than I ever did in film.

I don't agree about mobile phones beating 35mm film - especially transparencies - for quality though.

Same here and phones don't come near at the moment to about 75% of my photo's, due to available light (Samsung S10). Phones are nice to have with you when good daylight is there, but they become better as everything.

spraynpray

mhedges said:

spraynpray said:

When I started out in digital I though 'oh great, no more having to print' but after a while when my results got better, I started to print more enlargements than I ever did in film.

I don't agree about mobile phones beating 35mm film - especially transparencies - for quality though.

Oh they probably don't. But back in the film days most general consumers weren't using 35mm film, and especially not transparencies. They were using all kinds of smaller formats. Or if they did use 35mm it would have been on fairly crappy p&s cameras.

Agreed. Phones in comparison to FF are like 110 (13x17mm) in comparison to 35mm Olympus or similar.

KnockKnock

I have some 11x14 prints of NYC Central Park, and the Seine in Paris, both taken at night, on a tripod... on a Canon S80, that I'm still really proud of. The iPhone 11 Pro kicks its butt at this point - I know it's possible. Of course, I'd rather be shooting the same with a Z7

rmp

I like to think my photography is getting better. I know the equipment is getting better -- my wife told me so. :-) In the past I sold old equipment and bought new stuff to keep myself entertained. After seeing a few of my images taken with the Z7/24-70 f4. She said, "I could buy new stuff, but I must keep the camera that took these." So, blame the equipment, blame me, but keep the improvements coming.