The Death of the Digital Camera?
Yet another post celebrating all that is gloomy in the world this week. I'm embracing my inner doomsayer and really going for rock bottom. Pessimists rejoice!
Yeah, yeah, yeah. You’ve heard it all before...
Photography is doomed. It only has a few years to go before some new-fangled techno-gadget replaces it. Zzz…You’re all bored with these type of predictions by now right? You’re still complacent and content in your own little arty world where the Camera is King, and it’s going to be eons (or at least after you’re dead) that another technological revolution comes along which renders the digital camera obsolete.
If this is your honoured opinion, I totally respect that and I’ve no desire to ruin your happy place. So please don’t read any further. For those of you who are feeling courageous, even hungry for change, let us now consider a couple of groovy new inventions which, although they are not completely new genres of tools in themselves (aka camera replaces paintbrush), they still make me seriously worry that the days of the digital camera are numbered.
Let’s first consider the low end of the market: The camera as a tool of the consumer. Here the camera acts as a tool to record life, e.g. family photographs, street and travel photography. The technology is on a vertical development curve here. Digital point-and-shoots are doubling in their capabilities every two years or less. A really good 8 megapixel point-and-shoot will set you back a few hundred quid at most, and my latest Fuji (bought last year) has already been superseded by a new model. In the next few years, these humble point-and-shoot toys for plebs like myself may well become obsolete. Why have a camera for snapping the kids when your mobile phone can do it for you?
Yes I know, mobiles have lousy cameras (no matter what their megapixels) but consider the Samsung i8510, which comes with an eight megapixels and a flash, and boasts that its image quality and colour are so good that consumers would struggle to tell the difference between a photograph produced by a regular 8mp digital camera and the Samsung. Best of all, it is a top-notch mobile phone with Sat Nav, 8gb storage space for music and high speed internet access. The camera can even detect when people in the picture are smiling.
If this camera phone does what it says on the tin, why on earth would your average consumer want to go and buy a regular digital camera?
O.K. now all you proper photographers out there are going to quite rightly say that there’s a heck of a lot more to picture quality than mega-pixels. What about the lens quality? What about the sensor (which is presumably tiny)? And I grant you that this specific model won’t be remotely as good as your 8mp digital SLR for those two reasons alone, even ignoring the fact that there’s a lot more to taking a good photograph than lens, sensors and megapixels. However this new technology is young yet. Just think what camera phones are going to be like in…say…five years time? What about ten? My bet is that your average Joe Blogs won’t be buying digital cameras any more. He’ll be using his phone instead.
But you’re not the average consumer. You are professional artists. So no worries, right?
Well Rich (who is a total gadget freak) has recently become very excited about Red One. If you haven’t heard of it, then prepare to be vowed. Red Digital Cinema’s new toys can shoot up to 4K (shortly to be 5) which is the same resolution as 35mm film, and the current best model has a 12 megapixel sensor (and is being upgraded rapidly) which is capable of capturing up to 60 frames per second. And yes, these aren’t traditional cameras, they are camcorders, but heck they are so light and compact that you couldn’t tell. Photographers and movie makers both love them, and the image quality is so darn good that they are being used by the likes of Peter Jackson.
Why should you worry about capturing “the killer shot” in a shoot, nailing that one definitive image that captures “the decisive moment” when you can just film the entire shoot to the same quality as your regular SLR? You can then create all the photographs you ever want, or re-live the entire shoot in infinite variations as many times as you like. It makes getting as many great photographs as you want completely trivial.
"Aha," you say, "but what price for this revolutionary new art-tool?" Less than the price of a digital back Hasselblad, and falling all the time.
So, my dear favourite photographers out there, are you still complacent about cameras remaining your primary tool with which you will capture images? How long before cameras as you know them are rendered obsolete? Will high definition cinematography replace the digital SLR as the tool of choice for professional shooters? If I were a betting person, I would lay odds that it will, and sooner than you think too.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. You’ve heard it all before...
Photography is doomed. It only has a few years to go before some new-fangled techno-gadget replaces it. Zzz…You’re all bored with these type of predictions by now right? You’re still complacent and content in your own little arty world where the Camera is King, and it’s going to be eons (or at least after you’re dead) that another technological revolution comes along which renders the digital camera obsolete.
If this is your honoured opinion, I totally respect that and I’ve no desire to ruin your happy place. So please don’t read any further. For those of you who are feeling courageous, even hungry for change, let us now consider a couple of groovy new inventions which, although they are not completely new genres of tools in themselves (aka camera replaces paintbrush), they still make me seriously worry that the days of the digital camera are numbered.
Let’s first consider the low end of the market: The camera as a tool of the consumer. Here the camera acts as a tool to record life, e.g. family photographs, street and travel photography. The technology is on a vertical development curve here. Digital point-and-shoots are doubling in their capabilities every two years or less. A really good 8 megapixel point-and-shoot will set you back a few hundred quid at most, and my latest Fuji (bought last year) has already been superseded by a new model. In the next few years, these humble point-and-shoot toys for plebs like myself may well become obsolete. Why have a camera for snapping the kids when your mobile phone can do it for you?
Yes I know, mobiles have lousy cameras (no matter what their megapixels) but consider the Samsung i8510, which comes with an eight megapixels and a flash, and boasts that its image quality and colour are so good that consumers would struggle to tell the difference between a photograph produced by a regular 8mp digital camera and the Samsung. Best of all, it is a top-notch mobile phone with Sat Nav, 8gb storage space for music and high speed internet access. The camera can even detect when people in the picture are smiling.
If this camera phone does what it says on the tin, why on earth would your average consumer want to go and buy a regular digital camera?
O.K. now all you proper photographers out there are going to quite rightly say that there’s a heck of a lot more to picture quality than mega-pixels. What about the lens quality? What about the sensor (which is presumably tiny)? And I grant you that this specific model won’t be remotely as good as your 8mp digital SLR for those two reasons alone, even ignoring the fact that there’s a lot more to taking a good photograph than lens, sensors and megapixels. However this new technology is young yet. Just think what camera phones are going to be like in…say…five years time? What about ten? My bet is that your average Joe Blogs won’t be buying digital cameras any more. He’ll be using his phone instead.
But you’re not the average consumer. You are professional artists. So no worries, right?
Well Rich (who is a total gadget freak) has recently become very excited about Red One. If you haven’t heard of it, then prepare to be vowed. Red Digital Cinema’s new toys can shoot up to 4K (shortly to be 5) which is the same resolution as 35mm film, and the current best model has a 12 megapixel sensor (and is being upgraded rapidly) which is capable of capturing up to 60 frames per second. And yes, these aren’t traditional cameras, they are camcorders, but heck they are so light and compact that you couldn’t tell. Photographers and movie makers both love them, and the image quality is so darn good that they are being used by the likes of Peter Jackson.
Why should you worry about capturing “the killer shot” in a shoot, nailing that one definitive image that captures “the decisive moment” when you can just film the entire shoot to the same quality as your regular SLR? You can then create all the photographs you ever want, or re-live the entire shoot in infinite variations as many times as you like. It makes getting as many great photographs as you want completely trivial.
"Aha," you say, "but what price for this revolutionary new art-tool?" Less than the price of a digital back Hasselblad, and falling all the time.
So, my dear favourite photographers out there, are you still complacent about cameras remaining your primary tool with which you will capture images? How long before cameras as you know them are rendered obsolete? Will high definition cinematography replace the digital SLR as the tool of choice for professional shooters? If I were a betting person, I would lay odds that it will, and sooner than you think too.
posted by Lin at 10:47 AM
6 Comments:
I've learned that there is no point in being a pessimist. It wouldn't work anyway.
That Red Whatever sounds like a good start for the sports shooters. But until strobes can recycle at a rate to keep up, I don't see any fears being developed by the studio shooters.
Us nudes in nature shooters have stagnant subjects, five hundred frame that all look alike poses no threat to my gear.
Adobe has announced CS4. One advantage is you can use all the filters and such in 16 bit.
I like to see advancement, I just want it to slow down so I can catch up. I'm in the Special Ed class.
Are you sure that's not a new fangled Anti-Tank weapon there?
The only thing that stays the same is change. I just grabbed a Nikon D3 for low light shooting (and with a full frame sensor) to go with my D2x. Both will be obsolete in a year. I suspect they may outlast even me however. No newfangled Red thing in my future. Billboards are being shot with 12 megapixel cams and less....unbelievable high res has become an axiom with all flagship digital cams. What is the next level?....perhaps the Red thingy!!! Not for me...
Mr Charles (or BT if you prefer)
I took a workshop over three years ago with Bill Atkinson (color management guru), where he told us of work among cellphone companies that would result in multiple gigapixel cellphone cameras that will shoot without lenses -- technology closer to the multiple lenses of a fly's eye than to the human-eye analog that is today's SLR.
Here I guess I am sympathetic to gun enthusiasts: what fun is it to fire a weapon remotely by pushing a button -- better to hold the iron in your hands, big and clumsy as it is, and fire it off yourself. (It's not a perfect analogy, but you get my drift.)
And I go the other way, I guess. I feel that my photography exists as an expression not necessarily tied to any specific tools.
Give me a disposable cardboard camera, cell phone, or the latest gear... I'll find a way to make it work for me.
I've written about this before, suggesting that photographers consider learning some videography skills. It's all going to merge into one skill set, sooner rather than later. Photojournalists will probably experience the amalgamation of theses skills very shortly. Other photographic genres will follow. As an example, why hire separate wedding photographer and videographer people when one person can deliver each set of images (still and moving) from the same camera?
Considering that the newly announced 5D mkII can do 12 minutes of HD video on a 4 GB card, I think JimmyD's comment is right on the mark - now if I could only afford it.......
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