Have you ever looked up at the moon? In the right light and on the right night, it’s stunning. But so too are all the other moons in this galaxy — and you probably can’t even tell them apart. In fact, in lots of ways, it’s hard to tell lots of modern cameras apart. That’s a part of the big problem with cameras today. Nothing has really made a stark move to stand out immensely from the others. Well, there are a few exceptions overall. But are the changes and variations really meaningful?
Modern cameras have a problem; and more specifically, they’ve got problems in that they’re all more or less the same. We’d know. We’ve reviewed them all — and as I write this article in the end of November 2023, I can’t be happier to get them all out of my office. There’s very few things that make them all stand our from one another. You know that sloped shutter button that Sony bragged out with their new Sony a9 III? Well, it turns out that every other camera has that.
I just listened to On Taking Pictures episode #348 (yes, Bill and Jeffery are back) and they discuss how very few photographers need a global shutter or 120 frames a second. And that’s what I thought originally too. Yes, it means that your flash won’t need to go into high speed sync and therefore it will save battery power. But how many people can really tell the difference apart in your final photograph? How often do you need to shoot at 120 frames a second?
Modern cameras are more or less trying to one-up one another on tech that’s more or less useless to the majority of photographers. Now, if you’re shooting that many frames, photographers will need to use the rate button — which is something that I’ve been using for several years now. I don’t want to have to filter through a few hundred images to get to the one I want let alone even 1,000. We’re outsourcing the skill to be able to see, be in-tune with a moment, and predict things to cameras — and it’s taking the art out of photography and the skill out of what people have honed their craft to do. That’s not a bad thing, but not giving us features that we could really use in the name of marketing is a big problem.
So what am I talking about? Let’s go down a list:
- Panasonic gave lots of their cameras the Real Time LUT feature, which is great because you can make your own presets in-camera from already made presets, modify, and apply them.
- OM System and Panasonic do Live Composite, which is fantastic for astrophotography. It means that photographers don’t need to sit there and composite all the images together in-camera later on.
- Canon is still the only brand that does multiple exposure with RAW. If you need to make tweaks in post-production, you can. But if you’re also skilled enough, you don’t need to do anything here. Otherwise, the high end tech like Eye sensor detection AF is only in the R3.
- Nikon made their autofocus so good that it can autofocus on people with very dark skin in very low light extremely well. This democratizes photography and addresses a long awaited need that brands have needed to implements for over a decade.
- Leica was the first to put the image authenticity feature into their cameras with the Leica M11P. It protects your copyrights and ensures people know that you actually shot the image. If you did manipulations to the photograph, those are also recorded.
- Fujifilm gave us film simulations, that mean that you don’t need to do anywhere as much post-production. What wedding and portrait clients don’t love the film look?
The big point here is that the majority of modern cameras are all so similar, and they’re focusing now on things that work for better marketing still rather than helping to push photographers forward. Truly though, we need more pushes forward.