A question I am often asked on social media is what camera I use. I rarely respond because it’s both tedious and unimportant. Here are three reasons why my camera doesn’t matter.
It’s about constraints as much as capabilities
Any camera has both capabilities and constraints. The capbilities define an “space” of the possible images you might capture, the constraints the “walls” of things that are impossible to achieve. Creative art happens with the interplay of these two. Whatever device you have is the right one… to play with.
For example, consider this image:
It was taken with my iPhone, which has the camera in the corner of the back of the screen. The reflection is very close to the water, and to take the same picture with my “proper” camera would be difficult. I would be worried about getting the bottom battery door wet, or making the neck cable soggy. If someone asked me what camera I used, they would take away the completely wrong message. It’s not about the colour science, image resolution, or clever software.
My Fujifilm X100-F has a fixed 35mm equivalent lens: it cannot zoom, I have to move around. That’s a constraint, and I have learned to look for “parts that represent the whole” when I cannot stand back far enough. My smartphone cannot swap batteries, and that’s a constraint: I have to bring a power bank if I want to use it all day for photographs as well as ordinary communications. That drives a different set of behaviours, making it good for short urban use but less helpful for a long day in the countryside.
The problem with fixating on the product used for capture is that people are thinking all about capabilities, and not the creative constraints. They want a “better” device than the one they already have, but will be disappointed if they just emulate my purchase decision, since my pictures are inspired by how I work with the constraints, not just the capabilities. A bit like the wing mirrors on a Ferrari — a necessary but ugly constraint — the fun is how you “sculpt” around these limits to create something of aesthetic interest.
Photography is about lighting, not capture
The clue is in the name: “photography” is “drawing with light”. Therefore it requires both a light source as well as a capture device. The single thing that will make the most difference to your photographic output is a better light source, not a better capture device.
I took this picture yesterday at the seaside. It’s no artistic masterpiece, but it does have some “pop” as I used a flashgun to illuminate the hull and under-exposed the background to give it some drama. If you asked me what camera I used to get this kind of tone and saturation, the answer is “I didn’t, I used a xenon stobe light…”. But that’s not the answer people want to hear!
The magic is often in the processing
Finally, the end image that the viewer sees is always processed in software (even if straight from a digital camera as a JPG). A lot of my personal style comes from how I use different effects and filters to generate a feeling that I want to share. So yesterday the sun burst through the clouds, and there was a “rays from heaven” moment.
It didn’t actually look like this at all in real life! I have run this image through Aurora HDR, changed the LUT mapping, fiddled with the sharpening, and taken out most of the colour to focus onto texture. The camera itself only played a minor cameo role, with its capability to store RAW images about the only thing that mattered.
I hope this has given you a little insight into why I don’t generally respond when someone asks me what camera I use. It’s not just that I am lazy: it is also a kindness not to mislead them into imagining that these images are the result of my superior ability at shopping.