You've spent thousands on photography equipment. Justify your purchase by showing us your recent images that were made possible with modern gear and cutting-edge features.
In February, we asked to see your best images taken with older cameras to prove that good photographs don't require the newest, most expensive equipment. For our May contest, we want the opposite. We want to see images taken with modern equipment that would not have been possible to capture with older gear.
Maybe your 100mp sensor allowed you to crop in to the perfect composition or your 120fps camera allowed you to capture the perfect moment. Maybe modern autofocus allowed you to capture a fast-moving subject, or your camera's incredible ISO performance allowed you to capture an image in almost total darkness. Perhaps the editing software you used allowed you to save an image by upscalling it, removing noise, or extending the frame. We want to see images that would not have been possible to capture just a few years ago.
Prizes
1st Prize
For this contest, the first-place winner will receive the entire "Road Runner" Collection of bags by Polar Pro. These lightweight bags have been designed by professionals to meet the most demanding needs of traveling photographers and videographers. These bags come in five different sizes but the winner won't have to choose between them because they'll get them all. Due to shipping costs and trade wars, these bags must be mailed within the United States.
2nd and 3rd Prize
For this contest, the 2nd and 3rd place winner will get their choice of any tutorial in the Fstoppers Store.
Rules
Each photographer is allowed to upload up to three different images. We will choose 10 images to feature in our critique based on the description the photographer uploads and how relevant the image and story is to the theme of "modern photography." Obviously, images without a description will be disqualified, but images with poor descriptions will also be ignored. Community ratings will not affect our choice in any way so your score doesn't matter, so it's not worth complaining about.
Extra Deal
For all of May, we are discounting our tutorial with Pye Jirsa titled Master Adobe Lightroom to just $49. If you're looking to not only master post processing, but learn to do it as quickly as possible, in a single piece of affordable software, this is the tutorial for you. Obviously Lightroom is the first choice of volume photographers everywhere, but this tutorial will open the eyes of even the most casual shooters.
As with all of our tutorials, if you don't like it, just let us know and we will give you all of your money back. You have absolutely nothing to lose.
These things and the appurtenant critiques are interesting. We shouldn't let the unsolicited critiques matter too much. I was in a print critique one time and some ne-er-do-well had snuck an Ansel Adams print in. And it was not an unknown image. The print judges scored it as a 65 out of a possible 100. 95.9% of the time the ones doing the critique are just loudmouths with an opinion.
Let me guess, the critique on the Ansel Adams print was, "Trying to be too much like Ansel Adams?" Lol
I don't recall the critique, only the score. But probably.
Two months ago, the competition theme was "Images Taken on an Older Camera." In looking through the images posted for this "Modern [Gear] Photos" contest, I'm wondering whether collectively they're any better than those in the older camera contest. Of course, the new gear and software advocates are gonna cite features like auto focusing or generative fill that make photography easier, or produce more wildlife or action photo keepers. But from the viewer's perspective, it all looks the same to me as it always has. Great pictures are conceived in the mind and executed by skilled photographers. The camera gear and software are merely behind-the-scenes tools, and have yet to prove they can turn a bad composition into a good one, or that they could do anything more than a skilled photographer could have done without them.
The thing that you need to take into account often is that it is less about whether taking a great photo is possible. Taking great photos has been possible for over a century. It is unlikely that you would see a massive variation in quality between "favorite" images taken with older gear compared to newer gear, especially at web resolution.
What the newer gear mostly is allowing for is the creation of specific images that were impossible before due to technical limitations or were impractical due to cost.
For example on gear from 15 years ago, you could take a beautiful shot of a fox as it climbs out of its den during blue hour but because of ISO limitations that shot had to be taken with something like a 400 2.8 which just wasn't a lens most photographers ever can expect to afford. Today, you can make that shot with a 5.6 or 6.3 that is accessible to nearly everyone. The newer tech doesn't make the shot better, but it does bring the shot into reach for a wider variety of photographers.
I could provide tons of examples of situations like this. Nothing is stopping you from taking great images with old gear, in a general sense. But old gear often gets in the way of taking specific shots under specific conditions that push the tech to its limits. Older gear also has a narrower margin for error and is much more prone to failure under extreme circumstances. A contest like this will never show that the old camera has a 10% hit rate while the new one has a 90% hit rate. You just never see the situations where it failed.
Some of my favorite images in my portfolio were taken on my old D800. They turned out great, but I can also remember countless situations with that camera where making the image I "wanted" to make was just not possible but would be possible with my Z8. The Z8 is cleaner at ISO 10,000 than the D800 was at like ISO 800. The possibilities that opens up are just incredible.
Another great example is "Daniel Viñé": 'Vietnamese rice terraces", the only way I could duplicate an image like that with my older gear is with panos and/or stacking, as he pointed out in his comments about the single image. One can also argue that the software that produces panos/stacking is also improving with AI and getting easier to manage, but that's a different discussion.
Or the shots underwater with added colorliquid.
To nail the focus and get the "good" image without too much noise while having maybe 3-5 shots?
I can´t reshoot this setting without refilling an huge watertank. (which not only cost much money but takes hours) for that, the eyefocus and fast camera is such a win.
For still portraits it mostly doesn´t matter if we use a canon AE1 analog, a 5dm3 or the new models.
So it´s up to the job i guess?
Its very strange to me how these new model cameras have more and more gadgets to help with images every year, when all you need is about 6. That is why the more expensive cameras have less crap and cost more. I remember teaching a class a few times and bumping a button on accident and the whole camera changed. Had to read the manual to find out how to fix it. As far as looking at images on a digital device, its hard to tell what is better, because of software. Now if you put a medium or large format print from the darkroom up against a digital print, their is a definite difference. The traditional is so much better in person. Most will never see this comparison though.
I'm not sure that follows, the flagship pro cameras from the top makers all have way more features than the cheaper ones. For example, My Z8 has WAY more features than my Z7ii does.
Sure there are hyper expensive cameras like what Leica makes that seem pretty feature devoid but those cameras aren't designed for pros, they are designed for wealthy hobbyists who care more about the logo on their gear than what it can do.
And I disagree in regards to the old film prints. Which is fine, I'm not suggesting one is better or the other, its just about personal preference but to to imply the older equipment is better is just factually incorrect.
Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Frank, and Garry Winogrand to name a few Leica users. Leica has the image quality that the lesser brands can't match. There is simply no comparison to the image quality of a Leica. doesn't make you better if you have one, that part you need to learn on your own.
You are naming photographers who are all dead because they made their body of work more than half a century ago. All of whom had a body of work that, while considered quite good in certain circles, was far from "image quality driven". They were capturing emotion and moments. How many top tier commercial photographers who's work is mainly about image quality are rocking Leica's today? No many. The photographers in that realm are shooting GFX, Phase, or Hasselblad for the most part or if they don't have the budget to work with medium format, they are shooting Nikon, Sony, or Canon. Leica's market is hobbyists, the odd journalist, and the odd rich guy like Brooklyn Beckham.
I get it, you live in the realm of "its old so must be better" but the Leica of today is not the Leica of the 1950s. The competition has caught up and Leica hasn't innovated. Leica used to be an industry leader designed for pros. Now most pros wouldn't touch a Leica because it's a crappy professional tool.
The Leica name is a placebo effect. If we were to take a photo with a Leica camera, a Hassleblad, a Nikon, and a Canon, edit them all with the same process, then put them in front of you. you wouldn't have the slightest clue which brand camera made which image. But hey, if you want to spend twice as much for a camera that is half as capable, that's totally up to you.
The only major difference is, unlike the others, the Leica camera is dumbed into a body designed to be more nostalgic than useful.
I'm not saying the Leica sensor is bad. Its not. I'm not saying Leica Glass is bad, it's still world-class. I'm just saying its not better. You pay double for no actual improvement and give up half the features to do it.
In regards to prints, I think better would be subjective to what you seek to accomplish. In many cases, you're not going to shoot a fortune 500 marketing campaign on film, but if you're in the fine art space it I've seen shooting on film lends itself to be more "credible" than digital when trying to get into galleries or shows.
Ive been a street photographer for many years, so i'm a little biased in that respect.
Allow me to rephrase that. Paul Strand was quoted as saying, "isn't in interesting that our equipment has gotten better and our photographs haven't". There are some things that very modern cameras have improved, but the basic things are in your head and imagination. I have been building a portfolio the last few days to send to a gallery, at their request, and I just realized that each image I have put in it was created using my old 4x5 camera with film. I didn't purposely leave any out. The ones selected all originated using large format film.