Canon v Nikon v Sony. Forget That and Choose Your Side in This More Important Argument Instead.

The marketing battle between the big camera manufacturers is irrelevant. A far older and more important disagreement that has raged since the dawn of our art is as relevant today as ever. Where do you stand?

Let’s face it, they all make good cameras. Yes, some duff models come out occasionally, but at least a design flaw that causes a camera to overheat or fall apart is probably not life-threatening; it’s just a camera, not a plane or a self-driving car. Although you might feel you have a good reason not to feel safe in X brand of car or flying in Y’s planes, shooting with Z camera will be okay despite those widely reported problems. (I landed on the wrong letter. Sorry, Nikon, I didn't mean you.)

Whatever the camera you choose, you should be able to learn to take good photos. However, there is a disagreement in photography that, as time passes, swings from one extreme to the other. It’s an argument that doesn’t seem to be able to find a middle ground. However, that compromise is something I think we should seek.

I am talking about the photographic styles that stem from the battle between the science and the art of photography.

In the earliest days of photography, science played the most crucial role. Indeed, it was viewed mainly as a scientific process. The earliest pioneers, Nicéphore Niépce and William Henry Fox Talbot, were both scientists. Later, the invention of the Daguerreotype and the other early photographic processes that followed it concentrated on physics and chemistry. Consequently, the artistic merits of photography took second place. However, photography's creative potential soon became apparent, and it transformed from a simple method of recording a moment in time to something that could be manipulated to tell a story.

Pictorialism established photography as a legitimate art form and was crucial in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Challenging the notion that photography was purely mechanical, the movement promoted it as a medium capable of artistic expression. Subsequently, Pictorialism's emphasis on technique and personal vision influenced later photography-based movements.

Pictorialism is named after Henry Peach Robinson's 1869 book Pictorial Effect in Photography. It was a style promoted by a group of loosely linked camera clubs and societies that mounted international exhibitions and published portfolios and journals.

That movement took hold as a serious part of the arts when, during the 1880s, a British photographer called Peter Henry Emerson used photographs to depict beauty and personal expression in his surroundings. He was a photographer who changed his opinions. At first, he was inspired by naturalistic French painting, arguing for "naturalistic" photography. Consequently, he took photographs in sharp focus and recorded country life. Well-known where I grew up, his first album of 40 platinum prints entitled Life and Landscape on the Norfolk Broads was published in 1886. However, he soon became discontented with the work he was producing. He argued that the human eye did not render everything in sharp focus. Therefore, emphasizing all objects in a photograph with equal sharpness was wrong.

Inspired partly by Impressionism, he moved on and experimented with soft focus, endeavoring to match a photograph to what his eye saw. But, like many artists, he remained discontented with what he could achieve. Nevertheless, his approach created a big rift between him and the photographic establishment of the time.

During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Pictorialism was still influential, but Modernism, which became dominant with the advent of the First World War, made photography a means of precisely recording the world once again, and the Pictorial aesthetic took second place. Modernism laid the groundwork for many subsequent photographic styles and movements, including street, documentary, wildlife, and photojournalism.

Key figures in the Modernist movement included the West Coast photographers Edward Weston and Ansel Adams, who were part of the f/64 group. Meanwhile, Henri Cartier-Bresson and Robert Capa, two of the founders of Magnum Photos, also took a realist approach to photography. They concentrated on sharp focus with clear detail, and their works highlighted the inherent beauty of the subject matter itself. That is opposed to the Pictorial approach of showing the photograph's beauty; it's possible to have a beautiful picture of an unbeautiful subject.

Nevertheless, Pictorialism remained prominent and became more popular again between the wars. Alvin Langdon Coburn was known for his innovative techniques and abstract photography, and Imogen Cunningham engaged with Pictorialism with work including botanical photography and industrial landscapes. Meanwhile, Adolf de Meyer was celebrated for his elegant and stylized fashion photographs, and Gertrude Käsebier created portraits and images depicting motherhood. Also, Robert Demachy is remembered for his gum bichromate prints and influential writings on Pictorialism.

The start of the New Vision Movement of the 1950s and '60s saw an exploration of meditative abstract imagery that was seen as a means of self-discovery. Then, in the late 20th century, Post-modernism rejected the Modernist approach, concentrating on a photo's selective and constructive nature. Post-modernist photographers included Sherrie Levine, Anne Zahalka, Richard Prince, Cindy Sherman, and Robyn Stacey.

The Big Swing in the Digital Age

Thus, photography continues swinging back and forth between the precision of science and the expression of art. On one hand, some try to create as accurate a record as possible. Meanwhile, others prefer to emphasize the art and creativity of the picture.

With the advent of digital photography, the swing was very much toward the technical, a move advocated by the big camera companies and their marketing departments. For example, they sold the idea that customers should want more and more pixels. Consequently, the uneducated novice photographers bought into the myth that having more pixels is always better. Similarly, some sold the idea that the badly named “full frame” camera was the only type a serious photographer could use; another myth that has been debunked.

The Rebels Fighting the Trend

A couple of companies, namely Fujifilm and OM System (formerly Olympus), take a different course. Besides having excellent technical attributes in their cameras and lenses, they provide a far wider range of creative functions suited to the creative photographer. Fujifilm has excellent film simulations, and OM System has the widest range of all computational photography options. Moreover, their art filters give unusual results that enable photographers to express themselves in unique and original ways. Like all contemporary cameras, they are also capable of producing pin-sharp images.

Likewise, editing software gives easier access to creative effects. These can be adopted and adapted by the photographer. Using them is intuitive, and they don’t require the technical skills needed with the early, complex digital editing programs like Photoshop. I am especially thinking about ON1 Photo Raw, where novice photographers who want a gentler learning curve can quickly get to grips with developing and editing images. Similarly, DxO Photolab produces excellent technically precise results, but it also has an enormous range of film emulations and effects.

Despite being easy to grasp, both programs have the potential for in-depth, advanced image processing. That democratization of photography must be a good thing because the increased accessibility breaks away from the elitism that pervades all art.

Where Next?

Is the pendulum swinging from technically precise photographs that record an event to more expressive and artistic images? I suspect that is the case. I see many more creative photos among the technically precise shots that still dominate than I did a decade ago. There will always be a call for sharp, clean images, especially for advertising or creating catalog images. Furthermore, great satisfaction comes from pressing the shutter and knowing you have a near-perfect shot better than the last. However, there is also room for people to become more inventive and experiment with creative styles. Therefore, perhaps the biggest challenge is finding how to make those two meet in the middle and sit side by side.

Which is most important to you? Are you more driven to achieve precise results? Does every photo have to be pin-sharp in all the right places? Or are you more inclined to experiment and push the boundaries of photography? It would be great to hear your opinions in the comments.