Photographers tend to have passionate opinions about their craft, and some of those opinions can spark heated debates. Certain topics, though, repeatedly surface in the photography world, leading to complaints that can feel redundant.
Coming to you from Dee Rosa Photo, this fun video ranks the top 10 most annoying complaints that photographers tend to make. One of the top offenders is the endless debate over film versus digital. The problem isn’t necessarily about which is better, but rather how people allow the medium to define their personality. In the end, it’s the image that matters, not the tool. Complaining about film being “cooler” or digital being “easier” just misses the point. You should focus on the image’s impact rather than the process behind it.
Another major topic is megapixels. People often fixate on the number of megapixels in a camera, claiming that more equals better. But, as the video points out, even cameras from the early digital age with much lower megapixel counts could produce large, high-quality prints. The fixation on megapixels shows a lack of understanding about what really affects print quality. Most modern cameras, even those considered “low” in megapixels by today’s standards, are more than capable of handling professional work.
Sharpness is another overhyped factor that the video addresses. Sure, lens sharpness can matter in certain cases, but it’s far from the most important aspect of an image. Composition, lighting, and subject matter far outweigh the importance of sharpness. In fact, if the composition is lacking, no amount of sharpness can save a bad photo. Many people get caught up in the technical aspects of photography, but neglect the artistic side, which is where true impact comes from. Those are just a few of the topics, so check out the video above for the full rundown from Rosa.
The weirdest disagreement is with dynamic range. That is an area that represents a large limitation of modern sensors, as well as film, as even with perfect exposure, unless you have full control over the lighting, odds are, the scene has a far wider luminance range than the dynamic range of the camera sensor, thus there will almost always be a compromise with current tech. With that in mind, a sensor and ADC that will do 15 stops of dynamic range, will do noticeably better than one that does 12 stops of dynamic range.
Strange that he is against concerns about megapixels. Modern CMOS sensors are still lacking in overall resolution. Without going to insanely astronomical price markups, on average the best most people will get is 2024, is around 100 megapixels, while what people likely want is something in the 400+ megapixel range. Beyond that, pixel shift technology is not a good solution as it requires fractions of a pixel shifts in order to get sufficient luminance and chroma samples, and with such subtle movements, even locked to a good tripod, often times you will still have some artifacts unless you are doing it in the basement or other extremely stable location (commonly seen in reviews of many modern ILC cameras where the high res mode is tested in a studio setting).
At the end of the day, the topics you point out mean nothing in most scenarios in the real world, in actual and practical usage.
I recently posted some images I took back in 2013 with my Sony NEX-5N and SLT-A77V. If one were to critique, I highly doubt anyone is going to say, "Dude. Dude. Had you only had 1 or 2 stops more dynamic range…."
https://fstoppers.com/comment/765997
--- "Modern CMOS sensors are still lacking in overall resolution…"
--- "on average the best most people will get is 2024, is around 100 megapixels, while what people likely want is something in the 400+ megapixel range."
Really? You think people likely will want 400+ megapixels? That's going to be a waste for most people. Even 100mps is niche. And, they are 100-200 megs in file size. Some have reported it slows down their editing/exporting. I seriously doubt a 400-800 meg file is going to be of any practical use for most people.
Odds are, people want multiple orders of magnitude more. The golden age of camera sensor resolution and lens resolving capability, will be when people can pixel peep to this extent with photos taken with a camera.
No, that's just a hypertheoretical hyperbole.
I completely agree with him! It's so refreshing to hear someone call out all the nonsense. The best camera is always the one you have and know how to use. I picked up *Helmut Newton Polaroids* a few months ago, and after going through his work, shot with a pretty bad camera—you realize it all boils down to knowledge and creativity. It’s about understanding light, exposure, framing, and subject matter. Nothing is left to chance. Meanwhile, today’s so-called "photographers" might drop $10K on gear, only to take subpar photos and rely on AI tools to compensate for their lack of skills.
Spot on.
I suspect most of these cashed-up pixel peepers are not commercial/professional image makers, but rather a hobbyist/amateur seeking to emulate what they see professionals doing online.
Many will have their sense of self worth and public image dependent on being seen with/ or known to be in possession of whatever cameras and lenses have the best reviews and costed out of the reach of the average income earner with a mortage and family to provide for.
People who buy expensive cameras and then talk about the color science kind of baffle me. I thought we were all shooting raw and using (LR/Capture one/any old raw editor of choice) to get the exact colors we like. Are people shooting jpg with 2000 dollar cameras?
Well, that WAS a bit of a whinge, but I found myself agreeing with most of it so actually stayed to the end.
My main camera is the Nikon Z50, no IBIS, I wish it had sensor cleaning, but the camera does what I want. Colour, dynamic range, noise, etc all great. The only problem with the camera is its damned user.