Admiring Sony’s new NEX-7 but easily resisting the urge

Sony announced a pile of new digital cameras yesterday. I was quite pleased to hear about them, despite the fact that I have no immediate plans to buy one. As I’ve shared here, I’m very happy with my Sony NEX-5 compact interchangeable lens camera. I like having a cam that’s the size of an advanced point-and-shoot, but with a dSLR-sized sensor that delivers better overall quality, and much better low light performance without a flash.

Sony announced a high-end NEX camera, a “prosumer” version if you will, called the NEX-7. I must admit that I do have a little bit of camera lust because it sports a very high resolution 25 megapixel sensor, along with an actual electronic viewfinder, inside a body a little bit bigger than my NEX-5. However, I don’t really know what I’d do with 25 megapixels, since that kind of resolution is mostly useful for very large prints, which I don’t make.

More importantly, I just don’t need a new camera, and I’m resistant to the perpetual upgrade mentality that our contemporary consumer electronics culture perpetuates. Not a single thing about my NEX-5 has changed since Tuesday, the day before the NEX-7 was announced. Like all tools, there are little niggles that bug me about the NEX-5 that might be better on the NEX-7. But I honestly can’t think of one concrete way in which my photography would improve if I only replaced my NEX-5 with the NEX-7.

There’s a oft-repeated adage in photography that “it’s the photographer, not the camera.” (Or as photography blogger & gadfly Ken Rockwell puts it, “it’s not about your camera.”) In general terms, I most certainly agree. An experienced photographer knows a camera well enough to know how to get the picture he needs from it. Many great cameras have been used to take crappy, or just mundane, photos.

An experienced photographer also knows when a particular tool is not right for the job. But this caveat has more to do with significant differences than minor upgrades. For instance, a 110 film camera is likely an inferior choice to shoot a photo for a billboard as compared to a medium-format camera with a much larger negative. That’s a fairly extreme example, but the idea should be clear.

Looking at the NEX-7, even though there seem to be operational improvements–like the addition of two customizable control dials–that may make it easier to control the camera, I can’t say that will necessarily result in better photographs than what I’m taking now. Just because I might want it doesn’t necessarily mean I need it, or that it will even be that much of a real improvement in my actual photography. My photography will improve more if I just go out and thoughtfully shoot more photos than if I save up for or buy a new camera instead.

So then, why do I care about the NEX-7? Frankly, I’m glad to know that Sony seems to be committed to further developing the NEX line of cameras. Along with the 7 Sony also announced three new E-mount lenses that fit the NEXes. Despite the fact that many photographers upgrade cameras with every change of season, for me a digital camera is not an insignificant purchase. I like a camera body to last me years, not months. Therefore I would prefer not to feel like someone who purchased a brand new $500 HP Touchpad a month ago, only to see the whole product line now discontinued and clearance priced at 99 bucks.

Even if Sony did abandon the NEX line it wouldn’t be the end of the world. My camera and lenses would still work, and I don’t really need to buy that many more lenses or accessories. Nevertheless, I am glad to know that there’s a good chance that in five years or more Sony will have an up-to-date NEX model camera available should I need to replace mine or upgrade.

I will continue shooting with my NEX-5, feeling just a little more secure that my favorite little camera isn’t an orphan.

Speaking of my NEX-5, I recently purchased a cheap and fun little lens that easily adapts to the NEX, and that won’t work with a bigger dSLR. That will be the subject of my next photography post.

Film’s not dead, either

Oh, no. I’m not ready to give up on the anti-planned-obsolescence rant just yet…

The world of photography has been much less chaotic than the worlds of audio and video over the last century. There’s really only been one significant technological disruption–from film to digital. Yes, there have been multiple formats of film over the century, but they mostly boil down to differences in size. But it is nevertheless the case that you can still buy new film for the vast majority of film cameras made since 1909.

Digital, of course, was supposed to be the death knell of film, but things didn’t quite work out that way. Instead, digital photography sparked new public interested in photography as an art and hobby, which ended up leading a lot of folks back to film. Like the vinyl LP vs. CD debate, there are plenty of passionate photographers ready to argue that one or the other is inherently superior. As one of those people who never took a strong interest in photography until getting my first digital camera, my perspective is that is has less to do with better than different–qualitatively different.

Still, the film business isn’t at all like it was a decade ago, when digital cameras were $1000+ investments yielding the kind of resolution you now get from a $10 keychain digicam from the drugstore. But there still is a film business.

The Rochester, NY Democrat and Chronicle recently published a story about a local business you might have heard of, that’s still hanging on to the film business: Kodak. The article quotes Kodak’s marketing manager for professional film, Scott R. DiSabato:

“We call it the ‘and’ world,” DiSabato said. “We know the professional use will be significant enough the next couple years, we’ll get the investment (into those film lines) back.”

In fact, Kodak introduced a new color film formulation this past year, a time when film still makes up a third of the company’s gross revenue.

Again, I’m not arguing against technological innovation. I have nothing against digital cameras, and I own several. I also own a pile of film cameras (that I picked up for next to nothing). I’m just pointing out again that obsolescence is a business process and a social process. That is, there’s nothing inherent in film that should make it obsolete, so much as that the combination of the need to find new products to sell, the fact that some of these new products actually do offer new and significant benefits and a social shift to embrace that new technology.

The social element is important–Kodak is still making and selling film because people are buying it and using it. They’re finding value in it, whether it’s due to nostalgia, the belief that it is superior to digital, an affinity for film’s aesthetics, or simply because using disposable film cameras when you need them makes more sense than dumping several hundred bucks into a digital cam.

If people choose not to accept the supposed inevitability of obsolescence in significant numbers, then we can interfere with that process. Moreso than with VHS videotape, film has a certain unavoidable market dynamic — someone has to manufacture the film stock and developing chemicals if the medium is to stay alive. I’m certain that the medium can survive even with smaller “boutique” manufacturing, but film’s not something the vast majority of people are going to be able to make at home. So a certain critical mass of buyers and users has to be maintained to keep film viable as a non-obsolete, if niche, technology.

Videotape, on the other hand, is reuseable. Certainly if all manufacture were to stop today eventually the tapes in use now would eventually wear out. But the true death of the medium would come more slowly than if film were to be no longer manufactured.

As (electronic and chemical) media makers we are still dependent on a consumer economy, but that doesn’t mean we are utterly subject to its whims, nor without feedback mechanism. We do not have to buy up every new so-called innovation because it’s supposed to be better, nor do we have to abandon a technique, method, medium or tool just because the industry, press or blogosphere now declares it dead. In fact, fantastic personal innovation, ingenuity and creativity can be sparked in the continued embrace, or reembrace of a reportedly obsolete technology. Whether it’s audiocassette, VHS, film, vinyl LP, laserdisc, minidsc, 8-track or daguerreotype, it’s not dead for you until you don’t want to use it any longer.

Thanks to Ken Rockwell, the most entertaining photography writer on the internet, for pointing me to the Kodak article. For more about practical, technological and qualitative strengths of film, read Ken’s essay, “Why We Love Film.”