Our Photographic Contradiction
I bought a ten-year old camera today.
Under most circumstances an occasion such as this would pass without mention in light of my adulterous lust for a good eBay auction. It’s an open secret that towards the tattered end of my ever lengthening list of personal character flaws is a compulsory addiction to the procurement of ancient photographic spice.
A decade-old camera would normally be considered damn near brand new when compared to the other cameratics I tend to gravitate towards but this time is different. Today, I bought a ten-year old digital camera.
Sweet God. Gnashing of teeth. Men weep openly in the streets. Mothers clutch their children tight to their bosoms as rivers boil and the skies break open with the deafening thunder of 1,000 unicorns.
Yes, dear friends, it’s true. I’m not proud…nor am I ashamed over the calculated blasphemy of such a criminal act. The consequences of my actions I face alone. I won’t lie, in the circles I travel in I stand at mortal hazard of immediate castration, partial disembowelment, the Alberta Goblin Torture or worse — they bring out the leeches.
I tell you all this not out of shear audacity or blind courage but rather to share a sweeping revelation. It is a revelation not about the camera itself (although you can bet you’ll hear about it eventually), no no — it’s more than that: it is the growing enigma of creative and expressive contradiction which seems to occupy quiet corners within the hearts of many a photo maker these days; one that was brought into sharp relief by my own desire to purchase a camera that, by all normal standards, is well past its prime.
Apart from being over ten years old, the camera sports a cropped image sensor*; a sensor slinging a mere 16 megapixels.
Yes. That’s right. This is an APS-C sensor with a megapixel count fractional to many modern smartphone cameras.
It’s this sensor…this old, stupidly low resolution (relatively) sensor…that made me want the camera in the first place — hence the illumination of our present contradiction.
*Authors Note: Alright, it’s a Fujifilm X-Pro 1. I’ll go into obscene detail on the camera another time but I just had to tell you.
The Contradiction
We currently tread water within an unusual fishbowl of popular influence; one that seems to only grow more stagnant and unclean with each progressive installment. It’s not enough to simply work towards the true paydirt of personal and creative expression. Instead, we are persuaded to rise and fall with the shifting tides of the heaving masses on a course dictated by an unsure wind. We are expected to blindly grab for tools which have outpaced the soul of the craftsman.
What dictates the propriety of the cameras we use? In 2022, at least in the realm of digital photography, a five year old camera is considered to be bordering on outdated. After seven years many are considered obsolete. Ten years and beyond, well…let’s just say a digital cameras of that age aren’t particularly viewed with high esteem. And there lies the contradiction.
Someone working within the more professional side of modern photography shouldn’t, by popular opinion, even consider purchasing such an antiquated camera like this dusty little Fuji and yet, here I am, absolutely smitten and in love with a machine that is totally outclassed in virtually every respect by even the most budget-friendly, modern full-frame digital cameras.
So, why?
The answer is simple: I know myself.
Ah yes, Socrates was right all along.
I know what I like, I know what I don’t like, I know what I need, and I’m willing to admit all three of those things to myself.
These are highly personal self-investigations that every photographer should be able to answer to at any given moment. Yet, we sometimes find it so difficult to do so simply because our own truths don’t always fall into line with what we have grown to think is “acceptable” in terms of trending, popular photography.
— WARNING: Requisite bona fieds and greasy self-massaging imminent —
I’ve tested and professionally reviewed three medium format digital mirrorless cameras for Hasselblad. My main digital camera body is a Sony A7R MKIII. Until recently, my back up was a Canon 5D MKIII. I shoot 8x10 and 4x5 large format film and keep a stable of relatively high-end 135 SLR’s and rangefinders as well as an arsenal of medium format cameras ranging from 6x6 to 6x9. I’ve reviewed and tested dozens of lenses, filters, and tripods from a host of companies that even I can’t remember. I’ve produced video courses, three photobooks, authored two texts on photographic technique, penned over 300 articles, and literally wrote the book on Lightroom. I am a darkroom printer and militant cyanotypeist; pioneering the ‘Welch Method’ for the washing of cyanotypes printed on Japanese washi and other delicate papers.
For better or worse, I am (begrudgingly) considered by some to be an authority on this whole picture making “thing”. I also have a recipe for a pretty damn good alfredo sauce.
In short, I’ve been around.
And yet, my most true photographic enjoyment (and most expressive work) has always found me through making photographs in ways and with tools that, more often than not, stand in quiet contradiction to most everything the modern photographic world says I should be using.
…here come the leeches….
All text and images copyright 2023 by Adam Welch unless otherwise indicated