How a Photographer and an Architect Spent a Year Building the World’s Best Camera Grip
#equipment #interviews #news #cameragrip #edpalisoc #he3grip #heliumdesignlab #hughbrownstone #leica #leicaq3
We Live in the Era of Post-Peak Camera Demand… So What’s Next?
In 2020, the global camera industry sold roughly one-eighth the number of cameras it did at its peak in 2008: 15 million units for CIPA companies versus 120 million just 12 years earlier.
Faced with an existential crisis, camera companies had no choice but to try innovating their way out of it. Sure enough: cameras have gotten better and better -- it’s crazy how much better -- but has it occurred to you (as it has to me) that camera prices have risen at an even faster rate?
Maybe not. You might argue that it’s just the opposite.
Sony’s $3,000, 61-megapixel Alpha 7R IVa, for example, has almost 50% more megapixels than the $2,300, 42-megapixel Alpha 7R III, yet it only costs 30% more. Leica’s $9,000, 41-megapixel black chrome M10-R is $1,200 more than the $7,800 M10-P -- but for that 15% premium, you get 71% more megapixels.
But you know where I’m going with this, right?
These are not valid measures of comparative value. Do the latest whiz-bang cameras give us a proportionally higher number of keepers, a proportionally richer viewing experience, or make us proportionally better photographers? Do they even give us what we actually want?
What the statistics tell us is this: for the vast majority of us, smartphones will, at normal fields of view, print sizes, and viewing distances, give us infinitely better images than our dedicated cameras. At least, proportionally speaking -- because our smartphone cameras are essentially free -- and surprisingly good.
That is, if we set aside our prejudices and we really learn how to use them.
The picture above was shot on the essentially free iPhone 11 Pro camera, and the picture below is shot on the $13,000 Fujifilm GFX 100 with 32-64/4 combination.
You still can’t do this with a smartphone (Sony a7S III with Tamron 150-500). You can do this, and it’s better at normal image size and viewing distance -- with far less futzing -- than dedicated cameras.
One section of the video above was shot back in 2019 before the pandemic and I ponder these questions with iPhone photographer Cliff Pickett as we wander the streets of New York. The kicker? The entire thing was filmed by the OTHER half of Three Blind Men & An Elephant, my wife, partner, camera op, and gimbal op Claudia, walking backward the entire time, on an iPhone X mounted on an OSMO Mobile 2 gimbal.
_About the author: Hugh Brownstone is a photographer, writer, educator, filmmaker, and YouTuber. His book "Streets of New York" was published in 2020. He is the founder and owner of "Three Blind Men and An Elephant Productions" and he and his wife Claudia are the producers of the documentary web series Mariner East and co-lead their Streets of New York workshops. You can learn more about them at here. You can find Hugh on Instagram and YouTube. _
Image credits: Featured image -- incidently shot on a smartphone -- was licensed via Depositphotos.
#editorial #equipment #cameras #hughbrownstone #iphone #iphonephotography #smartphonecamera #smartphonephotography #smartphones
As a Black and White Photographer, Why Are My Latest Photos in Color?
Some photographers are known for their black and white work (think Ansel Adams, Henrí Cartier-Bresson, Robert Frank, or Sebãstio Salgado) – while others are known for their use of color (think Ernst Haas, Joel Meyerowitz, Martin Paar, or Steve McCurry). Do you have a preference? If so, do you know why?
I’ve been thinking about this as I look back across my own creative output over the past 12 months. I am first and foremost a street photographer -- Joel Meyerowitz once told me that I was a portrait photographer who uses the street as his studio -- but I am also a black and white photographer.
And yet, not completely.
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In my book "Streets of New York" (first published in March, 2020), 53 of the 69 images in it are indeed black and white. I love black and white photography -- but 16 other images I chose to include were in color. Recently, though, that proportion has inverted altogether: 23 of the 35 latest photographs I’ve posted on Instagram have been color.
What’s happening to me? I already know why I love to shoot street, and I know that hasn’t changed.
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Beyond the fact that it is the home of my birth, every single time Claudia and I engage with the denizens of New York City, I am reassured that the world is not a uniformly terrible place. Unlike Bruce Gilden or Mark Cohen, I almost always ask the people I photograph for their permission. Once we get to "yes," a moment of casual intimacy is created in which we both participate: we create an image together.
I think the pandemic has played a significant role in the changing boundary between my black and white and color work. Like so many of us, it has been a blow to my psyche.
Now, however (at least for some of us; for too many of us not yet), it’s as if the world is slowly exiting a period of darkness and entering the light, and I’m responding in kind, at least metaphorically: it’s much harder to see color in the dark. It is a joy to see it now.
I do wonder if evolutionary biology just might play a role, too, perhaps as a faint genetic memory each of us retains of an actual exit from darkness to the light. After all, many mammals evolved from nocturnal to diurnal creatures after the sudden extinction of the dinosaurs: they could finally wander out during daylight without becoming lunch meat for the apex predators of the era. This is why only 6% of our photoreceptors are cones (what we might think of as color vision) while the rest are the biologically older rods (which are much more sensitive in low light and therefore we might think of as our black and white vision).
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As for why black and white photography in the first place? For me, it’s a function first and foremost of the time in which I grew up, which was the mid-20th century. From the photographers I studied to the cost and speed of color film versus the black and white film I chose instead to shoot, develop, and print in my own darkroom, my sensibilities and how I see were set then. I wonder if black and white will reassert its primacy for me in the months ahead, or if instead, this is a more permanent change.
I wonder: am I evolving?
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_About the author: Hugh Brownstone is a photographer, writer, educator, filmmaker, and YouTuber. His book "Streets of New York" was published in 2020. He is the founder and owner of "Three Blind Men and An Elephant Productions" and he and his wife Claudia are the producers of the documentary web series Mariner East and co-lead their Streets of New York workshops. You can learn more about them at here. You can find Hugh on Instagram and YouTube. _
#culture #editorial #blackandwhite #blackandwhitephotography #covid19 #covid19experience #covid19pandemic #hughbrownstone #streetphotography
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