u0421793I used to be a professional photographer in the mid 80s after art college (in which I spent almost all the time in the darkroom but actually studied industrial design / product design). I worked with a photographers that did industrial / commercial photography, our cameras were sheet film, with a couple of hasselblads as the ‘small’ portable cameras. 135 film was not taken seriously, and called the ‘miniature’ format, for personal or amateur use (mine was my Olympus OM-1). Myself and one of the directors had a liking for Mamiya TLRs, as our personal rollfilm cameras (the other liked his Hasselblad 500, the work one).
I spent all my time doing experiments in the darkroom. So, I know my shit.
Since then, I’ve been through a range of 135 film cams (eg Nikon F4 and F801) and then in this century, an long adventure of digital, and also more film cams (which by then were ‘vintage’ (or at least very cheap)) (in my opinion the peak 135 film cam was the Olympus iS-3000, although mine’s broken).
Anyway, the point is: I can’t remember the last time I shot digital in RAW. I only shoot jpeg now. The cameras I have are all on autofocus, all on autoexposure. I have no interest in ‘full frame’ digital, the biggest sensor I have is the Nikon Z30 (or the older Sony NEX-3n, which is starting to fail). I would happily have a micro four thirds as my main cam but I’ve got APS-C (which should be called half-frame, as it basically is, turned sideways), although I use my ancient flakey Fujifilm X10 a lot too as it’s smaller.
But increasingly I’m liking my iPhone 17 Pro as a camera. So what, I like it.
In my opinion, in a hundred years or so, people will be incredulous or at least fail to understand why on earth anyone would want a camera bigger than your own eye.
(Yes, there’s a reason, look at very large format pinhole cams for example, but that’s not normal).
I spent all my time doing experiments in the darkroom. So, I know my shit.
Since then, I’ve been through a range of 135 film cams (eg Nikon F4 and F801) and then in this century, an long adventure of digital, and also more film cams (which by then were ‘vintage’ (or at least very cheap)) (in my opinion the peak 135 film cam was the Olympus iS-3000, although mine’s broken).
Anyway, the point is: I can’t remember the last time I shot digital in RAW. I only shoot jpeg now. The cameras I have are all on autofocus, all on autoexposure. I have no interest in ‘full frame’ digital, the biggest sensor I have is the Nikon Z30 (or the older Sony NEX-3n, which is starting to fail). I would happily have a micro four thirds as my main cam but I’ve got APS-C (which should be called half-frame, as it basically is, turned sideways), although I use my ancient flakey Fujifilm X10 a lot too as it’s smaller.
But increasingly I’m liking my iPhone 17 Pro as a camera. So what, I like it.
In my opinion, in a hundred years or so, people will be incredulous or at least fail to understand why on earth anyone would want a camera bigger than your own eye.
(Yes, there’s a reason, look at very large format pinhole cams for example, but that’s not normal).
Philip Bragg