freelance paradigm

I was having a very interesting conversation the other day. A fellow photographer and I came to the conclusion that never in the history of human kind such good photos were produced as they are now. The reason is that we simply have amazing ISO speeds (check out Nikon D3 or Canon 5d mkII), but most of all; we shoot so many of photos that the final selection is really amazing. We also practice more; sometimes I take hundreds and hundreds of photos just to test new aproaches in composition, depth of field, light... I could never aford that on film.

And in a way, we are not quite there yet, because many of those reasons can backfire. I remain suspicious about the dynamic range of digital technology (versus film) and it's color potential. Because the film was expensive, people took more preparation to really make it work well. I knew and argued all that, but it wasn't untill today that I was really shocked by seing this:



This was made in 1942! 1942! What an amazing sharpness and detail! More than 60 years after, with all that digital revolutin, only a handful of professional cameras can produce this kind of quality. It really blew me off! So is it really that we are so much better?

Perhaps we are. Maybe the photographers got better, but the rush in which we work is often so hard on us that it is often impossible to prepare well and produce the top quality images. Even cameras are getting faster and faster to meet those needs, but more care should be devoted to dynamic range, where film still rocks. Even after 60 years.


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This and many other images can be now found on Flickr Commons. What a great project!!!