Is connectivity more important than image quality?
Sep 25, 2016
Udi Tirosh
Udi Tirosh is an entrepreneur, photography inventor, journalist, educator, and writer based in Israel. With over 25 years of experience in the photo-video industry, Udi has built and sold several photography-related brands. Udi has a double degree in mass media communications and computer science.
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In this photokina we’ve seen most camera makers making it bigger and better. But not necessarily faster. The new Fuji GFX medium format may be the prime example of that. Both camera makers and lens makers are putting full focus on developing features that relate to photos hard qualities: dynamic range, more megapixels, low light performance. But is this what their customers want?
Haje Jan Kamps over at Techcrunch suggests that workflow speed may be more important to photography consumers than almost anything else. As an example he shows the image above taken by our own John Aldred. Rather than downloading the photo from the card, processing it and uploading, John just snapped an image of the LCD so he can get it out there fast enough.
Cameras are getting measurably better all the time, but better image quality is only half the battle. Arguably, cameras are ‘good enough’ now — that would explain why SLR owners are replacing their cameras with greater intervals than they used to at the dawn of digital SLR technology — but the rest of the taking photos and sharing experience is stuck in a bygone era.
More crucially, perhaps, is that the population using dedicated cameras are changing faster than the camera manufacturers are adopting to the change…
… Apple even gave one of the iPhone 7 Plus phones to a NFL photographer ahead of launch to show what it can do. Why? It isn’t down to the image quality, I’ll tell you that much – an iPhone is no match for a full-frame SLR with a 600mm lens on a football field. But it has other advantages. Being able to tweet out a play seconds after it happened is, in some circles, more important than the artistic love that goes into crafting an amazing sports photo.
The bigger picture here is the shift that has been happening in photography over the past decade. People aren’t opposed to high-quality photography, but if you look at how most people create and consume photographic content, there’s a huge change…
…On holiday, people are more likely to bring an SLR or advanced compact camera, but those photos typically get downloaded, edited, and shared after you get home. Or, more realistically, the photos are taken, copied onto a hard disk and then never looked at again. As more and more of us are living our lives on the pulse of what’s happening in the lives of others, even a few weeks of delay is too much: “Hey, I thought Eddie was in France last month, why is he posting pictures now?”
I think Haje presents a valid point. Look at the amount of photos you have taken over the last several months. How many of those were taken via a smart device and immediately shared?
Of course, this does not apply to everyone, and Haje points out the exception. Photographers who are shooting art or dedicated imagery that should stand the test of time, or be used is some commercial ways. Those, of course, have no sense of urgency, but do these photographers need better cameras? I am not sure. Their cameras may already have all the megapixels and dynamic range they need. Now it’s just a matter of making cameras faster for the rest of us.
For the full argument, head over to Haje’s post on techcrunch.
Udi Tirosh
Udi Tirosh is an entrepreneur, photography inventor, journalist, educator, and writer based in Israel. With over 25 years of experience in the photo-video industry, Udi has built and sold several photography-related brands. Udi has a double degree in mass media communications and computer science.
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48 responses to “Is connectivity more important than image quality?”
I connect my SLR to my Android phone. Either directly with a cable or, if it’s more than a few pictures, I just plug an SD card reader into my phone and copy the files onto my phone. If I run low on space I just plug another SD card in my phone.
Well OK, one thing I’d love here is that if I could save raws as DNG files. That’d even speed up my process, because this CR2 to DNG software that I have on my phone is rather unstable, and just another cumber stone. Snapseed can work with DNGs.
Sometimes. But why would those users buy a camera instead of a cellphone?
For me, which speeds up the workflow is the image quality. Fine JPEG, better!
To publish or share, as said 孟恬, a card reader solves perfectly.
Well, one can choose the size/quality/compression depending on circumstances and goals… and even choose to shoot in “RAW+JPEG” mode if not sure… IMHO you don’t really have to make that choice when buying the camera neither than while shooting… ;-)
Good point seeing as a lot of images are only ever going to be viewed on a smartphone or pad.
Well, one can choose the size/quality/compression depending on circumstances and goals… and even choose to shoot in “RAW+JPEG” mode if not sure… IMHO you don’t really have to make that choice when buying the camera neither than while shooting…
Well, one can choose the size/quality/compression depending on circumstances and goals… and even choose to shoot in “RAW+JPEG” mode if not sure… IMHO you don’t really have to make that choice when buying the camera neither than while shooting… ;-)
If one owns a $6,000 Canon 1Dx II, one is not going to be using that camera to post photos of their lunch or coffee to Instagram. The person who owns a 1Dx II is more likely to use it to shoot action sports or in low light situations; unless that person is more interested in owning a 1Dx II as a status symbol.
I read Jeff Cable’s blog of him covering the 2016 Olympics in Rio. He covered the Olympics for a media agency. For many of the sports, the photographer section for the sports venues have Ethernet connections; the 1Dx II has an Ethernet port. There was one venue where WiFi would have been problematic, the rowing event; Jeff managed to get on an observer boat and I imagine that in covering the race, WiFi stations would go out of range and others would come in range.
For those sports that demand roving photographers, such as NFL games, the use of ethernet cables along the sidelines would be a safety hazard.
It all depends on what you want to do with your images. If speed is so important (as for sports shots, and so many tied to Instagram, Facebook, etc.) then by all means focus on connectivity. But it often makes little sense to use a 42-Mpix camera just to post to the web. If I’m interesting in printing my images — which is often the case — then image quality rates much higher on my list than connectivity.
Some DSLR camera makers don’t put GPS and Wi-Fi directly into cameras, but sell them as bulky and expensive external devices – it is weird, in time when every cheap phone already has it. You don’t have to sacrifice image quality for connectivity.
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For the kind of work I do I only see Wifi, NFC and Bluetooth as battery drainers that I don’t have use for, I understand certain fields in photography do require to be able to send the file from the camera ASAP (press) though.
I would use wifi on my 6D & 70D a lot more if the interface weren’t so clunky. Hiring a couple of bright young coders could make a world of difference here.