My Photography prophecies. What will photography be like in 5 years from now.

avatar
(Edited)

There was a time when i though my 12Mpx Nikon D3s is a pinnacle of technology (and it surely was for some time). When we "the real photographers" wanted a good laugh, we would talk about mirrorless cameras. And make fun of those telling that mirrorless cameras hold the future.

I have started this article after playing with color grading on an older image (taken with the same mirrorless camera i was making fun of) while trying to achieve that cinematic look and appreciating it's dynamic range and how much detail and color information you can pull from a single raw file.

Color graded (click to enlarge)
DSC03392.jpg

Original (click to enlarge)
DSC03392or.jpg

And then it naturally became a longer post where i'd like to laugh again. This time at myself.

After some time of shooting Nikon i drifted away from photography, sold my Nikon body and whole set of expensive heavy lenses (fast 1.4G 50mm, 70-200 2.8 VRII zoom) thinking that i had enough and i am done with photography. The total cost of those three pieces when new was about 8k EUR and i got in a range of 2.5k after selling it (good lenses tend to hold the price pretty well if you look after them).

As time went by and i was preparing to spend a winter in Tenerife i felt an urge to have some sort of a camera. What should i buy? Ofc something not too crazy but some piece that would not hurt my "professional" dignity i thought. I sold some steem (it was trading 8 buck per steem back then i guess) and got myself Sony A7RII + 55 Zeiss lens. Quite a standard setup for any aspiring beginner. I might save on camera body since they tend to outdate so fast but i'd rather buy fewer lenses. The ones i buy must be primes (ones that do not zoom in and out), fast and sharp.

The first time i pulled out 48Mpx raw into photoshop i was simply speechless. The difference of detail, color and luminosity information i could pull from highlights and shadows was so great that my jaw dropped. The amount of detail was so great that my older monitor simply could not handle all the detail. The error at which i could overexpose and underexpose moved to both directions by at least two stops.

First Prophecy: You will not need to set your camera exposure in the future

Then i started zooming in on some shots... the more i zoomed the more i was stoned. It's 55mm lens, by some criteria the most usual portrait lens, that is not macro and only focuses at a distance of ~30 centimeters from a subject and not closer. Ok! Who cares! It's 48Mpx i will never need a macro lense (well this statement is not yet true to this day but trust me it will be for somebody reading this article in some 5 years).

Full size (click to enlarge)
Flower yellow_1.jpg

100% crop (click to enlarge)
Flower yellow_1crop.jpg

Ok, i thought, i will not need a macro probably but i will definitely will need some zoom lens. I can not go out and do some street chick photography and be a weirdo at a safe distance without a zoom lens!

Wait or can i? Let me try to photograph this menu of a cafe on the right for my future reference (those pesky tourists always get into the shot...).

What do they serve for starters? (click to enlarge)
Tenerife day 4_14.jpg

Oooops! Excuse me. It accidentally slipped while cropping (honestly). (click to enlarge)
Tenerife day 4_15.jpg

Second Prophecy: You will only need one camera lense in the future

Things tend to get even crazier when you stitch six or eight 48Mpx frames into a single panorama shot. The files start to get bigger than most computer games were when i was a student so start stacking up hard drives.

Had to reduce the size four times and drop down compression quality to even upload it. (click to enlarge)
Untitled_Panorama2small.jpg

I bet you did not even see that couple making out on a back seat of their car in the first shot lol
And it really is just a crop from the image above.
(click to enlarge)
Untitled_Panoramacrop.jpg

Third Prophecy: You will not need to focus in the future.

While i have no examples to illustrate this last prophecy since on Sony A7RII you still do need to focus before releasing the shutter (autofocus is extremely accurate and fast by the way) there are already developments with focus stacking in real time where you just shoot an image and select your focus point in post production. Anywhere on the image... How dope is that :)

So summarizing i declare. In the future you will have one camera and a lens (probably built in like one in your smartphone) that you just point and shoot on auto mode and select your exposure, focus point, zoom level in post production. Professional photographers as such will go extinct but there will be creatives that will be working on data recorded by the device and decide all creative aspects of the image. Composition, focusing, color correction and framing will all be done in post and i would not be surprised that it will be done by or with the help of AI.

Damn the future seems so dull and boring already.....

Hope you had some fun reading :) Stay safe and be creative while you are allowed to!

Join Studio Photography Community Here



0
0
0.000
6 comments
avatar

Superb visual impact, excellent work David ! Congrats

0
0
0.000
avatar

Thanks a lot. it's always nice to make some kind of impact :)

0
0
0.000
avatar

Lol... I enjoyed this! :)

0
0
0.000
avatar

Glad to hear dear, tried my best to be a funny guy, since i am grumpy in real life lol

0
0
0.000
avatar

You? Grumpy?? Nahhhh... :) You're always full of smiles.... :D

0
0
0.000