First, here is the answery bit
To make sense of photography in 2024 and beyond, we must make things easier for people. Stupid terms do not help. But I need to get over this. So, in this episode, I propose some new terms as a way forward for photography. These are terms that make sense and will help people take photos.
After this, I will get back to the important part of photography – taking photos. Yes, taking better photos is what I care about most.
The Future Of Photography – Making Sense Of It In 2024
Hi, and a very warm welcome to Episode 171 of the Photography Explained podcast. I'm your host, Rick, and in each episode, I will try to explain one photographic thing to you in plain English in less than 27 minutes (ish) without the irrelevant details. I'm a professionally qualified photographer based in England with a lifetime of photographic experience, which I share with you in my podcast.
I will not go through all 31 stupid photography terms, just a few to give you an idea of my thinking. But check out my photography website, rickmcevoyphotography.com, where I will post the whole lot with all the accompanying videos. I will do that in January 2024.
And before I forget, I need to say this - I wasn’t expecting 90 minutes ish of me correcting the world of photography. But why not, eh? These things needed saying. The photography industry needs to move on, or it will get left behind. Photography, and indeed photography technology, need to make sense and be understandable to people. As accessible as phones are.
Let’s start with ISO in my new world of photography.
ISO as a photography term is banned.
ISO is called brightness. Everyone is told to use the native ISO for their camera and that they can turn up the brightness from this setting to 1, 2, 3, 4, or whatever a camera can do without creating bad stuff to allow them to choose a faster shutter speed (see below) or a smaller aperture (see below also).
And then there can be a brightness, oh, I don’t know, extreme range, 5-10.
In old-school photography terms, starting with a native ISO of 100 as 0,
- one would be equivalent to ISO200
- two would be equivalent to ISO400
- three would be equivalent to ISO800
- four would be equivalent to ISO1600
- And five is the range where there is a risk of digital bad stuff.
Five might end up being six or seven, depending on the camera.
It is nice and simple; it works, makes sense, and does what we want it to do.
Right, that was easier than I expected.
OK – next - file formats.
- RAW – unprocessed.
- JPEG – processed.
Yes, raw files are unprocessed, and JPEG files are processed, so this makes sense.
Now for a trickier one.
Focal length/ crop factor/ effective focal length
Let's get rid of these. Then, we can look at this differently.
Standard view
- 50mm on a full-frame camera
- 75-80mm on a cropped sensor camera
- 100mm on a micro four thirds camera
And 1x is 24mm on an iPhone 15 Pro.
I know other camera types exist, but this is the main stuff covered. I apologise if I am only using the iPhone. This is what I use, but hopefully, this helps get the point over.
The problem is the difference between them. It would help if they were the same, but they are not.
The phone way makes more sense, starting with 1x. And they have now added the focal length numbers to relate it to photography with cameras.
We need to agree on what 1x is and take it from there. If 1 was 50mm on a full-frame camera, all focal lengths on all devices could relate to that. Or 10. Or 50.
It is not the number; it is the field of view, what you look at when you take a photo - if that could be the same happy days.
Or am I oversimplifying things?
The problem is that 24mm does not make sense on an iPhone – it is a number that is back fitted from 1x to relate it to cameras. 1x makes much more sense.
It’s tricky, isn’t it, but the more I think about this, the more the 1x or whatever times make sense. And to start with the standard view, i.e., how humans actually see the world, it makes sense, right? Let’s get back to how we see things.
Yes, I am happy with that. 50mm, 75/80mm on a cropped sensor camera, 100m on a micro four-thirds camera, they can all be 1. And if we bring phones in line that would be great.
What do you think, dear listener?
Sorted. Let’s move on.
Camera types
There are so many different digital cameras. Full frame cameras, cropped sensor cameras, micro four thirds cameras, mirrorless cameras, and DSLR cameras. (But no APS-C cameras, ok?)
Now, I need help with this one and what to call them. I don’t have the answer. Any thoughts?
Large and medium formats make sense because they represent the relative size of the cameras and the camera systems.
Can this be applied to these cameras? Small camera, medium camera and large camera? I am sure the camera manufacturers would not be happy with this. And it is not only the digital sensor size that differentiates these cameras.
No, I am afraid I will have to think about this one – any help, of course, is appreciated.
Exposure triangle.
The exposure triangle is meant to help show the relationship between aperture, shutter speed and ISO, but it doesn’t. If we get rid of it, will anyone notice?
And now some other terms.
- Aperture scale – 1-10. Aperture is now called lens opening size.
- Depth of field – depth of sharpness.
- Glass – banned.
- Noise - digital bad stuff. Just kidding.
- HDR – extended brightness range. Or something like that.
- Hot shoe – flash mount.
- Telephoto/ wide angle/ standard/ fisheye lens – there is no need for them now with my cunning rework of focal lengths into a scale, 1x being how we see the world.
- Viewfinder – lens?
- Street photography – I still feel guilty about this one. How about candid photography - that is what it used to be called, after all.
- Speedlite – flashgun.
- Camera shake – camera movement or movement blur. Or just bad technique!
- Stops and f/stops – banned.
- Fast lens – banned.
And that is all of them covered off nicely. I said I wasn’t going to go through them all, but in the end, I felt that I had to. To give me some closure.
I missed shutter speed. Easy fix – exposure time. Nothing else needs to change; the time is fine, as it is the time that the camera sensor is exposed to light and not the speed of the shutter.
The talky bit
Happy 2024. Happy New Year, how exciting. And I wanted to kick off with something thought-provoking.
We need to simplify photography and make it accessible to people who have started taking photos with their phones. We need to learn from the phone manufacturers and align ourselves more with them so the leap from phone to camera is much more natural.
We need to give people who take photos with their phones compelling reasons why they should want to take the next step in their photography journey and go from a phone to a camera.
I am not alone in this view, judging from the feedback to date. I have had lots of positive comments from people who think the same things as I do. So, thank you for all your valuable feedback, which is appreciated.
No, things need to change.
If we do not do this starting right now, I fear that photography will be 99.9% phones in, oh, I don’t know, ten years? Five years? It is probably more like two years, the way things are going.
Remember when the CD was the future? I haven’t played a CD in years, and I got rid of my precious collection this year when we moved house, as streaming has completely removed the need for them. My CD collection had been in a cabinet for probably ten years without being played.
The CD was the long-term data storage solution not that long ago.
Video cassette recorders, Betamax, CD players, MP3 players, record players even – think about all of them. And with the rapid progressions in technology and the digital age, things are moving more quickly than ever.
I do not want the camera to go the same way, which I fear will happen.
So we need to modernise photography.
I have sorted ISO and focal length/ crop factor once and for all. And there were some other easy wins.
- Depth of field – depth of sharpness.
- APS-C – the term is erased from history (apart from the film system from circa 1996, which is perfectly valid).
- Crop factor – gone.
- Focal length – gone.
- Mirrorless/ micro four thirds/ cropped sensor – all gone to be replaced by the word erm camera. That is the one I need to think about more: small, medium, and large cameras will never fly with the manufacturers.
- Stops, etc – banned.
- And yes, there needs to be some thought applied to the new aperture scale, which needs to correspond to the exposure time and new brightness range scales, so each step is a halving or a doubling.
- If each were 1-10, that would work nicely.
- And exposure time can be just that, but in equivalent halving and doubling steps as it is now, just called the correct thing.
- Aperture scale = relative lens opening size – the scale is 1-10 where 1 is the maximum aperture, and it goes to whatever the minimum aperture is.
- ISO is now the brightness scale – the sale is 1-10. 0 is the native ISO.
- Shutter speed is exposure time.
Blimey – that is photography fixed.
Now, one last, very significant point here – what will I do with all of this information? This thought came to me as I was writing this bit. What I need to do is this – write to the major camera manufacturers and ask them what they think. Yes, all you camera makers out there - what do you think about this?
Great idea, Rick. Let’s do that. I will let you know how I get on. Ooh, how exciting!
What if I use my phone to take photos and not a camera?
I have covered this. You are enjoying the new technologies being unleashed on us year on year. The image quality you can achieve with mobile devices gets better every year. And you don't have all that photography gear to lug around. And there is, of course, the immediateness of phones, which is important to lots of people.
Phones have been integral in the rise of digital photography, and this will not change. But as for commercial photographers, when will the point come where phones are as good as cameras? When will cameras become obsolete?
What if I use a film camera?
You carry on as you are pretty happy in your analogue world. Film photography, for me, is the antidote to computational photography. It keeps things real and natural. And I see an increasing demand for this as the tech progresses. Not everyone wants camera technology to be a significant factor in their photography.
I see film photographers increasingly sitting outside the technological advances happening around us.
My first camera was a film camera, and the fundamentals I learned about photography with my film camera still apply today.
What do I do?
I use a digital camera to take commercial photos. I specialise in real estate photography, architectural photography, and photographing buildings. I use my phone to take other stuff. And whilst I have gotten pretty impressive results with my iPhone, taking photos with a phone is not as precise as with a camera.
I was taking some internal photos with my phone, and I struggled to get the composition bang on. So the answer is to put my phone on a tripod, and then I might as well use my camera with the larger sensor and the much higher quality lens. And that is where I am. I am no further on, even with an iPhone 15 Pro.
I don’t want to see the demise of the camera, which is why I keep banging on about this stuff. I don't want cameras to be used only by an ever-diminishing number of professional photographers. And I don't want artificial intelligence to take over photography.
And thinking about it, I have yet to cover image processing in this lot - another Pandora's box for me to open!
I am not against new technology; neither am I against AI technology, but I am in favour of photography as a human thing, as an art form (but not in a pretentious way). Sure, tech gives us new tools to work with, and that is fine. We need these tools, but we need them to be understandable and accessible.
And that is why I will approach the major camera manufacturers and see their thoughts.
Some thoughts from the last episode
Well, I am done with my stupid terms and am happy that I have a way forward with what I will do with my solutions.
But me keeping banging on about this stuff isn’t going to help us with our photography. Much as I have enjoyed this series of posts, I need to get back to explaining photography stuff.
Next episode
I will let you know what the camera manufacturers say. But now I want to move on, and I want to move on to what is most important for us photographers, what matters, what is important. And that is the taking of photos, of course.
So, the next episode will be me going back to the very beginning and doing a series of episodes about getting into and improving our photography. I am returning to the essential basics – they still apply in 2024.
The next episode will be me explaining to you, dear listener, what is important in photography.
I have yet to come up with a title; changing the world of photography took more out of me than I expected!
Ask me a question.
If you have a question you would like me to answer, email me at sales@rickmcevoyphotography.co.uk or head over to the podcast website - photographyexplainedpodcast.com/start.
If you want to say hi, please do – I love hearing from my listeners.
OK - I am done.
This episode was brought to you by, erm, a cheese and pickle sandwich and a bag of salt and vinegar crisps washed down with an ice-cold Diet Pepsi before I settled in my homemade, acoustically cushioned recording emporium.
I've been Rick McEvoy; thanks again very much for listening to my small but perfectly formed podcast (it says here) and for giving me 27 ish minutes of your valuable time. This episode will be about 25 minutes long after I have edited out the mistakes and other bad stuff.
Take care, and stay safe.
Cheers from me, Rick
