Of course, the camera matters
If you don’t believe me, try to recreate Ansel Adam’s photograph of the moon and Half Dome with your smartphone camera or a disposable point-and-shoot. You cannot. Even a top-tier digital camera will struggle to compete with a print from Adam’s large format camera. There is not one single camera or camera-and-lens combination that can capture every possible image.
Photography is technical. Even before photography’s digital revolution, technology was present from the first mechanical cameras to the CPU-laden cameras (film and digital) of today.
Regardless of the photographic medium — celluloid or circuits — one needs some sort of device to control the amount of light that strikes your chosen light-sensitive surface. That device is called a camera. Early cameras were basically light-tight boxes with a hole in one end (and a cap) and a film-sensitive surface on the opposite end. Photography, in its infancy, was a delicate and difficult process. As the years passed, technology made photography easier. Optical lenses were added to the cameras. Aperture diaphragms controlled the amount of light entering the camera. Shutters opened and closed the hole for you — faster than the blink of an eye, if necessary. The advent of the 35mm camera allowed photography to be accessible to people of all ages and all walks of life. Film evolved as talented chemists created improved chemical concoctions and emulsions. Light meters helped measure exposure. Tiny motors advanced the film faster than we could crank it. Computers were introduced and we witnessed the dawn of exposure control, autofocus, and, eventually, digital imaging.
Technology has, over the years, changed how we take photographs. The old cardboard box cameras still work, but technology has made the process of photographing easier. Intimate knowledge of the photographic process and darkroom chemistry is no longer needed. Anyone can pick up a camera and make a fantastic photograph.
When it comes to precise reproduction, you simply cannot achieve the same amount of clarity, color rendition, and sharpness when comparing optics made just a few years ago to today’s computer-designed, coated, and manufactured optics. To get the sharpest, clearest photograph possible, you need to couple modern optics with a modern camera. Of course, a flawed vintage lens may give your image a nostalgic feel, but there is no debate: modern optics bend light better than older optics.
The light amplification and sensitivity of digital sensors far outstrips anything from the film era. The combination of the modern digital camera and wide-aperture lenses allows photographers to create photographs that were impossible only a few years ago. A sharp, handheld night panorama of a city skyline from a moving aircraft? Yep, it’s been done with digital. The first-ever photographs took hours to make in broad daylight. Now you can photograph at night in a fraction of a second. Technology in the camera has constantly evolved the process of photography.
The camera matters.
Nope, the camera doesn’t matter
My good friend, Kris, is a professional photographer. She tells me that her friends have said to her, “That is a great photo. You must have a really good camera.”
“Yes,” she replies, “I send my camera out on assignment all the time.”
It is not the brushes or canvas; it is the painter. It is not the clay; it is the potter. It is not the guitar or drums; it is the musician. It is not the bronze or steel; it is the sculptor. It is not the shoes; it is the ballerina. It is not the wand; it is the magician.
It is not the camera; it is the photographer.
Photography is a technically based art form. However, it is art and it is the photographer who makes the decision where to point the camera and when to release the shutter. It is that human interaction that can mean the difference between a simple vacation snapshot and a landscape image, abstract photograph, or captured moment that stirs a deep emotional response in the viewer.
A master photographer can create great images with any camera. A poor photographer can often create poor images using the very best equipment.
Photography, especially digital photography, is so easy today that the cameras do almost everything for you. It is the photographer who puts him or herself in the correct place at the correct time, aims the lens, and frames the scene to create the perfect image. The human behind the camera, not the machine itself, chooses composition, placement, and the singular moment to capture an image. The camera cannot make photographs without the interaction of an organic at some point in the process. A photographer still needs to trigger a remote camera across a studio. A human must command and program an interstellar probe traveling across the void of outer space to take a photograph at a particular moment.
There are photographers in this world who struggle to explain aperture, exposure values, or pixels, but every day they go out into the world and create great photographs. They make art. The camera’s inner workings and function do not matter, nor does the technology stand in the way of their quest to capture beautiful, telling images. They have a natural ability to see a photograph and then use the camera to capture it. Oppositely, there are those who can speak volumes about the wiring diagram of their modern camera, yet they lack the ability to capture an image that provokes a positive response.
Like all art, there are some who appear to have a natural ability to, in the case of photography, “see” things better than others and create compelling images of those visions. And when these artists see well, iconic images are often produced. The medium is the photograph, the tool is the camera — any camera — and the execution is the responsibility of the photographer. This is why cameras are never given bylines. Art comes from within the photographer. It does not reside inside the camera.
The camera does not matter.
Todd Vorenkamp is a New York-based photographic artist and Senior Creative Content Writer at B&H Photo. Vantage has previously featured his writing about the Physics Photowalk at CERN and how he lost all his vacation memories to his camera.
