Stop Complaining and Start Creating!

1934 Packard 1107 12-cylinder
Afton Station Packard Museum, Afton, Oklahoma on Route 66 (click to enlarge)

Several days ago, I was reading the Phoblographer blog.  One of the entries was by the blog's editor, Chris Gampat.  He wrote about photographers complaining about digital noise.  You can read it here.  Reading the entry hit a nerve as I have, on many occasions in the past, also complained about noise and other "deficiencies" when talking about digital cameras.  That got me to thinking about how good we have it as photographers compared to photographers in the past.  Digital cameras, even point-and-shoot cameras, are 1000% better than anything that was around 50 years ago.  Indeed, we have so much for which to be thankful, when it comes to gear.

If you think about it, current digital cameras are amazing picture making tools.  I think, even point-and-shoot digital cameras, are better than the best film SLRs that were manufactured by Nikon, Canon, Contax, Leica, etc. in the past–even their top of the line ones.  Take the Nikon P600, for example.  A superzoom camera, as it is called.  Kind of a medium cost fully automated camera.  It has a zoom lens that gives you the equivalent of 24-1440mm!  That is insane!  We made fun of talking about creating a 28-300mm lens years ago as impossible!  And, according to reviews I have read, it and other similar cameras in that genre, make excellent images.

Why are we complaining about digital noise and other features when we have better photographic tools in our hands than ever before?  Why do we always want more and better? Why don't we ever seem satisfied with what we have and exploit how well what we have works for us?

I'm starting to think, as a basic flaw in human beings, no matter how good we have things, in this case digital cameras, that we will always never be satisfied but try (in some cases very hard) to find things about which to complain.  No kidding.  Think about it.

We have complained that there weren't enough pixels.  We got more pixels but continued to complain.  They when we got an enormous amount of pixels, 36mp in fact, we complained that 36mp was too many!

We complained that the pixels in our digital cameras are too small. The manufacturers made more, better and less expensive "full frame" sensors with the resultant larger individual pixels.  We still complain and salivate on wanting bigger so some manufacturers created affordable "medium format" cameras.  Big enough?  Probably not.

We complain that there is too much digital noise.  Manufacturers created sensors, algorithms and processes that give us outlandish ISOs with virtually no noise.  What was the result?  Instead of complaining that ISO 6400 was not good enough, we now complain about noise at ISO 25,600 and above!  Are you kidding me?

We complain about "automatic" focusing being too slow.  Think about it.  Automatic focusing!  It focuses for you.  The cameras do it extremely fast and accurately.  We still complain.

We complain about not only not enough focusing points, but not spread out enough in the viewfinder and not enough cross-type focusing points!  Seriously, if you can't successfully use what is in cameras today, you might want to find something else to do.  These focusing systems, numbers of focusing points and quality of systems in incredible.

We complain our cameras to too big.  Manufacturers worked hard to make them smaller.  What did we do?  We complained about them being too small and too hard to hold!  We now want a larger grip.

We complain about cameras being to heavy.  Manufacturers started to use polycarbonate and advanced plastics—even carbon fiber—in the construction of digital cameras.  We now complain that the cameras are now made out of polycarbonate and won't hold up like metal will.

We complain about not enough features.  Then when getting more features we could possibly ever use, we complain about menus being too complicated and ask why manufacturers are putting everything but the kitchen sink into a camera.

We complain about not being able to configure all the buttons on our digital cameras.  We then complain that there are too many buttons or that we can't configure them exactly the way we, as individuals, must have them configured.

We want wi-fi.  We want touch screens.  We want swing-out LCDs.  We want higher ISOs.  We want better, cheaper and faster lenses but at a lower cost.  And it goes on and on.  You get my point. If we as photographers can possibly find something to complain about, whether trivial or not, we will surely do so.

Is your photographic "glass" half empty or half full?  Are you content with sitting around and complaining about your gear and blaming it for the quality of your images (and you may not be even out there taking images) or are you going to grab your gear and get out there?

You know what I say?  Stop complaining.  Stop wanting more and better and just go out and use these marvelous machines that we, as photographers, who have it so much better than our fore-photographers ever had it, and use the great gear that it is.  Just pick it up, get creative and make images.  That is what I say.  Go!

My glass is certainly full.

Thanks for looking.  Enjoy!

Dennis Mook

Many of my images can be found at www.dennismook.com.  Please pay it a visit.  I add new images regularly.  Thank you.


All content on this blog is © 2014 Dennis A. Mook.  All Rights Reserved.  Feel free to point to this blog from your website with full attribution.  Permission may be granted for commercial use.  Please contact Mr. Mook to discuss permission to reproduce the blog posts and/or image.