Do You Think You Have To Have The Best Image Quality To Be Satisfied?

This is an 11mp crop from a 36mp frame from a Nikon D810 (click to enlarge)

Do you feel that you can only be satisfied with the absolute best technical image quality in your photographs?  Do you chase after the latest cameras, lenses and technical innovations, always trying to find the best gear to obtain the optimum technical quality for your images?  Do you incessantly read reviews and tests to see which gear tests out the best?  Do you regularly sell gear to buy new, better gear?  If you do, you're not alone. Many do.  But you know what?  You may be wasting your time.

I used to want the best image quality possible.  I wanted to also extract the absolute best image quality out of my photography gear.  This went on for years and years.  I was never quite happy and always wanted better image quality.  I bought and sold gear.  I changed formats.  In the film days, I bought the finest grained and widest latitude film.  I built a darkroom so I could control every aspect of the photographic process.  I bought and used the best chemicals for my darkroom.  I read and studied incessantly to improve my technique.  I always wanted better and better—no, I think perfect—image quality.  I chased and chased that goal.

And, I still do want excellent image quality.  However, I now do it using my current gear as it provides me with outstanding images.  I just don't chase after the latest and greatest anymore.  In my view, just about every digital camera and almost all lenses made today allow me to create better images that ever.  Even my M4/3 gear allows me to equal or exceed the images I made from my medium format film gear of yesterday.  I have no need to chase that elusive perfect photo gear anymore.

Ask yourself what gear you use.  Are you using M4/3, APS-C or even full frame?  If you are, and are expecting the best quality, give it up.  You aren't getting anywhere near the best image quality available today.  Your smaller sensor cameras may give you results that look as good as the larger format gear, but that is only true under optimum conditions.  In less than optimum conditions, you have to go big or go home!  With each step up to a larger sensor, you are improving your potential image quality but you aren't there yet.  To get even better image quality, you have to more up to medium format digital gear, or if you are really demanding, you might have to move up to large format digital backs on large format cameras.  

Face it, to get the best image quality you have to have a combination of the largest sensor with high (not necessarily highest) resolution, the latest in-camera digital imagine processing engine, the best computer designed and assembled lenses containing aspheric, extra low dispersion, etc., glass elements and perfect technique.  Then you need to know how to perfectly edit your images to get the most out of the digital image file.  Over sharpen an otherwise gorgeous image and you can ruin it!  Every aspect of the photographic chain is important for ultimate quality.

I've stopped chasing that elusive dream of perfection.  I'm perfectly happy with the gear I own.  I have M4/3, APS-C and full frame gear and all of it provides me with great images which gives me a lot of satisfaction.  Why would I want to cause myself stress by always wanting more, better, newer, etc.?   I've been there and done that.  I've learned many lessons over my past 45 photographic years.  Just enjoy your photography.  Enjoy making images. Enjoy the superb quality you can already get out of your gear.

Cameras and lenses are tools.  If you find tools that work well for you, feel good in your hands, are fun to use, beg you to pick them up, and they meet your needs, stick with them.  If you can't do something you need to do with your tools, then look for tools that allow you to do that thing.  If you need to make super large prints, you might need a larger format digital camera.  If you need to make noiseless images in very low light, you might need something more than you already have.  If you need to capture the split second a ball hits the hands of a player, again, you might need something different than most of us use.

In my quest to simplify my life, I've become very satisfied with my gear.  As I mentioned, I have three different formats of gear (tools) that I use for different types of photographic endeavors.  I don't need three formats but I sometimes I buy out of curiosity and to test and write about gear in this blog.  If I owned just one kit, it would be fine.

In the end, its all about the photograph.  Being that almost every digital camera can produce excellent images, may I suggest you concentrate on your photography, rather than acquiring more and better gear.

On the other hand, if you are a gear head, collect gear, obsess over gear, then chasing that latest and greatest is okay, because then, it is not about the image, it is about the gear itself.  Lots of people obsess over cars, guns, stamps, and all kinds of other things.  If your "thing" is photography gear, I wish you well.  As for me, I'm going to get out and make some images as often as I possibly can.

Thanks for looking. Enjoy! 

Dennis A. Mook 

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