Sand Dune detail,
Xiang Sha Wan, Mongolia
It used to be that big cameras ruled photography (just like dinosaurs used to rule the earth?). 8x10 was the gold standard for cameras. Big was “professional.” It used to be that you could judge how serious a photographer was by how large his kit was. If you came upon a photographer with an 8x10 set up, you knew the person was serious about his photography. Likewise if they were peering down the chimney viewfinder of a Hassleblad you would think, “pro.” You could get away with using 35 millimeter cameras if you had several festooned around your neck and at least one of them had a 300 millimeter lens. Despite the preoccupation with the size of the camera, the prints produced by and large were small. This is no longer the case.
Now the photographs are big and the cameras are small. Digital cameras are now getting smaller and smaller and the prints are getting bigger and bigger. While I do concentrate on the external size of equipment, the key part of the digital camera, the sensor, does continue to grow and grow. Now, cheap cellular telephones have larger built in camera sensors than my first digital camera. A while back I noted that there is one phone with a 40 mp sensor.
Soon, we will have to make a choice. Do we want to get a phone with a camera attached, or do we want to get a tablet computer with a built in lens and image editing software? The visionaries will soon be telling us cameras are a thing of the past and we will soon be headed into the world of the converged device that will be able to photograph, digitally edit and post to the internet immediately.
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