I shoot black and whit 'art' photos. I print a lot. So i spend a lot of time looking at the details of each photo. especially if they're hanging on my wall. that being said, i have a conundrum which, surprisingly, isn't well covered on the internet:
>would you say a leica monochrom, or a medium format (with more bits and more sensor real estate) would produce better black and white images?
Film photography is better due to low sensitivity in dark areas. No one needs to see what is in dark areas most of the time. Just imagine this photo with unnecessary crap in shadows.
Why are photography YouTubers so shit? They mostly churn out boring nontent while dressing like a copy of a copy of a copy of someone who thought he might closet cosplay Ansel Adams. Who are they aping? Almost all have the cadence and tone of a best buy sales associate either slowly conniving a golden HDMI cable sale or postponing their suicide on a Sunday evening only since their parents are still alive; with no in-between. I meet smarter and more interesting people IRL at camera club or local stores, so it's not as if this hobby is exclusively for people prescribed Klonopin and SSRIs. Half of them are just talking head slop direct to camera talking about what gear to buy (micro four nerds) The ones that do teardowns and repairs of gear are usually fine, but those aren't exactly photo videos at that point.
The only guy that does the "video of taking photos" thing I can stand is Nick LoPresti since he doesn't talk like he's constipated, but lately the lack of constipation has become a problem since he's been diarrhea-shitting up my sub box with low-effort commentary videos sitting in front of a green screen. Idk who he's aping there, 2016 twitch? Don't like it, especially one where he and his wife are politisperging about shit like how "they can't use Google search for inane things because it'll track you" for what feels like several minutes.
Snappiness may be my second favorite even though he looks and talks like a queer (he has kids so I guess he isn't technically). At least he does ridiculous things with cameras that are more interesting than "I walked and took a photo of something and had some ennui about it".
Also, I hate gxAce with a passion, dead horse of a gimmick beaten into dust at this point. 80% of his videos serve no purpose to the modal viewer since they're just a rain-dance to the corporate marketing teams to get them to send him gear. (Also combining sloppy wet deep-throat glazing prose with an aloof tone is uniquely excruciating to listen to.)
So, which of the big companies is going to be the first to offer an affordable 100mp camera?
Fuji is obviously already out there, but this thing is Eight thousand dollars. I suspect that when it happens (eventually) it will be Nikon. I feel like historically they are the company which has introduced high end features at a lower price.
The pursuit of being in the right place at the right time to capture the perfect sky no longer holds its former value when that very sky can be synthesized from colored pixels. When a dramatic reddish dawn or an approaching thunderstorm is conjured with a few strokes in Photoshop, or when a telephone receiver in a model’s hand is seamlessly swapped for a sneaker using Adobe Firefly with context-aware lighting adjustments, the photograph was, at best, merely raw material.
Even the need for initial raw material is obsolete, as AI can generate sophisticated images entirely ex nihilo.
Even the tangible, physical nature of the print offers no reliable refuge: A picture developed on photographic paper from a negative, held in the viewer's hand, might still originate from a digitally generated negative, or the photographer might have used analog means to re-photograph a digitally produced and printed image.
In sharp contrast, painting remains a sanctuary of authenticity. Within a painting, the physical labor and the direct interaction of the artist with paint on a substrate are inherently stored and visible. The viewer holding a painted image recognizes the unique signature, the texture of the applied color, and the clear intentionality of the human creator behind it.
While robots can wield a paintbrush, they cannot yet fully simulate the human touch. The immediate, non-reproducible trace of the human creator in the finished work remains the key differentiator. Traditional, handcrafted creation is reclaiming its significance.
This shift in perception is already evident at art fairs which do not show specifically photographs: Visitors often walk past photographs but pause thoughtfully before paintings. In art, people are not seeking the perfect illusion; they are seeking the visible, verifiable, and therefore authentic trace of another human being.
