Wednesday will not go down as one of the very best. It kicked off with a terrible dose of man flue and in hindsight am astounded I managed to come through at all. The day didn’t improve much as I then spent what felt like an endless time driving around Northampton General Hospital hopelessly struggling to park so that my 5 year old could turn up at his hearing test appointment on time. Still I had at least one aspect of my day to look forward too, attending my local universities photography course open day, more precisely I’d been promised a hands on demonstration by Hasselblad’s area sales team of their current saliva inducing digital camera line up, the H4D series.
And what a genuinely amazing piece of kit this camera is, like all cameras brandishing the Hasselblad emblem previous, it simply oozes quality. The Rolls-Royce of cameras, the grade that all other makers must chase etc etc etc’… but I’ve no desire to create a review.  The issue that has continuously frustrated me for many years now (and judging by the photographers I met at the event I’m not the only one) is this apparent mega pixel race we all seem to unwittingly be trapped in. This bizarre and down right delusional obsession with the pixel count as a measure of the caliber of a camera and so consequently the photographer.

This isn’t as an assault on any one individual camera maker, at least Hasselblad aim their cameras at high end professionals whom might at least sometimes employ all those 60 megapixels on a billboard poster or something as equally huge, all camera producers are at it! When did you last shoot a 48 or 96 sheet poster? When did you last do a print larger than say A4? In fact when did you last do a print at all?

I’ve been fortunate enough to shoot for customers that have demanded billboard posters and exhibited in galleries with huge prints all whilst shooting under the acute gaze of top London art directors. After taking a breather from the demanding world of advertising but still often shooting commercially where the paramount quality is assumed, I’m seldom if ever asked to shoot a job that will be printed anything bigger than an A4 spread in a brochure. In fact I took a brief look at my previous years commercial campaigns and can say that a healthy 75% of this work will not even go to print at all and will spend its days destined to be looked at on your common desk top personal computer screen at a measly 72dpi.

After shooting on just about every type and size of camera format over the years from a bog standard 35mm negative to a beautiful 10×8 transparency I now opt to shoot on a paltry 12 mega pixel DSLR, except of course when the job requests a specifically bigger file size. Guess what? I’ve never had any problems or concerns about the image quality! What I have to do is use all my experience and understanding acquired from years of photographic training and work experience together with the unique ‘eye’ I’ve developed as a result, to capture files that are of a commercially appealing quality. The message I’m seeking to hammer home is that these shots would be no better.

I keep threatening to update my kit, or rather keep getting seduced by skillful marketing ploys into assuming I need to update my camera gear, but the straightforward fact is I really don’t need to. Picture quality is not dictated by pixel count or more precisely file size, that is a fact. There are countless challenges affecting the excellence of the final photo not least the actual expertise of the bloke pressing the shutter. If you take a moment to really think about past photographs that have really had an impact then I doubt very much whether many of those shots were shot using what we would now call a top spec camera, even a fairly moderate modern DSLR is capable of truly quite amazing image quality.

Digital cameras have grown to be quite breathtaking in the amount of bang you get for your buck and have served as a great leveller in the way that photography is no longer just a rich mans hobby. Chose your camera system (don’t agonize), acquire a couple of reasonable books and then get out there and play with it. Try to dismiss those elitist camera nerds you’ll see on any online forum and definitely dismiss the self serving camera manufacturers pleas that bigger is better, its not!