Seeing so many “Pro Photographers” popping overnight and disappearing until the dusk of next day, like some kind of bizarre and febrile ephemerides, I am thinking my February stats could contribute to a better understanding a basic standard of being a busy (successful?) photographer:
February:
15000 actuation.
My Phase One DF Shutter gave up, again… New camera body acquired.
Mac Pro gave up and was repaired and upgraded.
One lens gave up and replaced.
Total 300 hours worked.
It’s very hard when parts get damaged in mid of the rush – we have back-up and redundancies but I certainly can’t have two Mac Pros.
Also Phase One systems are delicate and not cheap at all to repair.
I see some of people around me switching back to DSLR (?) because the Medium Format doesn’t come cheap. I understand Photography business is financially difficult nowadays, plagued by cheap wanna-be-s, who have no clue what’s this about but they just “want to be a photographer” imagining this is some kind of glamour/rockstar occupation (which I assure you IS NOT if you plan to stick around more than a week and have a serious business plan).
However, I can’t possibly understand the justifications from some photographers that the quality of a small DSLR or mirrorless is “almost” similar with Medium Format. To put it bluntly – I think a MF with half of the pixels of a Canon 5dr is better quality than the latter. Several factors to take in consideration: 16 bit depth, moiré, pro integration with software, sharpness…did I mentioned MOIRÉ!? New systems from Nikon, Canon, Sony etc. are courageous but, in a real life studio situation, they just fell short (that is if you have some basic standards in image quality) – they are trying to get just to much from a small crowded CMOS sensor and a do-it-all processor. In the end, let’s not forget, medium format systems have powerful computers attached to the sensor (the back).
Bellow an 100% crop from an image from a random session had this week as example.
