Fujifilm: “Young people no longer practice photography”
"Young people no longer practice photography" says Fujifilm.
I had to think about this a bit, so here's my take: I think Fuji is both right and wrong. Young people are definitely taking pictures and many are doing so with a fair bit of quality and seriousness.
But, young people aren't buying cameras to take them. They're using their phone, because for so many aspects of photography, it's more than good enough. So what Fuji is trying to say, I think, is that because they're not buying cameras, they're not doing photography. And that's only half right.
If you are a camera manufacturer, I can see why you’d think not buying a camera means you aren’t a serious photographer, but I just don’t agree with that. Photography is changing just as significantly as it did when we shifted from analog film photography to digital cameras, and this new revolution is making a “traditional” (maybe “dedicated”) camera less and less necessary.
Me, personally, I am still very tied to my large birding setup and lens, but increasingly, I’m finding I’ll grab my phone instead of going to get the camera and haul out the wide angle lenses. I do want to spend more time with those lenses in the next year, but having said that, the iPhone is what I’m wandering around with.
For instance, I took these this week with my new iPhone
If I had had to go get the Sony and set things up, these wouldn’t exist. Too much friction.
That said, doing more of my “serious” photography on the phone means my workflow for post-processing and catalogging/organization are kind of broken, and one of the things I need to sort out over the next period of time is reconciling that (and that’s been one reason I’ve been somewhat slow in adopting the phone more). From a quality standpoint, I don’t see anything in these images that makes me wish I’d used the Sony instead.
