It'll soon be the end of 2023 and the new year, 2024, will start. As is customary at this time of the year we look at the outgoing year and look forward to what the new year will bring.
I'm going to do something different and I'm going to answer the perennial question of which camera is the best?
2023 has been the year in which artificial intelligence or AI has become mainstream and has entered everyone's consciousness. Of course AI isn't new and the creators of AI software have been working for years on training their programs on big data provided by yourselves for free on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
All these social media platforms allow the posting of images or photographs as us oldies call them. These images have been used to train the AI software so that if you want a photo of American GIs entering Berlin on a Segway, AI can produce a very convincing one.
For me the AI software remains just that, software. It doesn't provide me with a mechanism for creativity where I can feel involved in the process. After all AI photos could be created by using another AI program to come up with ideas for photos that don't exist yet and program the AI software that produces the photos. No human intervention involved or required.
To return to the question posed above, the camera that is best for me in 2024 will be the camera that allows me full access to a number of tools that allow me to create photographs with full creative control.
No AI involved. No Automation, no digital processing at the capture stage.
I recently took a holiday to Arizona in the USA. For that holiday I took my Chroma Camera Snapshot kitted out with a Topcon Super Topcor 90mm lens and a Lomography LomoGraflok Instax back.
This camera is a 4x5 sheet film camera that has an International Graflok back to allow any accessories to be used with the camera like a rollfilm back or in my case a LomoGraflok back.
The LomoGraflok back allows the use of Fujifilm Instax wide film.
Back in the early 1970s polaroid were busy bringing out cameras that were low cost and introduced instant photography to regular people. My maternal Grandmother bought a Polaroid swinger camera that used peel apart pack film. Back then it was like star trek and when my own daughter was old enough to want and use a camera I bought her a spice Girls badged Polaroid 600 camera, which she loved.
My instant photography genes run deep.
Using the Snapshot is fully manual and requires me to work out the exposure myself.
The camera only produces good results if I am involved. No auto focus, the camera is zone focussed, no auto exposure.
I took 10 packs of 10 exposures for the two weeks. Not all were great but the ones that were really hit home.
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