ThePanda

Tim Bray over at ongoing has a post up on megapixels. He has a decent (and from what I understand, correct) explanation of what is good and bad about racing towards higher pixel counts.

I agree with his explanation, I disagree with his conclusion, and here I am treading on thin ice. I don't really take that many photographs, not anymore anyways. Besides the only reason I know anything about photography is because of my dad, who's a better photographer than I ever will be. I however like cameras, old, heavy ones which have that loud shutter releases.

Old cameras with satisfying sounds do not produce pictures which are easily digitized, and hence do not support Tim's idea of Lightroom composition. But this is not my main reason for disagreeing with Tim. Digital cameras are great, it costs little or nothing to shoot a picture, and shooting a bad one is almost free, and free is a great thing when you are either experimenting or learning.

That said, 15 years ago, one essentially had a copy of nearly every photograph one took, and you ended up looking at both the good and the bad, because deleting a photo was too expensive. I once felt that being able to get rid of photos as easily as one now can somehow took away from what was recorded, its somehow bad that one can choose what one saves. I have gotten over that feeling (film is surprisingly expensive when you are a student and your parents aren't paying for it :)). Composing post fact seems worse somehow. My dad and I used to take photographs in the jungles in India. The animals aren't usually tame, and they don't always tend to show up at photogenic locations with perfect lighting. Worse still, you don't always have time to compose, and as a result when you find something interesting enough you shoot as many photos as possible hoping that some of them are composed reasonably well.

In cases where composing photos is easier (flowers for instance, since that is what Tim talks of), it seems like there is artistic value to actually composing things, besides maybe you end up with more relevant pixels once you are done. I don't know, somehow the idea of lightroom composing rubs me the wrong way. But then again I don't really know that much about this.