“Every year, at least twenty new DSLR, mirrorless cameras, and cinema cameras hit the market. This constant flow of new technology is exciting as much as it is overwhelming. It can be tempting to always wanting to shoot with the latest thing available, but do you really need it? Is camera technology blinding us from more important stuff?”

Source: Jeff Loch, CineD

AT A GLANCE:

There are a lot of things involved in the creation of an image, Jeff Loch points out on the CineD website, but numbers aren’t one of them. “The image you can get out of a camera depends on the sensor size, image grain, color science, sharpness, noise reduction…etc. Not everything is about resolution, bit-depth, and codecs,” he writes, noting that new camera technology will always come with better specifications than the camera you currently have but that might not always result in a more pleasing image. As an example, Loch recalls the nearly 10-year-old ARRI ALEXA Classic camera, which is still used to shoot features despite the fact that it doesn’t shoot RAW internally, or in 4K, doesn’t feature a full-frame sensor or work well in low-light situations, and is not lightweight. Yet because of the colors it produces and the way skin tones are rendered, the ARRI ALEXA Classic remains a favorite of DPs and directors.

Head over to CineD to read the full story.