The Digital Imaging market is broken. Don't get fleeced!

a shot of the sensor of Sony's newly-announced VENICE platform, which has gotten the film scene all abuzz this week

Broken Barriers to Entry (YAY!)

I've been interested in digital imaging ever since I got my first smartphone-- which also happened to be my first digital (still) camera and video camera, too. Obviously, the smartphone didn't exist a generation ago, meaning many people like me didn't have casual access to such powerful creative tools back then. Instead, if we were interested in photography or videography, we had to hope we had a rich friend who had access to the not-so-affordable consumer-level market, or we had to dive all the way in and hope to find a school or apprenticeship somewhere that could grant us access to the astronomically-expensive professional market.

In short, every level of the imaging market-- from equipment to production to distribution-- was unfriendly to your average person not long ago. This is no longer the case today. From the smartphone revolution that got me into imaging to the DSLR revolution that changed pro production to even the machine learning & computer vision revolution that's unlocking new horizons in what we can do with the images we capture, it's an exciting time to be in the imaging game.

However, all this tumult does not come without its pitfalls.

Incomplete Disruption (CAVEAT EMPTOR!)

When an industry such as imaging gets disrupted as thoroughly as it has been in the past decade or two, there are bound to be some growing pains. I've been trying to communicate this to other peers in the imaging game for some time now, but mostly I just come off sounding like Chicken Little for heretically questioning the Old Gods of the industry.

"You mean I shouldn't just blindly trust the big brands like Canon with my hard-earned money?" they may ask, or "Why would I shoot with anything other than a broadcast camera?" they may scoff. Well, because the market literally makes no sense, that's why!

I stumbled across this blurb on RedShark today that came as close as anything to substantiating my hair-brained claims. Specifically, it's their juxtaposition of a Sony HD camcorder that costs "almost 10 times" as much as one of their own 4K camcorders that captures my point-- if you're not sure what you're looking for, and are guided by the principle that a higher price means a better product, you can easily get wrecked.

this is what happens if you aren't careful in the imaging game these days

One of the most important takeaways is that camera sensors continue to get better, smaller, cheaper, and more common, at the same time that our ability to process and distribute what we capture continues to grow. As you can imagine, companies that have made their money from the filmmaking status quo for decades are slow to respond (why would I stop selling the 10x more costly HD-only camera when some people will still buy it?!), and newcomers are quick to sell something sharper and newer, but without the same trusted brand recognition that the big players have.

Most importantly, beware of zombie products-- form-factors and sensor technologies that have outlived their usefulness but are still on sale for thousands of dollars. Canon is an especially egregious offender-- although they're credited by some for sparking the DSLR revolution, they've proven to be unwilling to improve their DSLRs' video capabilities, and continue to sell expensive cameras that can't keep up with the competition unless you hack them (6D mk ii, I'm lookin' at you!).

An Uncertain (but awesome!) Future

Will next year's smartphones finally reach image performance parity with DSLRs? Will your government-mandated autonomous smart-car come with so many cameras inside-and-out that the security state will achieve its dream of perpetual surveillance? Or will North Korea EMP Skynet into oblivion before it can destroy us all? Only time will tell.

Just how this democratization of access to imaging equipment and the channels for its distribution will shape the society of tomorrow remains to be seen. One thing that certainly won't change is how alchemical the imaging space can be. When you cross people's extremely subjective aesthetic preferences for image and story with the extremely complex science and technology behind capturing and reproducing sound and image, you're bound to get confusion. This looks both like your average viewer not being able to technically describe what it is about an image they like (is it the resolution? the dynamic range? the color bit depth? the variables are endless), as well as your career professional being too careful to venture away from their tried-and-true workhorse camera from a decade ago in order to try something that's objectively better.

At the end of the day, markets and technologies tend to change faster than people do. You don't have to be a pro (or even an enthusiast) to play with imaging anymore, but be careful where you put your (STEEM) dollars, because it's easier than ever to get fleeced.

"Trust us, we've TOTALLY done this before!"