photo from Engadget

Context Matters

Six months ago, I wrote about how broken the digital imaging space has become. In a nutshell, image capture and distribution has been exploding for the past few years, in a way that's bringing down the cost of high-quality tools. No longer must you scrape together $10k or more to produce top-notch visuals; production-level features continue to seep into even the most affordable consumer cameras. It's a great time to be making visuals-- as long as you have the bandwidth to do your research so as not to get fleeced by bad deals and vestigial technologies!

What's changed?

Six months later, things are a bit different. I wouldn't argue that innovation in imaging has slowed down (thankfully!), but instead, something else has changed: discussion around imaging has caught up.

Take, for example, this phenomenal writeup at Engadget. It doesn't go deep into history or context, which is fine! The casual folks who are most likely to get ripped off by the changing tides of the imaging industry aren't looking for that; they're looking for easy, actionable guidance on what's good and what isn't. And for the most part, this article provides: It effectively breezes through some key technologies and features that make imaging in 2018 so dope, such as 4K and wide color gamut, in addition to ultra-fast and reliable autofocus systems, before giving a wonderful price-based breakdown of different brands and options.

And while this article doesn't spend as much time as I'd like lauding how incredible it is that we can now buy such advanced features at such an affordable price, again, that's not what casual consumers are going to look for. In that sense, normalizing this majesty is an important part of helping people realize how easy it is to make great content these days (at least from a hardware perspective).

Are you taking advantage of the imaging revolution? If so, how? Let me know in the comments below!