Are those highlights clipping too soon? What’s the noise like at ISO 6,400? Is this lens sharp enough at the edges?
I never actually wanted to be a pixel-peeper – who does? – and yet here I am.
Camera testing has its upside. You get to try out a huge variety of cameras, sometimes ‘dream’ cameras that you could never hope to own yourself. You develop a wide knowledge of all the brands, all the sub-ranges, how they all fit together or compete, and how to advise people looking to buy a new one.
But other stuff happens alongside that. When you get a new camera to test, you’re always conscious of exactly that – testing. What’s the noise performance like? Does the IBIS work as claimed for stills, for video. Is the eye AF and tracking definitely better than the last version? What’s the rolling shutter like?
Every photograph you take becomes a test of one feature or another. And I’ve come to understand you can’t take meaningful photographs and test cameras at the same time. Well I can't, anyway.
I've tested 'dream' cameras like the Sony A7R V, one of the best mirrorless cameras of all and one of the highest resolution cameras on the market. I've reviewed almost every incarnation of Fujfilm's excellent GFX cameras, some of the best medium format cameras you can buy.
But as a camera tester, what happens is that every photograph ends up secondary to the thing you’re testing. You try to capture images that are creative and worthwhile in themselves, but that has to take second place to testing one aspect of performance or another.
It’s odd, but camera testing has become the measurement of extremes. You can think of every camera as having a ‘performance envelope’ but we end up testing the envelope, not what’s within it. Much of the time, in real life, we won’t ever need to approach the extremes of our cameras’ performance envelopes, and yet it seems that’s all we talk about.
There is a danger in all of this. We can end up with cameras we have to ‘live up to’. If you buy a Sony A7R V (this is just one example, there are many others), you will become fixated on eliminating camera shake, avoiding high ISOs, steering away from anything that could undermine its resolution. You will become a very boring photographer. I’ve been there! If you get a camera famed for its low light performance, you will only shoot in low light, just to get your money’s worth. If you get a camera that can capture 8K video, you’ll start to despise 4K, even if that’s what you actually need.
Features, specs and numbers can be measured, which people like. Handling, engagement and immersion can’t, so this somehow becomes a kind of woolly, second-division kind of testing – or not even ‘testing’ at all. But these things are what you need in order to enjoy your camera as a creative tool, and not as a boring scientific instrument.
So don’t end up like me. Don’t become a camera tester instead of a photographer. This isn’t why I got into photography and it shouldn’t be how you end up either.
