ere it is, the saga continues…

Today marks the end of the megapixel race, it is the begin­ning of dig­i­tal pho­tog­ra­phy 2.0 where the teenage sol­diers grew up and move up from the dig­i­tal bat­tle­field to focus­ing to what mat­ters. Tom & Jerry enters the adulthood.

A few months ago, Canon decided to act and intro­duced a series of upcom­ing high-end pocket cam­eras that has–get this–less megapixel count (!), but (yes) more capa­ble of shoot­ing in low light sen­sor. (sweet). One week or two after that, Canon stirred the indus­try with a new DSRL on two counts, with just one cam­era model: 1) A rev­o­lu­tion­ary, tech­no­log­i­cal mar­vel the EOS 7D (finally, a 100% viewfinder cov­er­age, thank you) and 2) An advanced, Pro level DSLR with an industry’s first ded­i­cated HD video cap­ture mode but­ton with a 1.6x cropped sen­sor (ouch!), so yes, a sin­gle digit EOS model that entails a pro fea­ture but no full-frame.

Consistently, Canon did intro­duce a more capa­ble sen­sor to han­dle low-light sit­u­a­tion on the 7D, but instead of pulling back on megapixel, they decided to stick with squeez­ing more pixel that out­per­form their lenses and upset a lot of their loyal users, includ­ing yours truly.

But the indus­try moves on, and prod­ucts after another piles that spells “We should’ve done oth­er­wise” bag of hurt; Leica goes back to the draw­ing board, turns back time and back from the future with a trio of sweet deals; The S2 semi medium for­mat hid­ing in an SLR body–their con­cept of next gen­er­a­tion of cam­eras, Their full-frame rangefinder flag­ship that should have been intro­duced 5 years ago, lat­est incar­na­tion of the leg­endary M series, The M9 and the ultra retro, Apple-like indus­trial mar­vel, iPod of the camera-land, Leica X1.

A breath of fresh air blows across the indus­try, inno­va­tion is still going on and far from dead.

Today, a small com­pany from Japan decided to step up and claim the crown from the big league. A mem­ber of the Mitsubishi Group of Companies, Nikon intro­duced a new flag­ship model of pro­fes­sional grade DSRL, The D3s; instead of stick­ing up with Canon they decided to forge a new bat­tle with a feat that is log­i­cally rel­e­vant to today’s devel­op­ment, low-light capa­bil­ity, a new soul to their heart of the image cam­paign, a cam­era that makes a 5-digit ISO grade a real­ity rather than a dis­tant dream.

If the imag­ing indus­try is as big as the finan­cial sec­tor, tick­ers would flood to CNN & FoxNews with head­lines that begins with ‘Breaking News’, reg­u­lar pro­grams would be inter­rupted for a spe­cial break­through announce­ment of this tech­no­log­i­cal achieve­ment, if only they announced it a cou­ple of months ear­lier, the Nobel Price would be awarded to Nikon instead of the CCD peo­ple. Yes, it’s that big of a news. You have no idea what will this bring to the table.

Rumor has been going on for weeks, that Tom, ergh, Jerry, I mean Canon has been work­ing on some­thing big too. So big that “Canon is work­ing on some­thing big, expect an early November announce­ment ” became a news and celebrity blog­ger buzz for the last cou­ple of weeks, expected are new pro-level cam­era, some say a new flash & its accom­pa­ny­ing tech­nol­ogy and as the 7D has spelled, expect 7D tech­nol­ogy in the future EOS cam­era models.

Now, let’s face it peo­ple; we don’t want another flash tech­nol­ogy, enough of that bull­shit, we don’t want flash, we want a cam­era that can see, an instru­ment of art that allows us to craft our vision that breaks the tech­ni­cal bar­ri­ers, a device that release our desire to cre­ate but not brake it. You all have been a fail­ure all these years, you have cor­rupted our vision with all your mar­ket­ing mad­ness that an image is no longer about image but pix­els, noises & cam­era but­tons & levers. We worked our ass to afford your prod­ucts, now give us some­thing that pays off. Give us some­thing that works.

If you are look­ing for tech specs, what’s new and cool or not about this new thing, you have come to the wrong place, there are many places for you to find that, mean­while, think about now, today, this moment–the world still car­ries on even with­out this cam­era, clients will come and go and newer things will come, what mat­ters now is that we should stop wor­ry­ing about things and being car­ried away in the illu­sions of ‘big­ger, faster, bet­ter’, instead let’s all sit back, relax and enjoy the day cause in the end, pho­tog­ra­phy is about the vision not the tech­ni­cals; it’s the energy behind the lens, not the toys inside our bags.

Tom & Jerry image cour­tesy tomandjerryonline.com, you can find some fab­u­lous look­ing wall­pa­pers here

PS.
The good look­ing drop cap above is a fine work of art by Jessica Hische, every day she intro­duces a new let­ter to her beau­ti­ful blog where you can get yours for free.