An old Photograph by the Pentax Optio 550

 

I recently went through my images of 2006. At that time, I was either using a Nikon D70 or the Pentax Optio 550, both cameras at 5-6 Megapixel resolution. The Megapixel war had just begun, and that much was standard for consumer cameras at that time.

Just for fun, I uploaded the image above to 100ASA and put into curation. If you are familiar with the type of images found in their Prime, Elite and Inspiration galleries, you might think that this IQ would be too low to make it there. I was very surprised to find the image published in the Prime gallery after less than 24 hours. 

It is a nice fog scene, for sure. And I like it a lot. However, I would not have expected that success. It seems to me that the photographers in that forum are asking for image content again. Personally, I am tired of seeing images that show the high level of the camera involved, and not much more. Resolution is good to have, but not everything.

There is another point to talk about here. This image was taken on my way to work. It did not take effort, nor special gear. It was shot handheld. I admire those photographers who create images in the studio with a lot of thinking and planning. It is just not my cup of tea. But I understand that this effort is essential to get good results in some genre of photography.

I do also like those images which are best labelled as "photographic art". They are technically imperfect. If they tell a story in their abstract way, I am all for it. I never did that, but would want to. The German Foto-Community is now full of such work.

But the main point of this posting is, that you do not need an expensive camera for most images. You need post-processing, or at least I do. Those simple cameras often spit out too simple results. Some refinement is necessary.

Here is another one taken at a nearby spot at the same time.

It seems I had this camera for a while. I have a Lightroom catalogue with all images in JPG format. Filtering through the images I found a lot more which were done with the Pentax 550. Here is a selection.