I recently got a new camera and today I was imagining how some would react to it. A likely question would be how many megapixel it has. During the early years of digital imaging, the megapixel count was a somewhat reliable indicator of the camera’s quality, in comparison to others of current and past generations. Nowadays, any decent camera not embedded in a mobile phone has a megapixel count beyond most people’s needs. And thus the megapixel question’s increasingly irrelevant.
Which is unfortunate.
The megapixel count provided a very much convenient and quantifiable barometer of quality. The higher the count, the better the quality. In other words, it was numerically tangible. ~ 6,000,000 pixels are going to look a lot better than ~2,000,000 pixels especially when they are spread out in print. Or so the story goes.
What’s lost, among the masses, in the early age of digital imaging is the other subtler qualities of the cameras. The quality of the camera’s optics, the lenses’ quality and the selection, the amount of control available, the construction of the camera and its materials and design, and so on. It’s not difficult to see how the inclusion in considering these other qualities has made the whole numerical barometer incompetent and insufficient.
Something else has also emerged alongside the diminishing value in the numerical gauge. The consideration for the quality of the camera becomes increasingly intangible. Surely, we can arbitrarily put a number on these other features. Or at least make them tangible. The nth generation of camera sensor, how many optical blades are in the lens, the number of lenses available, whether the camera is built with plastic or metal, how many features it has.
Nevertheless, that doesn’t seem to quite capture it. Some would attest that some man (or machine) made / designed works contain a certain kind of intangible quality that transcends beyond numbers or words. Perhaps that’s what Clive Bell calls “The Form”. I think I have seen it in a few Mondrians, Rothkos, Pollocks, and some Sigur Ros/Mogwai/Godspeed pieces. I have experienced it when I looked through a magnifier at the gorgeous slides taken with the Velvia Slide film. On the light table, it feels as if the light is breathing. The scenes are moving and the hearts beating.
Is it perhaps merely something that attracts me, has such an emotional effect on me and is so abstract that my words fail me? I don’t really know.
I am not claiming my new camera has this intangible quality. Far from it. However it does seem like the digital camera, like most modern man made artifacts, are reduced to being judged by something that’s quantifiable and easily tangible. We are not only no longer seeking the intangible, but we are turning around and moving away from it.
So where’s the beauty of human artistry to be found?
