Essentials
It’s the end of the year, planning for 2024 is heavily under way at work so I suppose I’m naturally thinking about it in relation to me too. A theme is starting to emerge for me around what’s essential. I think it’s something that has always appealed to me now I think about it. Maybe it’s why I like Leica’s tagline so much. They refer to it as the “Claim” and it refers to their pursuit of only the essentials of photography.
“Das Wesentliche is a profound german expression that has many layers. It is necessary to look the term up in a dictionary to get a feel for its meaning.
Applied to design language, das Wesentliche means to eliminate all distractions and to concentrate on the essentials.”
And while I think an essentialist (assuming that’s a word) approach can definitely be seen in cameras like the M series up to say the M10, I think we’re getting to a point now in photography as a whole where no one can claim that they’re only focused on what’s essential anymore.
Fuji have a separate tiny screen on the back to simulate the film pack you would put on the back of your camera, Sony’s latest A7 can make 120 RAW frames per second with auto focus that can track a breakdancer’s eye, the Q3 has a tilt touch screen and now even the M11 from Leica has an extra button on the top for more stable live view, a touch screen, internal storage and constant connection to a phone for GPS tagging.
60 megapixel sensors, extra buttons, even Leica have given in to temptation/ perceived expectations from customers and while the M11 I hold in my hands is an amazing camera that allows for amazing quality images even when heavily cropped I don’t know that I’d say a lot of these features are essential.
I don’t want to sound like an old man shouting at a windmill but the complexity/ capability of all the products in our lives and the increasingly interwoven Venn diagram of all the things they can do means that even one of the last remaining single use consumer products, the camera, is being forced to do more in the name of progress.
It’s a weird feeling. I’m over thinking for sure :)
As an aside, I remember enjoying this book a few years back, so much so that I think I accidentally left it out in the rain and had to dry it out to keep reading it :D
The concept of being disciplined about pursuing less appealed to me, the person whose preferred way of working involves an iPad and Apple Pencil over a MacBook.