The Image Quality Myth

If you spend anytime on YouTube, reading camera blogs or visiting camera shops you will be bombarded with the latest gear that will be packaged in a way to make you feel like you need it in order to get good photos. Before going any further I will caveat this by saying that if you’re a professional wildlife or sports photographer then by all means go for 1000 AI focus points at 300 frames per second as this will legitimately help you. However for most people, these crazy features are useless and what we only really care about is image quality. The elephant in the room is that image quality hasn’t improved that much in a very long time. Not long ago I was going through old photos and spent some time editing some shots from 2019 that I took on my Fuji XT3. If I’m totally honest I could not see any difference between the XT3 photo and today’s XT5 shot aside from the extra resolution. I’m sure if I started to pixel peep and dig deeper I would find something but for the most part there was no difference.

Another example is when I upgraded from a Fuji 35mm f2 to the 33mm f1.4. Yes the 33 was sharper, faster and with more pleasant background blur however can I easily pick them apart by looking at a photo? No.

My point is that many people chase image quality because they think it will give them quality images however this could not be further from the truth. Anyone can easily buy image quality but no one can buy a quality image. A quality image requires dedication, patience, practice and work ethic. Image quality only requires a credit card.

So next time you’re itching to upgrade your camera because it’s 2 years old and the latest one has an extra stop of dynamic range ask yourself this, will I get better images from this extra dynamic range or from spending that money on a trip to a photogenic destination?