I just uploaded images from the last 40 some odd years to Flickr.
My vision has remained basically in tact.
That's all I care about.
Cameras/lenses come and go but you must remain true to your vision.
Very true, but the
experience of realizing that vision has changed quite a bit, no?
It certainly has for me, but then I took a loooong period of time more or less off, so I can see a very discreet then and now without it all blending together into a lot of incremental changes. And now is
very different than then! Good autofocus is a revelation. I was working in a camera shop when Minolta came out with the first AF SLRs and it was a mind-bender, but was truly awful by today's standards. And just the change in mindset from moving from film (where the image was 90% cooked once you pressed the shutter) to digital (where you still have the ability make most of the decisions after the shutter is clicked that you'd already made before the exposure with film) is a complete paradigm shift. As is the idea that all shooting is free once you've purchased the basic equipment. That's such an enormous burden lifted - the freedom to experiment like never before knowing its not costing you a penny more than you've already spent. Ongoing costs used to be a very real impediment. Now the cost decisions all come up front. Its like an all inclusive vacation - once you've paid the bill you can eat and drink what you want!
I recently got a bunch of old images scanned and went through them and I realized two things. One, like you, my basic vision isn't much different than it is now. A lot of my best shots in those days look suspiciously like what I'd take today. But I shoot so much more now and, even given a fairly constant
percentage of keepers, the real numbers are better now. I've probably taken more images that I like and will keep in the past almost a year I've been into it than in the 5-10 years I was shooting a lot as a kid.
But I think the
percentage of keepers has probably gone up too. While the ability to see and compose and expose a shot isn't a lot different, I probably lost a lot of shots in those days for having the wrong kind of film in the camera, or the wrong filter on the lens, or NOT having a filter on the lens. I have shots from recently that would have been good if I'd taken them with IR film back in the day, but more or less mush if I'd been shooting Ektachrome. Now, I shoot in Raw and can choose between IR and ecktachrome after the fact and massage the color filtration in ways I couldn't even dream about then. So I probably get a higher percentage of shots that work now that wouldn't have then. I even have a couple of shots that I'd have probably taken with tri-x back then that, for my life, I can't make work in B&W today but that are real stunners in color (even given my penchant and preference for B&W).
These are all advances that I would not want to give back. Even if the basic vision of one of my good ones today isn't much different than one of my good ones 30 years ago... I have no idea what the future holds, but I'm glad there are people thinking about it and working on it because I'd bet they'll come up with revolutionary stuff that we can't even imagine yet, but will love when it arrives.
-Ray