j-calI am not sure this statement is accurate. Philip Bloom is very knowledgeable and creates great content. If you are reviewing a camera should you not be a pixel peeper? I mean i think his reviews are some of the most detailed honest and accurate reviews out there. Now granite he is in no way an action sports filmer and not everything he says aplies to that... but he is certainly not an idiot, he does a lot of good for the community.
Hi Jake
Here's my two cents:
Philip Bloom's reputation as a camera reviewer and industry figure precede him. The guy is utilizing the internet in the very way that it should be: providing free empirical content to lubricate the channels of commerce and art. Talk about a sweet deal. Has there ever been a better time to be a self-taught artist?
The problem is that he is perhaps unfairly judged by the superficiality of his followers. Pixel peeping is inherent in his task. The entire point of his reviews is to do just that - to put to test the validity of the reported specs of a camera (many companies, namely Canon, are known to essentially lie about their specs). In my opinion he does this fairly gracefully. Not long after his site started gaining momentum, he noticed his followers' inability to step back and see the context of pixel peeping. Now in every review he emphasizes (in bold letters) that
cameras are only tools, and that their specs are only a measure of internal economy in enabling the operator to perform unimpeded. If anyone doesn't know what I mean by that, let me know and I'd be happy to explain.
Camera reviews are all well and good, but the inexperienced consumer is not able to contextualize the information appropriately. Many of his viewers have this ludicrous notion in their heads that better specs => better images. Anybody who done this long enough knows that this is a damn foolish thing to believe (within reason, of course).
The unseen variable in all this is, of course, how a camera performs in a working environment (notice how I didn't say "professional"). This of any other art form and their respective tools: A paint brush extends the movements of the hand almost flawlessly with no interruption of dexterity. Make a mistake? Good luck convincing someone it was the brush's fault. A guitar's ability to resolve a chord depends on the player's ability to apply consistent pressure across the strings, and to strum each of the six strings with varying amounts of force so that each string's harmonic frequencies do not overbear the others' with transients. Again, this is entirely in the hands of the user. That is why it is called an
instrument. It is nothing more than the projection of one's muscles, neurons, and creativity. This is where Leica gets its prestige - not because of some exclusive feature that only the Germans have invented - but because of how the instrument performs unfalteringly in its environment. Almost nobody emphasizes the importance of this variable. Bloom touches down on it, but in my opinion he grossly skims over it. We have 4K slog handheld cameras using non-locking connectors and impractical baseplates that rotate no matter how much you tighten them, and nobody is asking questions because hey - 4K absolves everything, right? Put the camera on the ground, tell it to make art, and go get some lunch.
What irks me about camera culture is that with its democratization, you have a massive population of new people who fail to see the gear for what they are: instruments. These people do not yet have the hours of blood, sweat, and tears poured into the craft to understand its nuance and subtleties, and instead rely on a cheap metric (specs) to quantify that which they cannot possibly understand yet (can you blame them? We've all been there at some point.) The market is catering to this rapidly growing demographic, and in the past 10 years I've seen a huge change in the overall attitude of its cohorts.
Make of this what you will. The best digital video footage I've ever seen was from a DVX100b on a CRT TV, or a GH2, Voigtlander prime, and natural lighting. All this octocopter RED EPIC night vision garbage isn't impressing me, and with each new gimmick that arises every NAB, I spend a disproportionate amount of time hiding Facebook statuses from people raving about some new feature that is both revolutionary and useless.
