Good enough...for what?

I shoot a lot of old digicams for fun, but I also get a lot of actual work done with cameras that are technically obsolete.

Gettin' paid with a D7100 (upper left) and a 40D (lower right) in 2022.

When cameras stopped being light-tight boxes with a strip of photosensitive chemicals on a substrate and became light-sensing computers, they fell victim to Moore's Law.

Through the final decades of the film era, it was entirely conceivable that a working photographer could have used the same camera for decades, if not a whole career. While photojournalism, sports, nature, and that sort of photography naturally gravitated to motor drives, autofocus, and other advances as they matured in the Nineties, there's no reason that someone couldn't have soldiered through their entire career in product photography, landscapes, fine art, et cetera, with the same gear they'd always used.

Meanwhile in the digital era it was not uncommon for people to upgrade every three or four years.

While there has been a massive upgrade in capabilities, at what point is it good enough? And good enough for what? Or who?

I got to thinking about that while reading a recent piece by Thom Hogan:

I've written about "good enough" before, but I realize that I haven't pointed out the real problem with "good enough": it's a time-sensitive, subjective analysis based solely upon how well trained and experienced you are. Moreover, since we're talking about seeing things with our eyes, your eyesight also comes into play.

This is an entirely foreign notion of "good enough" to me.

My flippant and cynical response is "I know it's good enough when I see it in the magazine and the check clears" but that's just being snarky. I mean, if you're comparing lenses, sensors, monitors, et cetera, you need some sort of standards, and sharpness and color reproduction are things that are quantifiable.

On the other hand, this photo isn't super sharp at the corners and people are going to remember who Henri Cartier-Bresson was long after they've forgotten anybody currently blogging or vlogging or social media influencing about photography.

My photos are good enough for me if they convey the image I need them to convey. The camera or lens are practically incidental, so long as they're physically capable of capturing that image.

Huck expresses his opinion of meaningless increments of precision to a Nikon Coolpix P7000

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