Creative acts can differ notably depending on the tool one has on hand. The other day I was walking down the street, after leaving a physical therapy session for my chronic back problems (the matter becomes relevant as we shall see shortly). While walking down the street, the image just as we see in the above right struck my eye.

The camera that I was carrying in my pocket was my iPhone, which even though it does not take photos at more than 2 megapixels in the model that I have (the new iPhone S can shoot images at 3 megapixels), these photos are good enough for most things we present on the internet. Another one of the things worth mentioning is that the idea of a format of certain dimensions so much part of the analog era, in which film came basically in two sizes, 35 mm (a measurement based on the fact that the film was mostly produced for the movie industry) and 6 x 6 centimeters. Of course there were some cameras that could take a half frame in one roll or another. But the width was indeed fairly standard. The point is that in the digital era, all of this has changed. Now each manufacturer can decide on the size of its sensor. It’s as if each manufacturer of photographic equipment in the analog era decided on the dimensions of the film for their camera.

So, I tend to carry my iPhone around with me all the time, since this telephone/camera is so light, as opposed to lugging around a traditional camera all the time with all the weight it entails. I take the other cameras “out for a walk” for specific things that I intend to photograph, and then I have to make plans to carry the weight of that camera and its lenses. I had to get used to this to deal with my back problems.

In this case, I chose the Sony Alpha 900, because it has a complete 35 mm sensor, so it captures a total of 25 million pixels. This camera is wonderful for me, except for the fact that the lens that I have for this camera weighs a ton. The lens is a Sony Carl Zeiss Vario-Sonnar. It has a 24 to 70 mm zoom and a continuous aperture of 2.8.

The weight of this lens is commensurate with its quality. In all my years as a photographer, I have never used a lens that has the luminosity and tonal quality of this lens and not only that, also the definition. In the reviews that I then read on the internet, I discovered to my great surprise, that more or less the same conclusion was reached by a good number of people. The lens reached them through certain twists of fate, and then they realized that this lens was the best they had ever used on any camera. I warn you that the lens is not cheap, but its quality has no rivals.

In the image above, one can see the quality of the photo, and it’s not by chance given that the purpose of each of these cameras is extremely different. On the one hand, the equivalent of an artist who carries his sketchbook to take notes is what I propose to do with the iPhone, and the finished work is done with the maximum quality with the other camera. Needless to say in photography, this is not always possible, to the extent that the supposed decisive moment has already passed, and it is impossible to repeat it.

Pedro Meyer
Coyoacan, Mexico City
July 10, 2009

http://zonezero.com/magazine/articles/meyer5/index.php