“Wait, some days ago you just told that resolution and dynamic range were important, are you crazy?”
Let’s start saying that I’m not crazier than any of you (or I like to think that), and yes, resolution and dynamic range are important for the following aspects:
Give you more flexibility at retouch. Maybe you need to get better at retouching tools, but the spectrum is there.
Informing your client about the quality they get, will increase their opinion on you. Is like if you sell something and they know that they can’t get anything better, that makes them feel special.
Ensure your pictures will look good for a longer time with technology updates. I expect to see 11k TVs with 10-12 bit color in the next 10 years. Don’t you like as a photographer to show to your family your latest vacations? (jump to minute 1 to get the reference)
Not giving the maximum you can at any point, specially on areas that don’t require things like fast focus or fast return time for the pictures, is what drove me write the previous entry, sentences like “your customers don’t care”, are just unacceptable to me.
You don’t need high resolution or dr
This is simpler than you may think.
When buying a product puts you in a precarious situation, your rent and bills are more important than those ten extra megapixels.
When your investment in a system puts you behind your competency if you switch.
When your profession needs extra things that high resolution/dr systems don’t bring to the table, for example, wildlife or sports.
When you are travelling and don’t want or can carry a medium format/large format system in your bags.
When you work from a company and they only need images at a certain resolution for their publications.
When you don’t have a way to keep all the files and only store jpegs.
That’s a lot of reasons, yes, and I’m missing a lot more of why you are better staying with your system, or doing small incremental upgrades than moving into digital medium format and at the same time, recognizing its benefits and problems. Just please, let’s stop saying “they don’t need it” and give the best that we can.
Give the most you can
The point I keep coming back to is simple. Deciding for your client that they do not need quality is not humility, it is laziness dressed up as pragmatism. A client cannot ask for detail they do not know exists, so the responsibility sits with the photographer to deliver the best the situation allows and let the work speak. If a headshot only ever lives at thumbnail size on a profile, fine, but the day that person needs it printed on a banner or a magazine page, the file either holds up or it does not, and that decision was made at capture, long before anyone knew it mattered.
There is a middle ground that gets lost in these arguments. You do not need the most expensive medium format system to do good work, and chasing gear you cannot afford is its own mistake. But within whatever system you already own, giving less than it can do is a choice, and it is usually the wrong one. Expose properly, focus carefully, keep the raw files, and you leave the door open for uses you cannot predict yet. That costs nothing but attention. The phrase I cannot stand, the one that started all of this, is that your customers do not care. They care the moment the limitation shows up in something they paid for.