This one’s a bit of inside baseball. IYKYK, so to speak.

I’m getting sick of hearing about all these mythical so-called “full-frame” digital sensor cameras. For anyone not in the know, the term refers to a standard size of sensor based on 135 film. We used to call that 35mm, based on the diagonal measurement of the frame, 36mm wide by 24mm high. It’s been some time since I had to use any of my high-school math, but if you know the formula for calculating diagonals, (the constant β figures in there somewhere), you can see how that number came to be.

So plenty of cameras these days use that 35mm frame as their sensor size. And plenty of others use smaller ones. The smaller ones tend to have various designations decided on by camera manufacturers’ marketing departments: APS-C and APS-H, four-thirds, micro four-thirds, 1-inch, 2/3”, etc. You can google it to see how they compare. Note how none of these sensor sizes are described according to the actual physical sensor dimensions . Like much of what marketing departments come up with, that obfuscation is by design.

35mm isn’t the largest frame size. In the world of film it’s rather lilliputian. Even among digital sensors, it’s not the largest. I own two digital cameras, one of which contains one of the largest digital sensors you can purchase as a civilian. The other has a 35mm sensor. Both are great cameras, both do things that the other can’t, and they both continue to bring me joy when I use them. But the idea that the 35mm sensor is a “full” frame – that it’s the largest there could possibly be – is patently and demonstrably ridiculous.

So where did this notion of a 35mm frame being “full” even come from, you might ask. The answer to that hearkens back to those very same camera marketing departments, back at the turn of the 21st century, when digital cameras were just beginning to appear in the market. Among early digital single-lens reflex cameras, most (though not all) used sub-35mm sensors, but they were built to use lenses designed for 35mm film cameras, since a good many photographers already had those lenses at hand. Those lenses were made to project an image circle large enough to cover a 35mm frame (with a little to spare, to account for any vignetting at the edges). Since these newfangled digital sensors were only using a small portion of the projected image, they were designated “crop” sensors. It would be a number of years before camera manufacturers began making lenses designed to create  smaller projected image circles to specifically fit these “crop” sensors. And was a few years longer before they built cameras with larger sensors that could fully take advantage of the old lenses – 35mm sensors, in other words.

Marketing departments being what they are, they decided they needed a way to differentiate between sensor sizes in cameras. They already had “crop” sensors. They needed to create another term to describe the 35mm-sized sensor cameras. A term that could instill a bit of FOMO. Thus, “full-frame”, with all its associations of superiority and professionalism. Not to mention the professional price tag: early 35mm DSLRs weren’t cheap.

So why do I hate the term? For the same reason I hate “professional photographer” – it’s pretentious as fuck. It’s also silly in implying that there can’t possibly be any larger sensor size. I should know, after all.

Frankly, the term is stupid, and for the sake of clarity and honesty, the photography world really needs to ditch it.

I’ve been asked a few times over the years why I don’t call myself a “professional” photographer. There are two reasons for this.



One reason is that – in Canada at least – the term “professional” carries a legal definition: it implies that there is a governing body made up of one’s peers that is tasked with determining curriculum for training, issuing licenses, setting standards for the quality of service and conduct, and taking punitive or corrective action should those standards fail to be met. Doctors, lawyers, dentists, pilots and real estate agents all have this.



There is no such body in Canada for photographers. Anybody – literally anybody – can become a photographer just by saying they are. You don’t need a degree. You don’t need a license. You don’t even need a camera.



The other reason is that the term insinuates a certain status that can be lorded over others. Instead of calling myself a “professional” photographer, I prefer the term “commercial”. All that implies is that I do this to make money.



And for the same reasons, I refuse to characterize anyone as an “amateur” photographer. “Hobbyist”, “part-time”, “artist”, “dabbler” or even “aspiring” all work fine, and don’t carry that denigrating implication.



There are photographers who’ve been doing this much longer than me. There are people just getting started. Some make way more money than I do. Some just do it for the love of creating something. Every one of them can freely be called a photographer, and every one of them has worth.

Hi, there.

Welcome to the un-tamed jungle of my thoughts on photography. Given that I’ve been a commercial photographer since all the way back in January of 2010, you might be thinking to yourself, “Geez, Steve, what the hell took you so long to start writing a blog?” And the answer is simple: I wanted to have interesting stories to tell, and interesting stories only come with experience.

I’ll be honest, I gave a lot of thought to what story this first blog post ought to tell. I thought about recounting the time I met and was complimented by Conrad Black. I pondered talking about the time I photographed an astronaut on an airstrip while Armageddon descended around us. I even briefly considered recounting the stories of all the people I’ve photographed who’ve since died. But I decided to save those stories for now, and do a little visual storytelling instead.

Hence,

Full credits:

Model: Nastia K.
H/MUA: Ariana Zhang
Styling & producer: Stefania Mancinelli
BTS video: Morgan Harris
BTS video editing: Sore thumb

Assistant: Barak Falkovitz
Dress: Lea Ann Belter Bridal