The Weird World of Pixel Peepers

Being Creative

Despite the .dev in the URL, I refer to myself as a creative developer, for reasons that go beyond code. My first proper creative pursuit was music. Guitar, specifically. In the years since, I've picked up more creative pastimes than I know what to do with. I'm always dreaming up shit I can be creative with. I can't help it. It's a bit annoying, honestly.

No, really. I couldn't sleep one night because I was thinking about developing a game. It consumed me. I've never developed a game before in my life, and there I was, tossing and turning, thinking of a game about cats. That ain't right, is it?

Nah, it's actually all good. Can't complain. Being creative is a fun and rewarding thing to pursue, even when it steals your sleep.

But on the topic of creativity, hobbies, niches, and whatever else, social media brings out some weird people. Sometimes wonderful. Sometimes woeful. I'm looking at you, Reddit. Not exclusively. But holy moly, it brings out the latter.

Yikes.

They might be a necessary pain though. Let me explain.

The new A7R VI

I was checking out some new camera gear, as I like to do. I'm brand agnostic, I think, though that's hard to maintain once lenses get involved. Committing to a mount usually means committing to a brand, unless you go L mount, where you've actually got options. Anyhoo. I was looking at the latest and greatest Sony, who I use for professional work mainly, and the topic of the new A7R VI was hot on the socials.

It was being debated forcefully online, by the usual types. It really takes the joy out of it. Reading someone complain about a hyper niche issue like it's personal, how dare Sony abandon them in their time of need, now here's their open letter, their divorce papers, "I'm moving to Canon". It's exhausting. Like anyone from Sony is reading this shit. Just mugs like me.

Defending a multi industry conglomerate would be weird, so I'm not going to do that. That said, I am, slightly. Have we forgotten what we're actually shooting? Are we more interested in the technical result than the composition now? We used to shoot on stuff like 35mm film. Beautiful, characterful, pleasant and flawed. Limited to 24 or 36 exposures, waiting sometimes weeks for the results, only to find out most of them didn't work. That was all part of the process.

Now brands like Sony are pushing 66.8 megapixel sensors with a fucking AI chip stuffed inside. I'm impressed. I'm also disappointed, somehow, both at once. This is the future. Dystopian. No, wait, sorry. Utopian. Actually, no, sorry again. Just meh. Tell me most tech releases don't make you sleepy these days. I'm bored, boss.

The Reddit User

I've been a photographer for years, a professional one too, so I'm not talking through the hole in my arse. I think what Sony's made is fantastic, and I'd love to own one. But calm down. That's all I ask.

Take the wedding photographer who insists on sharing every best image they get on r/sony-mirrorless. Week after week. I don't even like weddings as it is, please stop. That picture of Sara and Ben's wedding you shot? Could've been taken on a mirrorless from eight years ago. I'm not judging your talent, just your justification. They can't see the difference. The slight chromatic aberration. The noise. The softness. Whatever you can think of, unless the shutter didn't open, most people wouldn't care.

Sara was more concerned about the seat covers than her own guests, and whether the little bows were fastened correctly. That's a real reference, from a wedding we actually filmed. Ben just wanted to get drunk, and maybe get lucky. It's tradition, isn't it?

The quality, the sharpness, the colour accuracy, whatever justified the price of the mirrorless you just bought, none of it matters to them. So why else did you buy it? Just because you can? If so, good for you. But does anyone actually care?

I do. I care to read what you have to say, even if it pains me.

Why the pixel peepers matter

I care when it's a cost cutting measure, or a gimmick dressed up as a feature. Popular move in the tech world lately. That's when I think pixel peepers, as they're lovingly referred to, play an important role. Thanks to their nerdiness, they keep the camera manufacturers accountable.

So thank you, Reddit user, for your insightful post about how sharp the A7R VI is at 500x zoom, or how the phase detection stumbles in extreme low light that even my cats would struggle to see in. Without your review, we'd be blind to it. And I mean that. Ever looked at the big retailers' or manufacturers' reviews? All "verified." The verified purchase badges usually come from post purchase incentives, just leave us a review and you could win a thousand bucks. Those normie reviews don't hold any merit. Have you ever actually trusted one? I haven't.

And honestly, I wouldn't put it past some of these people to be that petty about a battery. Sony's swapped out the old NP-FZ100 for something new, a proper upgrade too, more capacity, better management, the works. Costs about $180 AUD. Which, sure, is not nothing. But you've just dropped several grand on the camera it powers. Somewhere out there is a grown adult more upset about the $180 battery than the several thousand dollar body it lives in, purely because it means retiring a shelf of spares they already own. Nobody is running a troll farm to seed that specific a grievance. That kind of pointlessness, deeply niche annoyance? That's proof of life.

So this is why, to the pixel peepers of Reddit, or YouTube, or whatever flavour of social media you're on, (which if any of them did have a taste, it would have to be of shit, right?), thank you. Thank you for sharing your review online.

Ok so Reddit then

So does this mean I can trust Reddit?

Fuck no.

Reddit is a cesspit of bots and paid advertisers running fake reviews. Generally it's the negativity that shines a light on the real review worth paying attention to. Not always, but often. I wouldn't put it past a brand to sabotage a competitor's launch with fake problems planted in the comments. I think that happens more than we'd like to admit. So when I read or watch a review, and it comes across a little too optimistic, a little too clean, it gives me this uncanny feeling.

The tell, it turns out, is never the positivity. It's the pettiness. The wasted energy on something nobody asked about. A grown man refusing a battery on principle is more convincing than five star reviews ever will be, because nobody would bother faking that.

So I guess we need to suffer the pettiness until we have a more trusted system. Thanks Reddit.