Snap Happy

I'm not a camera person, but two photographers I work with - Andy Freeberg and Scott Schuman (better known as The Sartorialist) happen, coincidentally, to both use the Canon 5d. So I can vouch for this camera wholeheartedly having seen the results.

It sells for about $2,000 - which is the entry level price for a digital camera where the lens and the chip line up so you get exactly what you see. Freeberg has enlarged his pictures to 50" x 60" with no appreciable loss of quality. They look like pictures taken with a view camera. The Sartorialist's pictures not only reveal every hair on the heads of his subjects but employ an extremely shallow depth of field (where only one area of the picture is in focus) something that has until recently evaded digital photography.


Freeberg's shots of Chelsea gallery front desks (above) were the talk of the season with their deadpan revelation of the manners and convention of the art world. Meanwhile, The Sartorialist (below) who has already taken the blogosphere by storm, is set to take on the photography world when he shows his work at Danziger Projects this coming January. (Unavoidable plug - sorry.) Given the difference in their work and point of view, it is amazing to think Freeberg and Schuman use the same camera, but it once again proves how photography is not about equipment, but about ideas and having an original and worthwhile point of view.