This isn’t ancient history. We only have to go back to around 2015, say, the year when the Nikon D7200 was launched and perhaps the high water mark of beginner and enthusiast photography. The Nikon APS-C lens range was extensive and mostly inexpensive and the Canon APS-C DSLR scene was equally vigorous.

The best cameras for beginners were APS-C models back then, as were most of the best cameras for enthusiasts.

Sure, professionals would be looking at the best full frame cameras instead, but they were much more expensive and APS-C cameras were, for hobbyists, just as versatile and backed up by just as many lenses. You could build a serious system around an APS-C camera.

And then mirrorless happened.

Did mirrorless cameras kill APS-C?

Not directly, but they did change the way the two biggest makers approached the market. Sure, they embraced mirrorless technology and launched APS-C mirrorless cameras to take over from their old-tech DSLR models.

But did they launch proper ‘systems’ to go with them? Canon’s EOS M range looks largely dead in the water today and has barely a dozen native EF-M lenses – compare that with the dozens available for its EF-S DSLR cameras. Replacing the EOS M series, Canon’s RF-S cameras (including the new $600 EOS R100) have even fewer lenses made specifically for this smaller format, and it doesn’t look as if there will ever be anything like the optical diversity for these APS-C cameras that we once took for granted.

Things are no better at Nikon. Like Canon, it’s launched its own APS-C (DX) format mirrorless cameras, but barely a handful of native Nikkor Z DX lenses to go with them.

Yes, both sets of cameras can use full-frame lenses from the larger full-frame cameras in their respective ranges, but that doesn’t help with standard and wide-angle lens choice. It’s also an expensive workaround.

These two companies were once the biggest names in beginner/enthusiast APS-C camera market, but in a few short years their APS-C systems have effectively been left to wither away. And what have they been replaced with? Cameras, yes, systems, no. When there are as many cameras in an interchangeable lens system as there are lenses, something’s clearly wrong.

Of course, cameras like the Canon EOS R50 and R10, the Nikon Z50 and Z fc, do give new users a first step into the Canon RF and Nikon Z camera systems, and if they later upgrade to a full frame model, then all these lens problems go away. 

And if that’s actually the plan, it’s a pretty cynical one.

Hurrah for Fujifilm and Sony (and Pentax)

At least Fujifilm and Sony still take APS-C seriously (and a shout out to Pentax, too). Fujifilm is clearly committed to its APS-C lens system, and the same goes for Sony. It’s true that Sony’s full frame cameras and lenses get the lion’s share of development these days, but Sony still plugs away with its APS-C system with occasional camera and lens launches that continue to make this a convincing and complete camera system for those who don’t want to go full frame.

But let’s just go back to 2015, when you could get a decent APS-C beginner DSLR for around $500/£400 and know that there were dozens of lenses out there to go with it and at sensible prices. What wouldn’t we give to have those days back?

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Yes, that’s right. A photography composite isn’t a photograph. It never was. We were just calling it that for most of history. We’ve never called a bunch of paintings put together a single painting: we called it a collage. Other art forms are similar in that it’s impossible to combine a bunch of things to form a single unit. We can’t do that with pottery, woodworking, drawing, glass blowing, etc. A finalized plate of food is called a dish and only really becomes a dish after processing and combining several things together. When different songs are combined, they’re labeled as remixes to signify that it’s different from the original. So why isn’t it that way for photographers? Well, there’s a lot that goes into the making of a photograph.

To put it bluntly, compositors, for years, have tried to market themselves as photographers and sometimes fail at it. So that could be a part of it. But let’s delve into the more realistic answers.

Moment

When you’re taking a photograph, the moment is a massive part of it. In fact, it’s probably the most essential part of storytelling. You’re sometimes capturing a moment. An example of this is a bird catching some prey. Another fantastic moment is the viral image that went around during the Black Lives Matter protests. These specifically have important moments that are real, organic, and that have actually happened.

Let’s put this into more context. If you took the nicely dressed woman in the viral image along with the cops out of the scene that they’re in, the moment would be gone. The reason why is that we’re clearly in a particular place that makes the moment happen. Indeed, the act of making Photoshop composites ruins the moment.

When you create those images using AI, it’s not making a moment. It’s simply creating something based on the cues you’re giving it from your imagination. Those photos genuinely lack a real, human moment.

Subject

With Photoshop composites, there’s usually a subject or a few of them. But those subjects often also have organic importance to the rest of the scene. They can be seen as collaborators. A portrait subject can be molded by you easily into whatever pose you want, or they can improvise. The clouds in the sky can do whatever they want when you’re shooting a landscape. Sometimes, they might cover the sun, while at other times, they’ll let it shine through. You can organically get this with photography but not with Photoshop composites.

Gear

A large number of photographers say that gear doesn’t matter in photography. But it indeed does. I can’t capture the moment that a runner crosses the finish line in the same way with an a9 series camera that I can with a large format camera. The gear dictates how you shoot. This, in turn, can affect the moment, the way the subject is perceived and can affect how the photographer thinks.

Like it or not, the gear really matters here. And if you’re making Photoshop composites, the equipment doesn’t really matter. This is because you’re simply pulling photos from a ton of places and then working with them to create a collage.

Some cameras from OM System and Panasonic have a feature called Live Composite. I’ve used it many times to photograph stars above NYC. In this case, you’re making a composite; but there’s a specific creative vision that’s happening live in front of you in-camera. You’re arguably capturing a ton of moments and having the camera blend them together. This is the creation of a photograph rather than a photoshop composite.

The Importance of the Photographer

The photographer’s creative vision is very important to making a photograph. But the photographer’s creative vision disappears when you’re making a photoshop composite. At that point, you’re not shooting a photograph. You’re blending a bunch of stuff together to make a composite. A great example of this are all the photos we see of the stars in the sky above places in the desert or the city.

With a composite, there’s a creative vision, but it’s being falsely created. With that said, lots of astrophotography and star trails are composites done in photoshop or otherwise using different software. They’re not photographs. Crazy, right? The same applies to sky replacement, background replacement, etc. You’re making a composite, and not a photograph.

A: Keep it simple! Remember, you are the star of the show, not your clothing. Choose outfits that fit well and avoid tight tops or jackets that squeeze you. Loose blouses or shirts don’t translate well in headshots, so opt for tailored clothing. Avoid patterns that are too large or distracting. Small, appropriate jewelry is fine, but avoid big earrings and necklaces unless they are part of your personal brand. Stick to simple, neutral colors and avoid overly bright shirts. Pay attention to your collar choice—crisp collars look great, while loose collars can give a more casual or sloppy appearance. If you wear a tie, make sure it’s straight.

The Japanese photographer Nobuyoshi Araki met the love of his life, Aoki Yoko, in Tokyo in 1968 at the advertising agency at which they both worked. After a three-year romance, they married and in celebration Araki published his first book, Sentimental Journey. The pictures in the book – including this shot of Yoko on a dreamy boat trip with her lover – were a startlingly intimate portrait of their early relationship and their wedding and honeymoon. Araki called his practice I-photography, referencing the Japanese tradition of the confessional I-novel. Though his camera dwelt on his wife and muse, it was Araki’s way of seeing, his insider’s vantage, that the viewer was invited to share.

Araki, now 83, subsequently published dozens of books and became infamous for his erotic pictures, in particular his obsessive and sometimes disturbing interest in kinbaku, or rope bondage. His series about Yoko – included in a New York exhibition, Love Songs, conceived as a compilation gifted to a lover – suggests a more tender kind of looking. “It is thanks to Yoko that I became a photographer,” Araki always says.

Yoko died of ovarian cancer in 1990, and her husband published Winter Journey as a companion volume to the first book, chronicling with equal honesty his wife’s illness and her death. A third series of pictures, Sentimental Sky, was an attempt to photograph Yoko’s absence in their apartment and in his life. In the context of that later work, this image also takes on a kind ghostly quality, prefiguring the pictures Araki took of his wife adrift in her flower-filled coffin. Looking back at this image, he has noted the ways in which it has taken on a life of its own: “It is like crossing the Sanzu River in the afterlife, isn’t it? And there’s kind of a foetal look to it. It’s mysterious – [though] I didn’t really mean to be like that…”

• Love Songs: Photography and Intimacy is at the International Center of Photography, New York, from 2 June to 11 September