Imperfection is Character

Digital camera technology has marched on to distances people never would have imagined. State of the art mirrorless cameras can almost flawlessly capture high resolution stills from miles away, get colors so accurate, and do all of this in incredibly small profiles. Today's cameras are tack sharp and have color that sometimes feels more accurate than our own eyes; they're perfect. We're sick of them, though. We want grain, inaccurate colors, and other quirks that arise from imperfect cameras.

The sharpness of a high quality digital camera, while technically accurate, leaves something on the table for the rest of us. There’s a certain comfort that comes from the noise and softness of lower quality sensors. The texture yields tactility that makes these imperfect cameras feel more authentic. Despite the reduced fidelity, this style is so desirable that you'll often see people add grain effects during post-processing to get rid of the clinical look that ultra sharp cameras have.

Modern cameras can reliably and accurately capture color. In newscasts or documentaries, what we see on screen is almost exactly what others saw in person. While this again is useful in certain contexts, there's a more compelling and human style that comes from slightly inaccurate colors. Stylized coloring imparts an artistic tinge on what's been captured that simply isn't present when optimizing for accuracy alone. It's almost funny. After all of the developments in digital color technology, we still want shifted colors reminiscent of film photography at the end of the day.

Our desire for imperfection extends beyond the camera sensor or body, itself. Some chase vintage lenses, others live by film photography. Obscure and eccentric camera systems like GoPros with CCTV lenses or 3D printed cameras have niche communities built around them. This isn't because these are ultra high quality systems, rather it's because they produce unique captures with characteristics that are hard to find in other systems: they have character.

As cameras continue their relentless march toward technical perfection, our tastes have quietly moved in the opposite direction. The very sharpness, accuracy, and fidelity we once chased now feel sterile at times, prompting us to reintroduce mild imperfections like grain and color shifts to recover a sense of texture and humanity. As was alluded, imperfection isn’t a flaw to be corrected but a quality that invites emotion, interpretation, and authenticity into an image. Whether through noisy sensors, inaccurate color science, or eccentric lenses and homemade systems, these limitations give photos and videos a voice of their own. Perfection can document the world exactly as it is, but imperfection transforms it into something felt. That transformation—those quirks we refuse to let go of—is character.