It’s funny how the world has changed, lol. Back when I was using my Tecno Spark 4, I vividly remember that the only reason I bought that phone was for the camera. For one, it was the trending phone. My classmates would hail me for using such an expensive and high-quality device. Everyone wanted to borrow it to take pictures.
I remember that Christmas, my family and I went out just to have fun.
I took this one picture of my brother, and for him, it was the photo of the year.
Fast forward to last year, I reposted that same photo for his birthday. And this boy looked at it and asked,
“Was it POS we used to snap this picture?”
Can you imagine?! Lmao.
Back in my Facebook celebrity era too, my pictures were the talk of the town. It was me and my Spark 4 camera against the world. Then boom, the iPhones came. And just like that, it turned out the pictures really did look like they were snapped with a POS machine 😭.
These days, I cannot appreciate a photo with bad quality. As someone who’s deeply into photo and video editing, I take resolution very seriously. It’s extremely important to ensure the quality doesn’t get lost during the editing process.
When I shoot videos, I always set my camera to 1080P, never HD. HD gives you clarity, yes, but clarity over sharpness while shooting is a recipe for disaster. Eventually, it becomes messy to work with during editing.
There was this one time I worked on a videography gig for a brand, and one of the CEO’s friends kept insisting I shoot in smart HDR. I had to break it down to them, Smart HDR isn't for every type of video. Unless you want contrast to overpower your hues and ruin your entire aesthetic, you don’t want that. Not to mention how horrible it becomes in post-production.
So for me, the raw process of shooting a video or snapping a picture is just as important as editing. That’s why it’s not just about the device, even the lighting, angles, and environment all matter. All of that effort is
just to get the highest quality I possibly can. That’s how much it means to me.
In fact, I cannot and will never watch movies in low resolution.
Okay, two examples;
First: I wanted to download Mufasa: The Lion King. There were three versions: 300MB, 650MB, and 1 GB. Of course, I picked the 1GB version. Why? Because watching pixels masquerading as images really irritates my brain.
Second: I was watching this Achalugo movie on YouTube using Glo Network, and as you probably know, that network is not exactly the blueprint for stable internet. It started off great, clear and smooth. Then, as anticipated, the resolution dropped.
Did I waste time? Nope. I immediately switched to my MTN SIM, just to watch that movie in peace. That’s how serious I am about this quality matter, lol.
And then... WhatsApp. Honestly, I don’t even have the words. I feel like WhatsApp and media files have beef. The app sees a beautiful image or high-quality video and says,
“You? Come here. Let me ruin your life real quick.”
When I discovered that WhatsApp had added an option to send media in HD? Gosh, I was so happy. But that joy didn’t last long. I quickly realized the “HD” still compresses the quality, it’s nowhere near sending the media as a document. And the worst part? The HD option isn’t even available for status uploads 😩.
So yeah, I’ve learned to live with the fact that media quality reduces per share, not just on WhatsApp, but even during simple phone-to-laptop transfers.
But if I can help it? Best believe I’ll use every single trick up my sleeve to make sure my photo keeps its full essence everywhere it goes.
