Here’s a good one. Things are accepted. They are accepted because they are in common usage or they are observed as ‘the way it is’ …
… but that doesn’t make them right. The difference between accepted and acceptable.
Let me give you an example. The majority of drivers on the M25 drive in a certain way. The best way to describe this is … ‘badly’ … but it is accepted by the other drivers as ‘the norm’ so they all (mostly) do the same. They ‘fall in’ with what’s going on around them. It doesn’t make it right though.
Here’s another one. One often hears a word mis-pronounced. The fact that the mispronunciation is used so frequently and so widely, convinces the users that it is indeed correct. Convinced or not, they are wrong to exactly the same extent as they would be if the error was isolated. An example is … ‘nuclear’. It’s pronounced as it is written but it is so commonly mis-pronounced … nu-cue-ler … !
Poor grammar is accepted too … “more sweeter” for example instead of correctly “more sweet” or “sweeter”. It’s as common as breathing … doesn’t make it any more correct though.
Now let’s consider a photographic example. What is the easy thing for a photographer to do for his client? A somewhat sweeping question, I know, but I’m referring to shooting Jpegs. There’s a big difference between shooting Jpegs and making Jpegs from a finished ‘non-Jpeg’ file and presenting that to your client. Let me explain to those who may not know what I am wittering on about.
The two most important reasons why one shouldn’t expose the shot straight to Jpeg are firstly, the finished image will only be the camera manufacturer’s representation, and secondly, if that file is not the one the photographer intends to present to the client, it will have to be ‘worked on’ and Jpegs shouldn’t be worked on. It degrades them. There is however one reason why ‘off camera Jpegs’ are presented to clients. They’re quicker and require no effort. They’re not better … they’re worse!
The most common solution is invariably not the best choice. Just because it’s the ‘norm’ doesn’t make it right …