Commons:Categories for discussion/2025/07/Category:Photographs by camera
Categories are suppose to have some actual relation to what's being depicted in the images that they are added to, not just be stores of trivial information. 99% of the time there is no actual difference between an image taken with camera model to the next. Perhaps different brands, but most people would be hard pressed to say what camera model or brand any given photograph was taken with. Let alone if it a Crosscall Action-X3 versus a Crosscall Action-X3. More so since any differences in the images could be due to the settings, lighting, or any number of other things that have absolutely nothing what-so-ever to do with the camera.
It's not like the information isn't available in the EXIF information and structured data anyway. It's pointless to have a category system around it though. Categories exit to help people sort and find photographs. These categories do nothing to aid them in that. If anything they just it that much harder because it presents a weird problem where the images are intermixed into categories for cameras when they aren't images of said cameras to begin with. Like Category:Crosscall Action-X3 just contains Category:Taken with Crosscall Action-X3. Know one looking for images of Crosscall Action-X3s want images taken with the cell phone. They want actual images of the cell phone. So the files in these categories should be removed and they should be deleted. Adamant1 (talk) 12:51, 14 July 2025 (UTC)
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Comment - a couple of the subcategories for unusual types of cameras like Category:Photographs taken with thermal imaging cameras might be worth keeping, but I agree that most of these categories are not useful. (On the other hand, there was some pushback against removing other technical categories at Commons:Categories for discussion/2024/09/Photographs by technical parameters.) Omphalographer (talk) 00:03, 15 July 2025 (UTC)
- @Omphalographer: It looks like there's also Category:Thermal images. So I guess the question would be if there's thermal images that A. Aren't photographs and/or B. Aren't taken with cameras. Maybe, but I can't find any examples. So assuming one of the categories is pointless, Category:Thermal images seems like the clearer of the two. --Adamant1 (talk) 12:58, 15 July 2025 (UTC)
Keep A related previous discussion (Commons:Categories for discussion/2024/09/Photographs by technical parameters) resulted in an unanimous vote to keep categories such as these. And while I didn't participate in the discussion linked, it's an opinion I share as well. --ReneeWrites (talk) 09:45, 19 November 2025 (UTC)
Not done: Has been discussed and decided on Commons:Categories for discussion/2024/09/Photographs by technical parameters. --MB-one (talk) 14:43, 22 January 2026 (UTC)