Technique/equipment
Feb. 3rd, 2006 10:33 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pecuniumSomeone, in reponse to photo posts, will usually say they don't take pictures as good as "X" because they don't have the fancy equipment.
Sometimes this is true.
In the digital realm, it can be very true. Not only is there's a lot which can be fixed in the digital darkroom (and a lot of program, aside from the various flavors of Photoshop, can be helpful, though in the aggregate they may cost just as much. I use PictureCode's Noise Ninja to clean things up, before I start to play with them) but the sensors have a lot of differnce between them.
But a lot of it has to do with technique.
This is where digital has made a huge change in things. Scale. Ansel Adams scorned the 35mm camera. I agree with his complaint, and also think he missed the point. Adams said the problem with the 35 was that one could shoot an entire roll of film, and just count on one of the frames being good. It offended his sense of craft.
As anyone who has ever played with a 4x5 will tell you, taking a picture with one is an adventure. The image is reversed, and upside down. It's dim (you think you have a hard time telling what something looks like when you chimp the LCD on your camera; that's nothing to the incredibly hard to see details on the ground glass of a view camera. It's why photographers use hoods). Focus is checked with a magnifing glass. Different parts of the camera get shifted to make the focus do just what one wants. (for an example of how one can play with focus in a view camera see The Photos of Olivo Barbieri He's using a lens which has some of the features of a view camera, but on a 35mm camera, which makes it more doable; as he's in a helicopter).
And he was right, lots of people just scattergun the camera and hope for the best.
But, and this is where I think he was wrong, to get better at taking pictures one has to take pictures. Sometimes one needs to take risks. Risks cost money. Adams, when he lived in Yosemite, would plan things. He'd go for walks, ponder the view, consider the light, think about where the sun would be when (and by when he included the season, as well as time of day). Then he'd come back, with his camera and 6 packs of film, three color, three B&W. That meant he had six shots of each.
If one can't "previsualise" the picture (his term) and then do the math (f-stop, shutter speed, extension loss for the distance of bellows to film plane, filter factors, fall-off for tilt and swing; the list can get pretty long) you might as well stay home.
The 35mm format changed all that. With a very few exceptions (one cannon lens, a few Macro attachments for Nikon, most notably the PB-6 bellows, which has limited swing, and shift at the front, this can be converted to tilt and rise by rotating the bellows) none of that can be done. The image area is so small that getting a lens which covers the corners as brightly as the middle is easy (fall-off at the corners is why old photographs are vingetted, the lenses weren't clear enough to be made large enough to throw light all the way across an 8x10 inch area).
So one could shoot with abandon. And with freedom. Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Capa, Eisenstadt, all were able to do what they did because the camera was small, and could be made ready in an instant.
One of the truisms of photography classes is, "film is cheap." And it is, for certain values of cheap. Before I got a digital camera, I shot a lot of film. When I was regularly shooting I shot at least a roll a week. When I was being busy I might average four.
These days... I can shoot about a thousand frames before I have to empty the disks. That's 27 rolls of film.
At an average of $18 per roll (total cost) that's $486.
Assume one perfect picture per roll, and five which are acceptable, that's 162 pictures I can use. It means I spent $3 per picture (cash, not time and effort).
But with the digital camera I can leave out the cash (well, yes and no, there's equipment cost, and software, and the like. Where I could pay someone else to deal with the heavy lifting in the darkroom, digital makes me deal with it myself).
Which means I can shoot. If I have a self-critical eye (or thick enough skin to share with people who can step-up and tell me what they think) I can do what used to be really expensive... take a lot of pictures.
I'm wandering. I had an idea, and it got a little away from me because I mentioned Ansel Adams. Back to the point.
What can one do to maximize the opportnities one has to take a good picture?
It isn't equipment, per se. I took some great (and I mean great, I need to dig those slides out and scan them. Thank God for Kodachrome, I'm not worried about the color, even 20 years on) pictures with my N2000. The N2000 was a camera meant for the amatuer with interest. My father bought it for me when we met (long story, maybe it will be worth telling here, but not now). It cost about $250 back in 1988. No auto-focus (the N2020 had that, and if we'd known it had interchangeable viewscreens that would have justified the extra $40 bucks, but I digress).
It had three programmed modes (Aperture, Program and ProgramS, the last was for shooting action, it went for the higher shutter speeds).
But it trapped light. And I bought some lenses, and I shot film. I shot lots of film.
That's part of it. Shoot.
The other part is, Know your equipment. The hardest part of the D2H has been learnging all the buttons and knobs. I still have to look to do things. I'm set in my ways and my other cameras have, at most, a light meter. This thing has two methods of autofocus (well, more like eight, depending on how I tell it to look at things) three means of metering (well, three means and 12 variations), and all sort of other tricks.
Feh.
Photography is about trapping light.
Lenses corall it, the film stops it. Those photons die, right there, to be reborn in the picture.
Flash helps but stability means more. A wobbly camera shooting a well-lit scene will catch a blurry image.
Tripods are your friend. I have three. A heavy one (about 4 lbs, just adequate for the Hassleblad) a medium one (a tad under three-pounds, good for moderate hiking) and a mini (about five ounces, I love it. It lets me shoot things I can't do otherwise. Lichen on a rock, in the shade, when I have Velvia 100 in the camera and a reading on the meter of 3 seconds... Not a problem. Attach the tripod, hold it onto a rock, set the self-timer and when the camera goes "click" the picture is sharp.
But what about those places the tripods not useful? What about those iffy shots (the rule of thumb is, length of lens/shutter speed. So a 300mm lens ought to be at 1/250th of a second) the ones where you might jiggle, you might not? That rule, of course needs to take a couple of things into consideration. If you have a multi-focus lens (it's a bit of geekery, zoom lenses are for motion pictures. This isn't really the convention anymore, and hasn't been since about the time I started shooting, but hey...) which is long/heavy (like my 75-300 4.5/5.6) you'll want to shoot a little faster, in the mid-range, because the lever arm will make it wobble more. On the other hand a heavier camera body will dampen that a bit. A smaller body will make it worse. Do some testing.
I use the strap. I learned to shoot firearms before I learned to shoot cameras. For obvious reasons having a wobble in the rifle is considered bad.
So we use slings, and tension, and body posture to make the weapon move less.
So too do I with the camera. I run the strap around both triceps, open them until it's snug, leaning them toward my chest; so the strap is pressed against it. I turn so the camera is in the pocket of my left shoulder (cameras are built for righties, sorry) and with my left hand I support the barrel of the lens, on the side away from my shoulder. My right hand provides as little support as I can manage. Stop breathing for a second and press the shutter.
How well does it work? I can usually get at least one slower shutter speed, and some times two.
By way of example.
I took that at 1/125. The day had a moderate breeze, the lens was my 75-300, extended to 200mm.
Here's a
The type is small (and at web resolution isn't that easy to make out) but it can be seen.
So now I'm off to take a shower, catch the bus and join Maia with the dogs, where I will take some pictures and try to get some decent shots of hawks.
Sometimes this is true.
In the digital realm, it can be very true. Not only is there's a lot which can be fixed in the digital darkroom (and a lot of program, aside from the various flavors of Photoshop, can be helpful, though in the aggregate they may cost just as much. I use PictureCode's Noise Ninja to clean things up, before I start to play with them) but the sensors have a lot of differnce between them.
But a lot of it has to do with technique.
This is where digital has made a huge change in things. Scale. Ansel Adams scorned the 35mm camera. I agree with his complaint, and also think he missed the point. Adams said the problem with the 35 was that one could shoot an entire roll of film, and just count on one of the frames being good. It offended his sense of craft.
As anyone who has ever played with a 4x5 will tell you, taking a picture with one is an adventure. The image is reversed, and upside down. It's dim (you think you have a hard time telling what something looks like when you chimp the LCD on your camera; that's nothing to the incredibly hard to see details on the ground glass of a view camera. It's why photographers use hoods). Focus is checked with a magnifing glass. Different parts of the camera get shifted to make the focus do just what one wants. (for an example of how one can play with focus in a view camera see The Photos of Olivo Barbieri He's using a lens which has some of the features of a view camera, but on a 35mm camera, which makes it more doable; as he's in a helicopter).
And he was right, lots of people just scattergun the camera and hope for the best.
But, and this is where I think he was wrong, to get better at taking pictures one has to take pictures. Sometimes one needs to take risks. Risks cost money. Adams, when he lived in Yosemite, would plan things. He'd go for walks, ponder the view, consider the light, think about where the sun would be when (and by when he included the season, as well as time of day). Then he'd come back, with his camera and 6 packs of film, three color, three B&W. That meant he had six shots of each.
If one can't "previsualise" the picture (his term) and then do the math (f-stop, shutter speed, extension loss for the distance of bellows to film plane, filter factors, fall-off for tilt and swing; the list can get pretty long) you might as well stay home.
The 35mm format changed all that. With a very few exceptions (one cannon lens, a few Macro attachments for Nikon, most notably the PB-6 bellows, which has limited swing, and shift at the front, this can be converted to tilt and rise by rotating the bellows) none of that can be done. The image area is so small that getting a lens which covers the corners as brightly as the middle is easy (fall-off at the corners is why old photographs are vingetted, the lenses weren't clear enough to be made large enough to throw light all the way across an 8x10 inch area).
So one could shoot with abandon. And with freedom. Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Capa, Eisenstadt, all were able to do what they did because the camera was small, and could be made ready in an instant.
One of the truisms of photography classes is, "film is cheap." And it is, for certain values of cheap. Before I got a digital camera, I shot a lot of film. When I was regularly shooting I shot at least a roll a week. When I was being busy I might average four.
These days... I can shoot about a thousand frames before I have to empty the disks. That's 27 rolls of film.
At an average of $18 per roll (total cost) that's $486.
Assume one perfect picture per roll, and five which are acceptable, that's 162 pictures I can use. It means I spent $3 per picture (cash, not time and effort).
But with the digital camera I can leave out the cash (well, yes and no, there's equipment cost, and software, and the like. Where I could pay someone else to deal with the heavy lifting in the darkroom, digital makes me deal with it myself).
Which means I can shoot. If I have a self-critical eye (or thick enough skin to share with people who can step-up and tell me what they think) I can do what used to be really expensive... take a lot of pictures.
I'm wandering. I had an idea, and it got a little away from me because I mentioned Ansel Adams. Back to the point.
What can one do to maximize the opportnities one has to take a good picture?
It isn't equipment, per se. I took some great (and I mean great, I need to dig those slides out and scan them. Thank God for Kodachrome, I'm not worried about the color, even 20 years on) pictures with my N2000. The N2000 was a camera meant for the amatuer with interest. My father bought it for me when we met (long story, maybe it will be worth telling here, but not now). It cost about $250 back in 1988. No auto-focus (the N2020 had that, and if we'd known it had interchangeable viewscreens that would have justified the extra $40 bucks, but I digress).
It had three programmed modes (Aperture, Program and ProgramS, the last was for shooting action, it went for the higher shutter speeds).
But it trapped light. And I bought some lenses, and I shot film. I shot lots of film.
That's part of it. Shoot.
The other part is, Know your equipment. The hardest part of the D2H has been learnging all the buttons and knobs. I still have to look to do things. I'm set in my ways and my other cameras have, at most, a light meter. This thing has two methods of autofocus (well, more like eight, depending on how I tell it to look at things) three means of metering (well, three means and 12 variations), and all sort of other tricks.
Feh.
Photography is about trapping light.
Lenses corall it, the film stops it. Those photons die, right there, to be reborn in the picture.
Flash helps but stability means more. A wobbly camera shooting a well-lit scene will catch a blurry image.
Tripods are your friend. I have three. A heavy one (about 4 lbs, just adequate for the Hassleblad) a medium one (a tad under three-pounds, good for moderate hiking) and a mini (about five ounces, I love it. It lets me shoot things I can't do otherwise. Lichen on a rock, in the shade, when I have Velvia 100 in the camera and a reading on the meter of 3 seconds... Not a problem. Attach the tripod, hold it onto a rock, set the self-timer and when the camera goes "click" the picture is sharp.
But what about those places the tripods not useful? What about those iffy shots (the rule of thumb is, length of lens/shutter speed. So a 300mm lens ought to be at 1/250th of a second) the ones where you might jiggle, you might not? That rule, of course needs to take a couple of things into consideration. If you have a multi-focus lens (it's a bit of geekery, zoom lenses are for motion pictures. This isn't really the convention anymore, and hasn't been since about the time I started shooting, but hey...) which is long/heavy (like my 75-300 4.5/5.6) you'll want to shoot a little faster, in the mid-range, because the lever arm will make it wobble more. On the other hand a heavier camera body will dampen that a bit. A smaller body will make it worse. Do some testing.
I use the strap. I learned to shoot firearms before I learned to shoot cameras. For obvious reasons having a wobble in the rifle is considered bad.
So we use slings, and tension, and body posture to make the weapon move less.
So too do I with the camera. I run the strap around both triceps, open them until it's snug, leaning them toward my chest; so the strap is pressed against it. I turn so the camera is in the pocket of my left shoulder (cameras are built for righties, sorry) and with my left hand I support the barrel of the lens, on the side away from my shoulder. My right hand provides as little support as I can manage. Stop breathing for a second and press the shutter.
How well does it work? I can usually get at least one slower shutter speed, and some times two.
By way of example.
I took that at 1/125. The day had a moderate breeze, the lens was my 75-300, extended to 200mm.
Here's a
The type is small (and at web resolution isn't that easy to make out) but it can be seen.
So now I'm off to take a shower, catch the bus and join Maia with the dogs, where I will take some pictures and try to get some decent shots of hawks.
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no subject
Date: 2006-02-03 08:51 pm (UTC)Composing a shot though - that's not just a matter of prediction, it's also a matter of knowing how to adapt composition to a given environment. If you know your equipment well, or if you've had time to compare shooting conditions to final product on new equipment, you can pretty much shoot well within those limitations. I might use Ansel's trick of coming back to a shot at a different time, but I'll hardly complain about not having to use only six shots to get the job done.
If I'm not sure of light levels - I don't generally bother with a meter, and sometimes that bites me - I'll bracket a shot, blowing out a little on one side and under on the other, and I might do an angle bracket as well, again by threes, for a total of nine shots. Typically, if I've got a shot I care enough to bracket, one of those nine, and more often (since I only rarely bracket by angle) one of those three will be exactly what I was after. Practice though - I spent a year destroing film on all kinds of stuff before my eye settled. That repeated when I moved to digital, but more for reasons of reactions to different types of lighting.
The equipment portion that really rang a bell, however - I trained firearms for years before I picked up a camera at the age of ten. Very nearly everything I learned from one transposed cleanly to the other - from equipment care to shots in motion. Shooting each made me better at shooting the other - and it really helps to know, just by feel, what the composition of a shot will be at what depth, when shooting from the side or other position where the viewfinder isn't useful.
One thing regarding digital that I'm terrible at is the lcd display. I'll compose in my head instead of using the lcd to shoot - if there's not a physical viewfinder, my shooting quality drops dramatically. I'll also weigh a camera down if I have time - I've gone so far as to rip the legs off a tripod and bolt on fifteen pounds of pig iron so I could get the stability I needed on one old camera. (I have something of a fetish for truly crappy cameras, and just love tweaking good shots out of 'em)
...rather a ramble at tangent, that, but the upshot is - I like your idea of strap use, and will be out the door to try it in challenging lighting/weather conditions shortly. Many thanks!
no subject
Date: 2006-02-04 03:42 am (UTC)My camera doesn't allow me too. When I've had to use cameras which have it, I refuse. On the rare occasion someone has asked me to take a picture with a camera which has nothing else, well, there's nothing else.
Having started life with film, I am pretty good at guesstimating light. Since my camera is having temporary lobotomies of late (and I need to have it for a chunk of time, which time has moved, so I've had to put off sending it in to get fixed) I've been forced to treat it like an old fashioned camera, with no meter. I've been cheating, and using the LCD to get a rough idea of the level, but the LCD has less range, less depth and will appear to be blown out when it isn't.
The hardest thing for me to learn is to tend to the overexposed, not the under, when shooting digital. For film it's the opposite.
Since I do have cameras which are more expensive to shoot (the 6x6cm, and, when I get around to moving it from Tenn, the Sinar 4x5), and use studio flash, and compound lighting, I have light meters.
They are really useful when shooting stuff with a wide range (I still haven't seen a definitive statement on how many stops of range the D2H has) so I can decide what to lose when it's more than the medium can handle.
But if one is shooting digital, bracketing can make up for certain knowledge, in a way that shooting nine frames of film, for every shot, might not be worth the money.
TK
no subject
Date: 2006-02-03 11:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-02-04 03:43 am (UTC)TK