Buying Fancy Cameras

Sooner or later it happens to most keen photographers.

"I suppose that my present camera is all right. But one of those geewhizbang models (costing three times what my present camera did) would be so much better. I think I shall mortgage one of the children and go GET one."

Okay - I'll bite ..... WHY will it be so much better?

If said keen photographer is about to embark upon a career in sports action photojournalism or about to head off to some bullet infested world trouble spot or about to work full time in some highly specialised commercial/scientific field of imagemaking there may be some very good reasons INDEED for buying a geewhizzbang.

If you expect a camera to perform faultlessly all day every day for months on end in hot, humid, dusty or icy conditions, bouncing in and out of suitcases etc, high end designated professional bodies and lenses truly make sense. You want the camera to be sealed against undesirable conditions, be able to shoot fast and long. You want back up flash cards on line. You want ultra bright viewfinders. You want bodies that will endure constant heavy use without complaint.

Gear that earns you a good full time living, enabling you to get the paying pics AS and WHEN you need them is worth every dollar you pay for it. End of story. In the digital photography world, if the gear is still functioning reliably (however beat up it looks) after four years, you have done very well. It's time to update to the latest capabilities by then, in any case.

You will notice that most of the camera characteristics, to which I refer, have something to do with physical body toughness, weather sealing, high activation number shutters and backup image file security. About the only actual picture taking function I mentioned was the high fps rate.

Let's return to the everyday REAL world of you and me ... the keen amateur. Aside from the small percentage of us with more time and money than is entirely respectable, we seldom use our cameras for more than a dozen or so frames every couple of days. Several people I know, who describe themselves as enthusiastic amateurs, would be lucky to shoot more than a dozen or more images per WEEK on average.

Do we really NEED the characteristics of the professional kit I describe above. Of course not!

When I have a camera which is four years old, it usually looks and behaves as good as new. Why? It's simple! I DON'T crawl around in middle eastern deserts, dodging stray mortar shells. I DON'T stand for hours at football games with my camera rattling away at 9 fps during every critical play. My life is NOT so hectic that I don't have the time to put my cameras down gently and avoid scrapping them along rock walls. I DON'T have to stand outside some celebrity mansion in the rain, hoping for a glimpse of a movie star having sex with the pool attendant. What is more, very few of YOU do these things either.

The vast majority of shutterbugs do not NEED professional spec cameras. Let me repeat that. Most of us are silly to be spending big bucks on geewhizbang cameras that provide capabilities which will never be required.

"Ah but ...", I hear you say, "... surely the pro gear will give me better images!"

"Ah .... NO", I hear myself reply.

If the truth be known, for almost ALL of us amateurs, for almost ALL of the time, top-of-line, D3 type cameras of this world will provide NO better images than the D90 level cameras (at one fifth the price) which are the practical, sensible units we OUGHT to be using.

I discuss the Nikon range simply because I know it best (not because it necessarily IS better than some other brand). If we shoot an average of (say) 50 images a week, in four years we will probably have shot a total of 10,400 images. I hear some people screaming that they would shoot FIVE TIMES that many. Okay then let's make it 250 images a week, EVERY week. After four years we would have shot 52,000 pictures.

The D90 has a shutter which has been tested to more than 100,000 successful activations. Why do we need a D3?

The D90 has weather sealing not dissimilar to the D3. Why do we need a D3? The hires LCD screen on a D90 is the SAME as that on a D3. Why do we need a D3? At all but absurd ISO levels, observable image quality from a D90 is effectively IDENTICAL to that of a D3. Why do we need one again?

Of course the D3 is bigger and heavier than a D90. Remind me - why is that a GOOD thing? The D3 is full frame while D90 is only DX. There is lots of evidence that unless you use correspondingly better (AND doubly expensive) lenses on a full frame body, your picture quality may actually get WORSE. D3 anyone?

Look. We can go on and on about overweight files being a pain in the neck, soft cuddly rubber grips which inevitably peel off and regiments of fiddly, gimmicky, totally unnecessary features which endure the life of the camera unactivated. One starts to run out of reasons why us shutterbugs will ever NEED a fancy camera beyond something like the D90.

Funds burning a hole in the pocket? Want to spend money on your hobby. Take some advice. Go buy admittance to a very good course about quality post processing. You'll thank yourself for the rest of your photographic life.

Just before we go - there remains ONE solid reason for buying a geewhizbang camera. That reason is ... STATUS. Everyone knows that he (or she) with the best camera must be the best photographer. "Hey, there's a guy with a D3 ... let's go ask his advice." Sigh!

Shaken Confidence in Web Based Galleries

I have written several articles on this blog, encouraging people to consider the use of web based photo galleries as a means of displaying their work to the world, providing any BODY at any TIME with instant access to their work for a wide variety of reasons.

Potential customers get to see what you can do before giving you work. Clients get quick and convenient access to proofs. Family, living long distances away, can see the progress of children and grandchildren. Friends and relatives get to see pictures of family celebrations and one's adventures on vacation. Fellow photographer hobbiests get to admire one another's work, learn from one another and ENCOURAGE each other.

Potentially the greatest benefit of web-based galleries is that your images are stored remotely from your home and are thief proof, fire proof, flood proof and (theoretically) digital crash proof.

It seems I spoke too soon.

The recent near disaster over at Pbase.com has shaken my confidence somewhat and I am having to revise my thinking with regard to the security advantages of web galleries. Pbase.com stores and provides access to hundreds of millions of images - belonging to hundreds of thousands of photographers across the globe. Just how safe ARE these images?

For those who are not aware, the published story goes as follows. A large datacentre in North Carolina, where the server and data storage for Pbase is kept, suffered a major power outage on September 24. The resident UPS devices became exhausted before power could be restored and the site simply went down in disorder. Upon the restoration of power, the server failed to come up correctly and several days of frantic activity were necessary before parts of the site could be revived at all. It appears that it had become necessary to install an entirely new server and port across the ENTIRE database of images, gallery formatting, management software etc to new hard drive banks.

The result is that (as of yesterday - October 11) not everything was working correctly. Evidently, some data HAS been lost, not every subscriber's galleries HAVE been satisfactorily restored to their previous state, forums are NOT working and the all important statistics system (possibly the most comprehensive on the web), reporting daily activity and hit counts to individual subscribers - is STILL down.

All of this has been discussed at length on various web forums and a lot of people are unable to understand how such a major website can simply collapse like this given the theoretically foolproof redundancy and off-site back up systems which are in such widespread use today.

A number of questions come to mind:

a) Could my thousands of images on Pbase have been entirely lost?
b) Just how vulnerable are such systems to power outages, system failure, computer viruses and systematic cyber attacks?
c) Is the business model for such web gallery systems viable? Does it really allow for the kind of bulletproof security which we have come to anticipate?

Now let's get some things crystal clear. I think the guys who conceived, designed and implemented Pbase have created a wonderful thing. Aside from the happenings back on September 24, I have had nothing but GOOD experiences with Pbase. I have no evidence that the people in charge at Pbase are trying to do anything OTHER than what they believe to be in the best interests of their subscribers.

Having said that, my confidence in the Pbase system has taken a severe hit. Given that I sometimes use my galleries for professional purposes, I can't really afford to have my display site down. Consequently I have opened another set of galleries at Smugmug. i.e.
http://www.hobbsie.smugmug.com

Let me voice some personal impressions concerning Pbase and Smugmug.

To my mind, the Smugmug software is smoother, faster, more presentable and more flexible than the Pbase equivalent. What is more, I believe that my pictures and the display pages simply look BETTER at Smugmug.

On the other hand, the stats routines at Pbase (WHEN they are in operation) provide fantastic feedback to subscribers. As a Pbase supporter, you are told how often people look at your pictures along with which individual PAGES and IMAGES they look at. The communications system between supporters is EQUALLY brilliant, along with the simply SUPERB "Photo-a-Day" setup which shows EVERY new PaD image to EVERYONE. At Pbase you feel "connected" to a global network of like minded "fellows" in a way which simply ISN'T as true at Smugmug (or anywhere ELSE to my knowledge).

I await future developments in the Web gallery industry with great interest.

PS In the interests of accuracy, I note that the Pbase forums are now back up - 18 days after the power outage. I notice ON the forums that quite a number of Pbase supporters have done just as I had done - start up galleries on Smugmug. It was with some interest that I note the establishment of a "Pbase Refugees" community at Smugmug. Pbase statistics routines are still down.

Dumbing Down and Pricing Up Our Tools

The dumbing down of our society never ceases to infuriate me. Year by year the offerings on commercial television become ever more puerile, mobile phones become ever more gimmicky and I swear that the same basic movie plot has been retreaded (with only minor variations) for the last 50 (and counting) Hollywood pot boilers.

The pop culture articles of popular magazines have ceased to appeal to anyone except the ultra-voyeuristic and I do not even wish to DISCUSS the fact that no one seems able to digest anything more than a "three second grab" on the evening news.

All of that may be bad ENOUGH but NOW they are dumbing down the tools for my primary creative outlet - photography. I will not stand idly by and allow this to transpire without objection.

So far as still photography is concerned, the world is surely divided into two kinds of people.

There are those of us who expect cameras to provide high grade picture quality, speed of operation, reasonable durability, accuracy of viewing and above average image control. Moreover, the retired folk among us expect to be able to get cameras which embody these qualities without having to waste our limited cash on gimmick features which offer us no tangible advantages but nonetheless jack the price up.

There are also those who only use their cameras occasionally, are not especially discriminating on the matter of image quality but quite sensibly want the smallest, easiest-to-operate, most-convenient-to-carry piece of kit they can find.

Now I have no objection to dumbed down do-everything-but-make-the-dinner compact cameras. People who want that sort of thing are welcome to it - with my blessing. Just leave my upper entry level DSLRs alone!!

Just lately, the marketing gurus at Nikon and Canon have decided that it has become necessary to pollute the non-profession DSLRs with unnecessarily expensive features that will look "friendly" to compact camera users. It is presumed that these potential buyers cannot really see the point of DSLRs which don't operate like their old compacts. Rather than encourage people, moving from compacts to DSLRs, to "upgrade" their photographic skills, camera manufacturers seem ready to "downgrade" the DSLRs instead. Presumably this will allow new DSLR users to continue to produce the same convenient but shoddy images that they have long grown to know and love on their compact cameras.

What (may I ask) is the point of that?

1) It started with "live view" on DSLRs.

Compact camera users love to hold their light little devices at arms length, frame the shot and pull the trigger. The camera labours to focus on something and eventually gets around to capturing the image (often some seconds beyond the best opportunity). To make matters worse, because the LCD screen is ON, virtually all the time, the batteries are often exhausted after 100 images or so. But then, because the average compact camera user rarely shoots more than a few dozen images at a time - what does limited battery life really matter? Might I suggest that if you are serious about photography, it will start to matter very much when using a DSLR.

At the end of the day, people don't seem to understand that a good, bright real-time DSLR viewfinder will ALWAYS provide a clearer more accurate and faster idea of what you are trying to shoot than an LCD screen. The viewfinder feeds you all the essential shooting information you can't REALLY see on some pale blurry distant LCD screen half blotted out by the sun behind you. I don't know about you, but I really NEED instant access to shutter speed, aperture, exposure compensation and focus lock indicators as I work. Likewise if you are holding a DSLR to your face, while using the viewfinder, you have one more asset in your attempt to steady a relatively heavy camera in low light/long shutter speed situations.

What on earth is the point of a DSLR which is slow to operate, fails to show the essential shooting information, provides a pale, inaccurate view of the subject, can't be held steady, runs out of battery power in short order and (due to the need for a second "live view" image sensor dedicated for the purpose) costs far more than it ought to? I can't see a point. Does anybody else? Honestly?

Of course it can be pointed out that you don't HAVE to use live view to shoot with a DSLR. You can always go back to using it the traditional way. But if you are going to do that, why pay through the nose for live view capability in the first place?

2) Movies

Okay, it was argued, if you are going to have live view, why not include the capability to shoot movies? I find it amazing that I have to make the following points to presumably intelligent camera manufacturers. But here goes:

a) So far, the implementation of movies in DSLRs has been disappointing to say the least. One can't focus (automatically at least) when in the act of shooting a movie. It doesn't seem to have dawned on anybody that in movies, subjects actually .... er .... MOVE. Focus ought to move WITH them or what is the point?
b) Fussy photographers willing to shell out a couple of thousand notes for a decent body and lens probably CARE about the results of their photography. It seems clear that the best movies will always come from purpose-designed camcorders. Such customers will always prefer to use a camcorder for their movies, will they not? Given the clear weight of opinion on web-based photography forums, it seems obvious that being able to shoot movies on DSLRs is a marginal selling point at best.
c) By the nature of their design and the nature of their users, compact cameras will always be a better compromise if you want to shoot casual movie files. Why produce an unnecessarily expensive and unnecessarily cumbersome device to do the job of a much cheaper, much more convenient one?

Once again, so far as most traditional DSLR users (as opposed to newbie former compact camera owners), movie capability simply represents one more reason why non professional DSLRs finish up being more expensive than they ought.

3) Fold out LCD screens

I have been using digital still cameras (and most especially, digital SLRs) since the beginning. I have spent many hours in pressure professional situations. I have NEVER felt the need for a fiddly, bulky, vulnerable fold out LCD screen. I can well understand the need for a fold out screen if said device is your ONLY means of sighting the subject. This would be especially true if you are trying to keep the screen away from prevailing sunlight. I can also concede the usefulness of one in a media crush where you are trying to shoot over the heads of other journos and such - but really - how often do you find yourself in such a fix?

In the case of the recently introduced Nikon D5000, the incorporation of a fold out screen has meant that the entire body has had to be taller and heavier than would otherwise be desirable (at God knows what cost). To make matters worse (yet again) the size of the screen has had to be reduced from a full 3" to a smaller than desirable 2.8".

In order to heap absurdity upon absurdity it has to be conceded that one useful function for a fold out screen might well be to enable the subject to see him/herself in the screen during a self portrait. But the ridiculous D5000 fold-out screen, (mounted as it is by the lower edge, rather than the side) is inevitably obscured by the tripod upon which the camera must be mounted for such exercises!!!

Is it just me? Am I the only one who sees this cynical dumb-down trend for what it is? Please! Leave my perfectly satisfactory, light, cheap, easy to use, entry level DSLRs alone - for pity sake.

Kodachrome Film is No More

How many remember those little yellow boxes that would arrive in the mail, carrying our latest processed Kodachrome colour slides? Back in 1965, when I was 18 years old - keen as hell on photography - the arrival of a yellow box was a magic time, as I am sure it was for countless others.

Very soon the yellow boxes will be gone forever.

Kodachrome transparency film was introduced way back in 1935. With only minor changes to its unique fourteen stage process, the product survived until the day before yesterday when it was announced by Eastman Kodak that no more of it would be made. Existing stocks will probably last about 2-3 months and processing of currently circulating rolls will end next year.

The passing of the film era really comes home to me now, because once upon a time I must have shot more Kodachrome than anything else - God alone knows how many frames of it I exposed over the years, recording so much of my youth, young adulthood, early career, family, vacations AND images intended for print publication.

For me photography was all about Kodachrome II which boasted an ASA of 25. Kodachrome I, (which was before my time) had been limited to ASA 10. I am told that it had been just as good if just a bit slow. In any event, for my money, Kodachrome II provided the finest grain and most lifelike colours possible. What is more, the transparencies have lasted, without fading, all this time. For some reason (best known to the Almighty) a certain breed of trend obsessed photographer (sigh) would sneer at my use of KII, dismissing it for it's overbright, overblue colours. Such people (presumably in the know) would always suggest that I change to Ansco or Agfa and then (much later) a johnny come lately product called Fuji.

Well I hope those wise arse characters went ahead and shot EVERYTHING on muddy overwarm Agfa, red biassed Ansco and dull, grainy early version Fuji. I have to tell you that virtually all my Agfacolor slides from the 1960s have turned to purple, many of my Ansco slides have faded almost completely to blank while the early Fuji product I shot was so latitude intolerant that I gave away the whole idea (of shooting Fuji) for decades.

Virtually ALL of my Kodachrome slides look just like they always did - beautiful natural colour, with lovely fine grain.

Eventually along came Kodachrome X with a lightning fast ASA (i.e. ISO to you newbies) of 64. It was a perfect product for use with Instamatic cartridge cameras and while it lacked a little of KII's latitude, the overall results were pretty much the same. A little later they changed the name of these products to "Kodachrome 25" and "Kodachrome 64", which made perfect sense to me.

With the arrival of Kodak's Ektachrome range of transparency films, things began to change. The colours were never as true and the grain never as smooth but they could be processed in a range of local labs that couldn't handle Kodachrome. This made turn-around much faster and for commercial work this was often vital. What's more, keen types could set up their own labs to process Ektachrome themselves and process routines were devised to push the products to 400 ASA and finally even 1200. Colour transparencies could be shot in iffy light circumstances not previously thought possible. Shooters for outfits like National Geographic were delighted and took to Ektachrome like ducks to water.

At the end of the day however, if the light was good and the object of the exercise was unambiguous beauty - Kodachrome was one's film of choice.

Aaanyway .... it's gone now.

Despite the fact that I have now shot digital for years, you only get to be a young impressionable photographer once. I'll always remember Kodachrome.

FF - Much Ado About Not Very Much?

When Digital SLRs first came out, many of us were disappointed to note that the standard format was an APS-C sized sensor (later known as "DX" by the Nikon faithful) which was roughly half the size of a traditional 35mm film frame. We had all become so brain washed by the 35mm format that many of us began to agitate for "full frame" on the grounds that we were somehow being short changed by anything less.

Now the 35mm "standard" for small still cameras was an arbitrary one at best and had been originally chosen largely because film of that format was already in use by the motion picture industry and was therefore readily available for use by these subversive "miniature" camera manufacturers. There is nothing intrinsicaly magical about the format but photographers don't always take to change very easily. If we were brought up to believe that 35mm sized sensor surfaces were the REAL fair dinkum article, we were not going to accept "half" sized formats lying down.

As time went on, resolutions increased and general technical improvements arrived, it did indeed become apparent that APS-C/DX sensors were perfectly capable of producing images comparable to the prints and transparencies that 35mm film could produce. For all practical intents and purposes they could do the job, that most of us required, very satisfactorily. What's more, lenses designed for use with 35mm film would still work superbly with DX - especially once it was realised that DX only really utilised the "sweet spot" of such lenses, enabling them to give still better performance than they might have done with film or indeed with the long anticipated "full frame" sensors.

But there WERE thoughtful arguments in favour of full frame/FX sensors. If the performance of "cropped" sensors could compare with 35mm film, full frame sensors might be expected to go one better and perhaps give results that compared to "medium format" film:

a) Full frame sensors would provide more space for a given number of "photo sites". Pixel density would effectively be reduced, thus improving high ISO performance.

b) Full frame sensors could be beefed up to provide much higher resolutions than cropped sensors - for equivalent sensitivities.

c) Larger sensors would mean larger mirrors. Full frame DSLR viewfinders could be expected to be much brighter than their cropped equivalents.

d) Full frame sensors would enable expectations of lens coverage to return to those we enjoyed when using film. Using cropped sensors meant that 28mm focal length lenses (for instance) were nearly "normal" in their coverage. With film and full frame sensors, 28mm lenses would return to genuinely "wide angle" .... the way that God had always intended.

Now all of this sounds very good ... I suppose. In practice however, how much water do these arguments hold?

(a) The first argument is the best one of course. The ability to shoot relatively clean images at 3200, 6400 or even 12800 ISO would be terrific. Imagine being able to shoot low available light images at practical shutter speeds, without tripods. It could be especially wonderful for action photography. In practice however, most people will use flash or not bother at all - few punters can see the point of gloomy images. Noise reduction software routines are also pretty good these days and (if used correctly) will usually go a long way toward effectively increasing high ISO performance for most cameras.

(b) Ultra high resolution sounds good but how important is it really? Good DX bodies can deliver fine, clean 10-12 megapixel images without difficulty. How much resolution do you really need? How big will your prints really be? If you are like me, the lion's share of your output is for internet use anyway. More than about 6 megapixels is effectively pointless.

(c) I have looked through the viewfinder of my brother's very nice Canon 5D mkII. The view is genuinely beautiful. But then again, when I am using one of my cropped sensor DSLRs, the viewfinder has always seemed perfectly satisfactory to me, however less bright it may ACTUALLY be in A/B comparisons with the FF version. Of course the REAL problem comes when you press the shutter. That heavy, oversized FF mirror (with so much further to travel) comes crashing back and forth with such violence that I thought the camera would shake itself out of my hand. However much advantage one gains from the extra resolution and cleaner high ISO performance, I cannot believe that you don't lose pretty much MOST of it with all that thrashing about during the instant of exposure. It's called camera shake.

(d) It is becoming very clear that as resolution increases, the limitations of a given lens become more and more apparent. If their potential advantages are to be fully realised, 21-24 megapixel FF/FX cameras require the use of the best lenses you can find. Given the already horrendous cost of FX bodies, we now must seek out equally expensive lenses. I (for one) simply can't afford it especially when, in a few years time I shall probably have to afford it AGAIN! And even if I COULD afford it, I am saddled with excessively heavy equipment which, I know from experience, will become a literal pain in the neck by session's end.

Don't get me wrong. Cameras like the Canon 5D and its matching L lenses are truly wonderful kit but at the end of the day the files from hires full frame cameras can be almost unworkable. If we care so much about ultimate performance, it makes little sense to shoot anything other than RAW images. The aggravation associated with downloading, editing and storing the resultant 30-40 meg files I just don't want to think about.

Full frame sensors, heavy camera bodies, tank like lenses and massive image files sound like a great idea. All the fashionable people seem to think so. For those photographers in possession of the necessary patience, perseverance, hard drives, gym subscriptions and funding, I am confident they can produce most satisfying product. In practice - for many of us - the concept may be overrated and impractical.

A Picture a Day ...

Maintaining my Photo-a-Day galleries at Pbase can be quite a challenge.

Most people who run PaD galleries, post pictures when it suits them. They'll post one this week, maybe two pictures next week. If they haven't got time, they might post a nice picture that they shot last October.

Now let me tell you that there is nothing wrong with the above approach. In fact it is a perfectly sane and sensible way to go. Most of us simply don't have the time to do as much photography as we'd like and we don't always find ourselves in places and circumstances where inspiration comes easily or where photographic opportunities present themselves at a respectable rate of knots. Lugging around heavy camera bodies and multiple lenses is not always a convenient thing to do either.

Then I came across Scott Browne's Photo-A-Day galleries http://www.pbase.com/sbbish/photoadayish

Why don't you check them out?

Scott religously produces a new photograph each day. Depending where he is and depending on the circumstances, the image in question might be a magnificently lit and prepared study or a grabshot of something or someone which he happened to notice as he walks around. The work is never less than competent, usually interesting, often fascinating and occasionally brilliant. He takes risks and experiments. Most importantly his galleries are a record of someone who lives, does and SEES - each and every day.

I have learned a lot from Scott. His work also reminds me of things which I DO know but forget to act upon. In particular there is the old saying:

"You can take an ordinary shot of something EXTRAordinary or you can take an EXTRAordinary shot of something ordinary. Both can be equally compelling."

Scott's Photo-A-Day galleries provide lots and lots of examples of both. I imagine that Scott didn't start out as good as he currently is. I don't suppose that anyone does. He has obviously trained himself to SEE. He has trained himself to be able to visualise ordinary things in extraodinary ways and he provides himself with the opportunity to capture the extraordinary things when they DO present themselves.

Would YOU like to show interesting galleries of work? I don't care who you are. You can.

Step ONE. Be determined to capture and publish a new, fresh, original picture EVERY day. Don't imagine that everything you will come up with will be suitable for the cover of National Geographic or Cosmopolitan. The important thing is that you produce that picture on the day and publish it ON THE DAY. Your self imposed imperative to produce a new picture will START to help you to SEE creativively in and of itself. Go on. See if I'm not right.

Step TWO. Have a camera (however modest) with you almost ALL of the time. The less than technically perfect picture you got with your light and convenient Nikon D40 plus 18-135 is way WAY better than the technically incredible picture you DIDN'T get with your Nikon D3X plus + 24-70 because you didn't have the perseverance to actually lug the damn thing around with you (let alone afford one).

Some days you don't get to go out shooting pictures because you are tired, the light is awful or perhaps you have to work (some people DO, you know). Some days or evenings you sit at home, inspiration totally lacking. You STILL have to produce a picture. Start to look at the mundane things around your own house. Remember ... you can make wonderful pictures out of ordinary everyday little things if only you can learn to see those ordinary things in EXTRAordinary ways. Try some of these basic ideas:

• Shoot as BGCUs (that's Bloody Great Close Ups to the uninitiated)


• Shoot with unusual lighting


• Shoot from directly above, low angle or tilted


• Shoot against unusual backgrounds or in out-of-context locations


• Shoot against or on top of a mirror producing a reflected image


• Shoot as if you are preparing a "sales" image for an advertising campaign


• Shoot through some form of frame - leaves, books, groceries, whatever

I challenge you to shoot interesting pictures using nothing but silly, ordinary household items every day for a fortnight. See if it doesn't make you see and think more creatively - and improve your technique.

See my work at www.pbase.com/davidhobbs

Web Galleries to the Rescue

Last time I expressed the view that no foolproof mechanism for long term preservation of digital images seems to have emerged. For that matter, the same problem remains unsolved for ALL forms of digital data. Just how should one archive one's files for the medium to long term, confident that the digital media itself will have survived and that means will still be at hand to interpret the file and storage formats?

Well the answer is .... I don't know!!!! I just hope that someone else, much smarter than yours truly, DOES - or if they don't, that they soon will. It is a huge problem getting still larger by the minute.

Traditionally we viewed our images on photopaper, usually stored in photo albums. Once closed, the album storage format enables our prints to be protected from light and history shows that they can be preserved for very long periods indeed. Perhaps long term preservation of important images should remain in that form - on long life paper, in long life inks in books. But then just what do we mean by "important".

Going down through the ages, past our children and grandchildren, we reach descendants who will never have actually met us, interracted with us, spoken with us - or indeed have especially much interest in us and our lives at all. To them, pictures of our overseas trip to Bali in 2009 (including pictures of me posing next to the colourfully dressed hotel doorman) will hardly loom large in importance. Is it really so vital that such images survive? Beyond our lifespan and perhaps our children's, will anyone ever want to look at them again? In the final analysis, who are our images FOR?

The answer, of course, is that they are mostly for us - OURSELVES. Most especially they are for our twilight years when we will have the time for indulgent nostalgia sessions and when images of our early years and those of our forbears acquire a meaning and importance they never had during the hustle and bustle times of youth, early parenthood and career building.

In truth, most of our personal "good time" pictures can safely die WITH us.

Pictures of our children and grandchildren however, will need to live on down the years to be enjoyed and appreciated during the twilight years of SUBSEQUENT generations. Perhaps therefore, our only real image obligations are to our children. We should merely be obliged to ensure that our CHILDREN get the pictures that will remain of interest to them. Let THEM battle the vagiaries of future data storage/archive systems.

In any event, are images becoming less and less important as a whole?

Our generation comes at the end of a series of generations for whom photographs were a relatively precious commodity. Not everyone owned or used cameras. Professional shoots, film and processing cost real money. In my youth, significant occasions with my family are remembered by one or two images at best. Some significant relatives like my Uncle Earnest are remembered by one or two images IN ALL. The images which remain of such times and individuals are relatively few and commensurately valuable.

These days it seems quite different. EVERYONE has a digital camera. There are cameras in mobile phones, for heaven sake. Images arrive by phone call and email everyday - "Here's me and my new boyfriend hanging out at Tim's party" - "Here are sixteen pictures of the new puppy" - "Here's a dozen pictures of the new car" - "Look who we just ran into, down at the mall ... Sandra ... haven't seen her in days" - "Look at Bob's funny hat" - "Here's Sue spilling an ice cream on her new sweater".

Effectively, images today are FREE and so we capture them with total abandon. Most such pictures are intended for immediate viewing and disposal. In our present culture, images grow more and more numerous, more transient, more trivial and less treasured. The trouble and time associated with printing, mounting and preservation can often seem pointless.

When a photograph was taken in days of yore, it was taken with intent. All of them were important. If it hadn't been important we would never have taken it in the first place. Today things are decidedly different. Nonetheless even today's youth may eventually have sober moments and decide that certain images have a value beyond the moment. What should they do with them?

Web based galleries seem the way to go. They are becoming immensely popular and as a concept seem destined to survive the next human generation or so. Today it is possible to establish FREE galleries. Some gallery sites offered guaranteed preservation of uploaded images. Some sites like Pbase seem perfect for hobbiests whose pages can be highly customised and (like all web galleries) offer instantaneous display to international enthusiasts.

With web galleries, any relative in the world can immediately see all the images of our grandchild's birthday party, last Tuesday. Masses of old family photographs can be displayed for any relative to download or share. Our memories can be preserved no matter how quickly the bushfire comes to destroy our home. All of our artistic image attempts can be appreciated by others (anywhere in the world), who can upload encouraging comments as well.

Maybe - just maybe - web galleries are the preservation and sharing medium of choice ... at least for now .... I hope.

Looking at Pictures

Time was that if you wanted to see the family pictures, you went fishing around in the back of some out-of-the-way cupboard and eventually emerged with several well worn old-style photo albums. Blowing off the dust, you opened the tomes to reveal hundreds of old family memories going back generations.

Each time you returned to the albums, the black and white prints had turned just a fraction more sepia and the colour prints just a fraction more faded - but we remembered what the tones and colours really were supposed to be so it didn't matter ... too much.

Then of course back in the sixties and early seventies we all got modern and started taking coloured slides and could watch our family memories sort of like we were at the movies. Of course it began to dawn on us that slide shows frequently became tedious for the "trapped" visitors, effectively bolted into position before a seemingly endless parade of excruciating, underexposed, overexposed, blurry, pictures of frequently decapitated people they didn't especially care about. Likewise slideshows involved far too much trouble to be an entirely practical method for casual viewing.

To make the problem still worse, we discovered that many transparencies faded dreadfully. By the beginning of the nineties, many of my precious slides from the sixties had pretty much faded to a uniform blue - especially the Agfa, Ansco and Fuji ones. Remarkably the actual Kodachrome slides (not so much the Ectachromes) had endured pretty well.

In any event, these days, masses of families are urgently scanning what remains of their transparencies into digital form where their colours can be preserved or even restored a little. Lots of people, too, are methodically scanning their old prints. The biggest difficulty lies in finding someone who has the necessary combination of skill, patience, time, familiarity and affection for the task.

Just when we started to think that the problems associated with preserving our ancestral images had at last been solved (i.e. scanning to digital), brand new problems begin to emerge - sigh!

While slides had barely lasted 20 years, some of the oldest of our prints have lasted 150 years to date. How long will digital images last (and that includes our current images direct from our digital cameras)? The immediate, reflex answer is "forever", but is that really the case?

Once digitised, of course, images can be enhanced before being printed afresh. But how long will the new prints actually last? We have just lived through a period of 15 years during which photograph printing technology has undergone massive change - not always for the better. Unfortunately a lot of 10 year old prints (even those from SOME commercial labs) are simply fading to nothing. Over the last 5 years or so, the performance of new prints would appear to be rather better - especially those produced at home where "chrome pigments" and "archive" papers promise genuinely long life. The trouble is we don't know for sure - simply because the current methods and materials are too new.

Then there is the matter of digital image storage. Our local hard drives are hardly suitable. Hard drives last three to four years at best and frequently not as long as that. Back up drives are okay in the short term. I have two back up HDs for my main drive and get by on the hope that all three drives are unlikely to crash simultaneously ... they wouldn't .. would they??? After that I download to "archive" DVD-Rs. I produce multiple copies at any one time and hope to high heaven that my ancestors will not find them to have become meaningless plastic junk in 20 years time. If that is INDEED the case, the much hyped digital format and storage will have performed still worse than slides!

Deteriorating and unreliable digital storage is a very real fear. Experiments on present technology recordable CDs and DVDs suggest that long term reliance on such devices might well be fraught with danger. Even if the disks themselves survive the years intact, how do we know that the means will remain at hand to retrieve data from them? Think back to the relative technological instability of the IT industry. File and storage formats come and go like the wind. 8 inch floopy disks gave way to 5.25" mini-floppies and then to 3.5" hard case floppies and then to "Iomega Zip" disks and then to "Iomega Jazz" disks and then to recordable CDs, mini-CDs, DVDs and blueray DVDs and then to "flash memory" devices such as SD cards, CF cards and "memory sticks" etc ad nauseum.

In 20 years time, god alone knows what the (then) universally accepted digital storage media and/or imagefile formats will be?

Far from living in a technological golden age, we live at a time when we can't even be certain that our great grandchildren will be able to see our photographs.

But wait! Perhaps there IS a solution after all .... but that is for next time.

Light is a Harsh Mistress

Like most people who use cameras, I find myself constantly bitching about the light. What a delight it is when you find yourself in the right place at the right time with the ideal light for your purpose. Of course, in the matter of light, good photography is largely a matter of planning in which one tries to be at certain locations under certain lighting conditions.

Trouble is, at this time of year (mid-summer in the southern hemisphere) good outdoors lighting is hard to come by and potentially ideal light is really only available for a few hours at the beginning and the end of the day. "WHAT?" .... I hear you say. "Look out there. The sun is shining. Bright colours are to be found in every direction. There is a lovely blue sky. Start shooting quick."

The pity is that these latter statements are just not true. At the height of summer, in the middle of the day where I live, the light is quite appalling for good pictures. The sun is effectively directly overhead for much of the day. This means that the tops of people's heads, the roofs of houses, the crowns of trees are all beautifully lit by the sun (from the direction of the sun) while the sides of all of those things (from the photographer's perspective) are composed of broken shadow.

The strength of the sun is such that highlights are extremely bright while shadows are very dark meaning that most idle pictures of the squinting relatives lined up at the beach barbecue are dominated by shadows which render the faces indecipherable. At the same time, the sand and all whitish objects are a featureless blown out haze. Terrific picture ... NOT!

If one were to shoot pictures between (say) 7 and 9 am or (say) between 4 and 6 pm, the situation is a great deal better. At those times of the day, the sun lights things from the side, enabling more saturated and consistent colours. Face your human subjects away from the sun and many good things start to happen. For a start they stop squinting in the glare, their faces and fronts are in consistent shadow allowing reliable exposure. Fill in flash can brighten the faces moderately and the whole picture improves out of sight.

In winter, the situation is much better. The sun is softer and comes from an angle ALL DAY. Highlights and shadows can BOTH be captured and the limits of camera dynamic range are not generally threatened. Most importantly, if you devote a day to go somewhere interesting for the purpose of taking pictures, you can keep shooting ALL DAY and take your time while doing so. You can get many more useful images of a location because you don't have to stop shooting between (say) 9 am and 4 pm and find some halfway useful thing to fill in your time meanwhile.

People who look at my "Photo a Day" gallery on Pbase will note that there is currently a paucity of scenic pictures. Most of my summer hobby images tend to be close ups and indoor locations because outdoor pictures are much too tedious to plan in what is presently a busy lifestyle.

See my work at www.pbase.com/davidhobbs

The Passing Parade

It's amazing how the international photographic equipment industry has changed since the 1960s. Back then, who'd have thought that by 2009 the following would be true:

• The Konica and Minolta brands would have disappeared
• Leica and Panasonic (the people who make transistor radios???) would effectively be in partnership to make cameras
• Sony (more transistor radios???) would be a leading camera maker
• Leading European camera brands such as Voigtlander, Contax et al would have effectively disappeared
• Hoya (the filter makers?) would own Asahi Pentax
• Photographer's darkrooms would have turned into desktop computers

.... and here's the big one

• Except for highly specialised people and applications there is effectively no such thing as photographic film any more

When digital cameras first appeared in serious numbers it is amazing how many photographers (who should, by now, be knowing better) predicted that they'd remain a frivolous toy - just like motor cars, aeroplanes, talking pictures, CDs, personal computers and everything else that entrenched minds have always failed to get their heads around. No one, however, predicted the suddenness with which film would finally die - except perhaps the folks at Kodak, who for years had been trying to diversify in something of a panic.

In the light of phtography's recent history it is fascinating to predict what is likely to happen in the near future. Someone who makes predictions every year about what will happen to the photographic industry and its leading playes is Thom Hogan. You can read his predictions for 2009 here: http://www.bythom.com/2009predictions.htm

Looking back over previous Thom Hogan predictive articles, it is fascinating to see how generally correct he has been. Of course, on this occasion he predicts that the international economic downturn will hasten the death of so many prominent photographic businesses including the passing of most specialist photographic retailers and the demise of almost all specialist photographic equipment manufacturers. Wow - let's hope not. A world without Nikon, Pentax, Olympus? What a bleak prospect that would be.

See my work at www.pbase.com/davidhobbs

Could Primes be Past their Prime?

Let me summarise what I meant to say in my last article. Given the power of current post processing software, lenses produced today by prominent manufacturers have probably ceased to be a significant constraint in our efforts to secure quality images.

Class by class, it probably doesn't matter whether your lens is made by Canon, Nikon, Leica, Sony, Pentax, Olympus, Sigma, Tokina or Tamron. All other factors being equal, any given image (except maybe resolution charts) will look much the same.

It is interesting, by the way, to see how all of the makers are lining up to define lens classes. Looking at APS-C sensor bodies, all makers seem to offer some entry level (or NEAR entry level) zoom versions of (circa)18-55, 18-120, 18-200 and 70-300. The 18-55s are often surprisingly good if flimsy, the 18-200s are fairly solid but optically iffy while the 18-120s and 70-300s are something of a compromise.

Then there are the 12-24s, and 70-200s. In both cases, the optical and build quality usually represents a major step up in class. Then too, there is a slight step down from this latter level to the often reasonably fast (circa) 17-70s.

Leaving specialised items like macros, fish-eyes and super telephotos out of the discussion, the really rugged up-market lenses (some new designs plus some scrubbed-up film era designs) seem to be reserved for the full frame bodies principally in the fast 24-70 sort of range.

Most new lenses (that aren't intended for stabilised bodies) seem to incorporate a form of optical stabilisation. Significantly the most professional full frame models often leave this latter feature out. Presumably the lack of such complexity may render the lenses in question more ultimately reliable, the limited focal length ranges make stabilisation less vital ... and then again, the potential users should have pretty reasonable hand held technique at their disposal, rendering its usefulness questionable.

To my mind, given my aforementioned observations on optical quality, the choice of lenses, probably comes down to two major parameters:

• How much does it cost?
• How well is it made?

If you are basically a keen amateur whose gear often sits for long periods in dark cupboards, you might easily be best served by something cheap and (if it comes to that) easily replaceable. If you work your gear on a regular basis during which jolts, bumps and even drops are effectively inevitable, maybe you are better off with something more ruggedly constructed.

Yes, but what about primes (i.e. fixed focal length lenses)?

Let me return to our macho types, pixel peepers and status chasers on the web forums. These people constantly complain about the lack of prime lenses - at least modern versions of same. A lot of these people own lens collections consisting ONLY of primes. They seem to think that such will bestow upon them some sort of professional aura and/or ultimate image quality. In reality, except for some highly specialised applications (dedicated portrait & macro advertising studios, high profile sports photo-journalism and papparazzi work perhaps) they are probably deluding themselves.

Thirty years ago there may have been some point in all this. The quality of zoom lenses was pretty dismal. At the same time, most accumulating dust finding its way onto light sensitive surfaces in the camera was whisked away with every turn of the film winder.

These days, if you have to change lenses every couple of images, your digital sensor will soon be caked in muck, more than negating any alleged optical advantage offered by primes. More importantly, with all of the fooling around, you will more than likely miss vital shots. Anyone will tell you that the good (but technically less than perfect) image of the perfect composition/subject is a long way better than the technically ultimate image of the perfect composition/subject you just missed.

I am inclined to think that, for most general use at least, prime lenses may have had their day.

Modern Lenses are Fantastic

I thought I'd leave off talking about post processing for a while and air some hobby horse issues on the subject of lenses.

You see it all the time. People post forum messages on dpreview or other such sites, declaring their dissatisfaction with this lens or that lens. They complain primarily about "softness" or perhaps about distortions or maybe about mechanical aspects of the lens like autofocus or how smoothly the zoom ring operates. They rabbit on about lack of manufacturing quality control and how they obviously got a bad example - which they are about to take back to some poor long suffering retailer, for exchange.

The first thing is that few of these people are really qualified to comment on such things. They simply don't have the experience or skill to make the evaluations they presume to. Examining the pictures in question it usually appears that the perceived "softness" has little to do with lens quality. It almost always has much more to do with depth of field and camera shake. The posters complain about edge softness, completely forgetting that objects on the periphery of an image are often much closer than objects in the centre. A lot of the time, they are simply out of focus.

The other thing which is very often true, is that few people know how to hold a camera competently when they shoot. Nor do they seem to "get" the fact that there are certain shutter speeds they should not fall below in field use. I know its old but the traditional hand held rule still applies. At 120mm focal length, use a shutter speed higher than 1/120 sec. At 50mm use a shutter speed higher than 1/50 sec etc.

In lower light, you might well be using "vibration reduction" or "image stabilisation" and you may well be braced against doorways, railings and tree stumps but if you want to make sure you get the shot nice and sharp .... use the rule. It's that simple. In my experience, the difference between the perceived resolution of a (so called) poor lens and a (so called) excellent one is almost always LESS than the actual resolution difference between poor and excellent field technique - believe it.

Lens reviewers make a lot of the need to stop a lens down for best results or they harp about "refraction" softness due to the use of very small apertures. I am certain that resolution charts reveal the shocking truth on a regular basis but I tend not to shoot pictures of resolution charts. Differences in sharpness between f8 or f11 and wide open do not often intrude upon my consciousness with respect to REAL subjects in the REAL world.

Manufacturers of quality cameras and lenses face stiff competition today. They quite literally cannot afford to be marketing sub-standard gear. In fact, in my humble opinion the optical standard of modern lens designs is far and away better than it has ever been. There is no doubt that the quality of modern zooms is good enough for them to effectively replace prime lenses for most people. The lack of speed is more than made up for by the on-going high ISO improvements in image sensors. We used to be thrilled to use f1.8 at a film speed of 64 ISO. In reality, f3.5 at a perfectly acceptable ISO 400 is a good deal faster all up. To be sure, throwing subjects into stark relief against out of focus backgrounds is a little harder ... but we'll manage. Why not use longer focal lengths and try standing back a little?

Yes but what about distortions? ...... It's called the lens distortion routine in Photoshop or Elements. Barrel distortion has always accompanied wide angle lenses. Pincushion distortion has always hounded telephoto. The difference is that today we can push a slider across the screen and straighten everything up. We can also remove chromatic aberration fringes, intrusive vignetting etc In the final analysis, if we really think that an image is too soft we can use some light Unsharp Mask treatment. If the image was fundamentally sound and we don't overdo it, the softness problem goes away.

Then at last there are the moans and groans about how one lens autofocusses faster than another. The plain simple fact is that basic autofocus technique turns almost ANY lens into a "quick one" if we do it right. From day one of the autofocus era I learned to "find an equidistant edge" and immediately recompose. Works everytime and fast - no matter what the lens (well almost) It beats the hell out of 51 active focus points, which in the heat of the moment could be fixating on ANYTHING.

The pixel peepers, macho shooters, forum hawks and resolution chart obsessionists notwithstanding, if your pictures look soft, it almost certainly means it is YOU who fouled up - not the lens.