Understanding Your Lens (Part 1)

As promised, I will start this series of tutorials on understanding how lenses work.

This first tutorial is a direct follow up to my previous post on why zoom lenses are better than prime lenses in real life photography. Here I will discuss how to creatively use a zoom lens to change perspective. I decided to tackle this technique first because most beginners do not understand this. I bet even those who claim to shoot with only prime lenses are ignorant about the concept and that is why they quickly dismiss the importance of cheap zoom lenses while boasting the superiority of their f1.2 prime.

In this lesson I will be using my Pentax K5 and my only lens, a Sigma 17-70, which you can get brand new for about $300. For the price, it’s totally worth it. My subject is Thomas the Tank Engine because the rain here in Brisbane is not allowing me to capture proper landscape shots. At any rate, the examples should give you an idea of how we might apply the concepts in real world shooting.

Without further ado, allow me to demonstrate the effects of varying focal lengths and how they affect composition.

Let’s have a look at how a nifty-fifty (50mm) lens might render a scene. Since I am using a camera with APS-C (crop) sensor, I will have to use a focal length of 35mm. This focal length is how your eyes would normally perceive the scenery. It’s what tells you that a particular spot and angle have the potential of creating a nice photograph. This is the perspective that your eyes send to your brain. Here’s the shot:

Apologies for the crappy shot but that is not the point. We could translate this to a real landscape scenario though. A typical theme goes something like this: Assume that Thomas is a huge rock that you have chosen as your foreground and the toy house is a mountain. With a 50mm lens, all you can do now is step foreward, back, left and right to properly position the foreground against the background. The problem here is that given the distance between the rock and the mountain there is not much you can do to change their relative sizes. In the example above, Thomas and the house look like they are of the same size. This makes the shot confusing because the viewer can’t concentrate on one subject. The relative significance of the background house is equivalent to the foreground Thomas. Boring and downright bad. If you only brought your nifty-fifty in this location, you are better off going home than waste your time and disk space.

Cheap zoom lens to the rescue. Supposing that the mountain isn’t really that good. It’s summer so it looks pale and generally uninteresting. However, the foreground rock has got some vibrant green mosses growing and some flowers. Naturally, you would want the foreground to dominate the frame while making sure that the background isn’t distracting. What does a photographer with a zoom lens got to do? Shoot WIDE. Here’s the same scene shot at 17mm:

Not quite a huge rock with flowers but you get the point. Let’s analyze this for a bit. For starters, I did NOT move the subjects at all but just changed the focal length and distance to foreground. Notice that in this shot, the size of Thomas relative to the FRAME, is almost the same as the first shot. But look at what happened to the background. The toy house now seems a lot farther and smaller. The exaggerated perspective created by the wide angle lens makes the foreground appear so much larger than it really is thus shifting the compositional balance to the front. This is the technique used by majority of landscape photographers where they prefer to use ultrawide lenses (12mm or wider) to create this wild perspective that hits you right in the face.

Before I continue, I would like to point out that the use of ultrawide lenses is easily abused by beginners. N00bs think that ultrawides allow them to include everything in the frame. BAD! Had I done that in my example, the frame would now have included pillows, TV, PS3 and cabinets…stuff that distract from the main subject. The main purpose of ultrawides is to allow you to approach your subject.

Back on topic. Now supposing that the situation is the opposite. The mountain is very beautiful. It’s showing wonderful autumn colors. The rock on the foreground however, is just ordinary but significant enough to be used to anchor the composition. The problem is that the mountain is far and a lake is in between your chosen foreground. There’s no way you can approach the mountain without walking several miles. You need to take the shot before the mist fades away. What can you do?

Lens compression to the rescue! Here’s the same setup shot at 70mm:

Again without rearranging the subjects I have managed to bring the background house “closer” and relatively bigger than my foreground. The size of Thomas relative to the FRAME has remained approximately the same and yet the house has now occupied the entire background. The roof has even disappeared from the frame. This is the effect of lens compression. It brings the background closer to the front and larger in the frame. The composition now has made the background significant.

This is the reason why I’m stuck with a general purpose lens. Since I shoot mostly landscape, I don’t really give a damn about wide apertures. Bokeh addiction is for n00bs who just got rid of their point-and-shoot. Take a look at that last shot because that was taken at f11. I could have used f5.6 to make the background disappear in a creamy blur. Ultrawides, on the other hand, have no lens compression at all. And 50mm prime? Limited and boring unless you have an endless supply of subjects to shoot with.

So let’s summarize what was covered:

1. Use a wide angle to emphasize the foreground and increase foreground to background distance.

2. Use longer focal lengths for lens compression to bring the background closer while maintaining the size of your foreground relative to the frame.

As I have said time and again, your cheap zoom lens is good enough for just about anything. I hope you find this post helpful.

Until next time.

My First Roll of Slide Film

After Kodak announced the discontinuation of several transparency films, I decided to try some of them before they finally become just part of photography’s history. The photos that I’m showing here were captured using my beloved Nikon FM3A and Kodak E100VS slide film.

I was quite uncomfortable at first, knowing that slide film is probably the most unforgiving medium. It has a very narrow dynamic range of about 4-5 stops. It means that I had to carefully choose what I shoot. Before tripping the shutter I had to evaluate the light as best as I could and make sure that I am properly judging the meter reading from my camera. In the shot above, the exposure needle of my FM3A was almost pointing at 1/15s. I thought that it must have been tricked by the shadow areas. My goal was to capture the sunlight hitting the buildings and bridge so I was careful not to blow up the highlights. I decided to expose one stop lower at 1/30s and this is what I got. I really like the warm light hitting the top of the bridge against the storm clouds in the background. When I composed the shot I had panoramic cropping in mind so I made sure that the important parts are all framed right in the middle. I wanted to use the whole frame but in order to capture the building and the bridge I had to shoot wide and aim higher. Wide and high introduced so much distortion that the buildings seem to lean over to the center of the frame. My only option was to shoot wide but frame it in such a way that the horizon was almost in the middle, a mortal sin in composition unless you have a reason to do so. In this case, the reason was my goal of doing a 1×2 panoramic format and I think I have succeeded in doing that.

I wish I could let everyone see the actual frames on film. The colours are so intense and there’s depth that it looks three-dimensional. I used my cheap Epson V500 scanner to digital the film and to be honest, I think it just ruined the image. I guess slide film is meant to be viewed in a slide projector.

I am very happy with the results and would definitely buy more of this stuff before the world runs out of them. Of the 36 frames, I got more than 10 keepers and I think that says a lot about how film forces you to think a hundred times before clicking the shutter. There’s no reason you couldn’t do the same with digital photography but there’s always the temptation of deleting the bad ones or fixing it later in post or storage is cheap arguments.

Before I sign off, here’s more of my slide film captures:

Zoom Lens vs Prime Lens

Let me start by apologizing for I will be beating a dead horse that by the time I’m finished with this post it will be FUBAR…until someone else beat it to a pulp.

The reason I’m blogging about this is because another beginner has been victimized again by “experts” persuading n00bs to get a 50mm prime because it is a MUST HAVE lens. This beginner posted in a forum complaining about how tight his 50mm is on an APS-C sensor. Two mistakes have been committed: 1) forcing to buy a 50mm lens, and, 2) using it in a crop sensor camera.

I will say it again: Beginners will learn so much more by using a kit zoom lens than by using a fast prime lens.

I don’t want to start an argument about the technical advantages of prime lenses over zoom lenses but let me tell you that most of those advantages can be easily accomplished with a kit lens attached to a modern camera. That means any camera you can buy brand new now. What I would like to discuss instead is about taking real photos and not just test charts.

One of the biggest hurdles in photography is that most of the time we do not have control of subjects. You can’t tell a mountain or a tree to move for the perfect composition. All we can do is change position and/or perspective. With a prime lens, forget about changing your perspective. You just can’t. Why then would you limit your learning with a handicapped lens?

Let me expound on perspective and why a 50mm or equivalent lens is a big hindrance. The 50mm has almost the same field of view as human eyes. In other words, boring. No, I’m not saying Henri Cartier-Bresson’s shots are boring. I meant, unless you are as good as HCB, your shots will be boring. For a beginner, that means years and years of learning.

Photographers aim to let others see things that “normal” individuals would usually ignore. That’s why we shoot rusty metal for texture, silhouettes for forms and shapes, light and star trails, and so on. Stuff that ordinary humans do not normally perceive. Changing perspective is a very good technique to achieve this goal. Exaggerated views from ultrawide lenses and the effect of telephoto lens compression will immensely add to your artistic creativity. This is simply impossible with a 50mm prime.

The challenge is for the beginner to recognize the effect of varying focal lengths. It is very easy to just zoom in and out instead of stepping forward and back, a behaviour that pro prime lens users label as being lazy. I prefer to call it lens ignorance which is exacerbated if one restricts himself to a 50mm prime. In my next blog post, I promise to show you how you can maximize the use of your cheap kit lens.

I would like to end this post by addressing a nonsense argument against zoom lenses. Many prime users are quick to point out why those who prefer walkabout zoom lenses are not maximizing their SLR cameras. The argument is that SLRs were made so you could change lenses otherwise buy a point-and-shoot instead. ROFL!!!! We change lenses because the laws of physics won’t allow a sharp, distortion-free 10-500mm f1.4 full frame lens that fits in your pocket. There will always be limitations. A lens can be fast, long or light as long as you choose only two.

Use the most appropriate lens for the job. For beginners, stick to your kit zoom lenses. Stay away from prime lenses until you have decided which focal length suits you the most (hint: check the EXIF data of your shots). A zoom lens, with enough self discipline on your part, will get you there faster and let you take more interesting shots along the way.

RAW vs JPG

At the risk of beating a dead horse, I would like to discuss this sensitive matter. I have always shot in RAW ever since I started doing serious photography. Editing a 14-bit RAW file is so much more flexible than tweaking an 8-bit JPG. Not only that, I used to edit and store my images in AdobeRGB format to maximize color gamut. Flexibility was everything.

It was only during this past year or so that I have started investing on (cheap) filters. Since I do mostly landscape, GND, ND and CPL filters have become essential tools in my photography. I used to do a lot of HDR to extract details in the shadows and highlights until my taste drastically changed. Shadows have now become part of my composition instead of being a hindrance to creating a pleasing photograph. I’m not just referring to silhouettes but contrast in general. A huge part of this is because I have learned to appreciate and distinguish the quality of light and how it interacts with the landscape. I used to shoot from 5AM to 10AM when I was just a beginner but now, a 5AM to 6AM session for a 5:30AM sunrise is enough. I quickly realized that photos taken 30 minutes after sunrise have a very low keeper rate unless I am dealing with fantastic extreme weather conditions.

The challenge for me has always been to get it right as much as possible when I trip the shutter. I spend a lot of time adjusting the exposure, combining filters and chimping the LCD to confirm that my histogram is where I want it to be. I wake up two hours before sunrise just to arrive at a location which I have already reasearched beforehand for weather patterns and tide movement. I shoot sunsets until an hour after the sun has disappeared on the horizon. All of these just to get the ideal light conditions and colors.

Yesterday, I had a very frustrating experience. I drove for 3 hours to a planned location to shoot autumn colors. It wasn’t perfect but I managed to get some fantastic light and warm colors. The shots I took were crisp and punchy and the histograms were ideal. Driving back home for another 3 hours I immediately transferred my files to my Mac, believing that I have captured something that was worth $50 in fuel and half a day that I have lost forever. Reality hit me in the nuts when my photo editing software presented me with lifeless photographs. The colors were not only dull but they were wrong. The contrast, gone. The crisp and punchy photos are nowhere to be found. I spent hours tweaking the RAW files to reproduce what I captured, what I saw in the LCD. All of that effort ended in frustration.

The moment of realization. I spent a huge amount of effort getting it right during capture only to throw away all of that and redo everything in the computer!!! That, to me, is insane! Wasted time…lots of it.

The second moment of realization for me was that I’m not good at photo editing at all. I am better off spending more time taking photos than being in front of a computer. I should have known this a long time ago. The photos you see in my Flickr gallery are edited but I do not spend more than 10 minutes for each one of them. You can watch how I work in my two-minute photo editing video. That represents the bulk of my editing workflow. If a shot does not look right after a few minutes of contrast and color adjustments, it just becomes a worthless junk of ones and zeros.

I am far from being a good photographer but I am worse as a photo retoucher. From being an HDR addict to becoming re-acquainted with film, it is quite obvious where my priorities are.

As a consequence of yesterday’s experience, I have decided to shoot in JPG for a month and see if I’m gonna miss anything. If my productivity does not improve, I’ll go back to shooting RAW or maybe shoot RAW+JPG if I can afford to waste more disk space. I have been asked why not strive to improve my editing skills instead of giving up? I am not giving up on improving my computer skills but at this point, I believe that I am better off spending my time improving my photography skills instead. When I become pro, there would always be someone else who can do the editing for me I would like to be proven wrong but my personal experience tells me I’m heading in the right direction.

Don’t Push Too Hard

Let us be realistic. Photography is a difficult art to master. Not only are we limited by individual skills, we are also limited by time, subject and tools. It’s not like music where the only limitation is in the musician. In photography knowing when to stop is very important.

Time. We only have 24 hours in a day. Unless you are a paid pro, you will have to juggle photography with your day job. It really pains me when I see a beautiful sunset outside of my office window. I feel bad watching a glorious sunrise inside an airport terminal. You just have to let it pass and hope that you’ll be at the right time and place “next time”.

Subject. How many times have you wished you could move a tree or a huge rock even just a tiny bit for the perfect composition? Or bring a mountain closer? Or move the sun a few inches to the right for symmetry? Or wish the model was taller, skinnier, etc…? Painters are lucky because they could create and arrange their subjects however they want, the trade-off of course is we get to finish our work in a fraction of a second what would take them days or months to complete theirs.

Tools. Among artists, photographers are one of the most ill-equiped. Cameras that can’t capture the dynamic range of a scene. Lenses that are too heavy and too slow. You name it. And yet photographers have the most expensive tools. A photographer spends so much time and money circumventing tool limitations. A good musician or painter seldom complains about his tools but a good photographer simply learns NOT to bother at all.

Your lens isn’t sharp, so shoot at smaller apertures. It is not fast enough, so use a tripod or choose a different subject. Camera sensor is too noisy, then shoot when there is enough light or convert to black and white and use grain to spice up the photo.

I find it funny that people complain about sharpness and shallow depth of field when their shots are not even properly composed.

My point is, there will always be severe tool limitations. Realize that you just have to do something else instead of complaining. You can’t shoot sports or go birding with your 18-55mm f4-5.6 kit lens. Those who do, carry bazookas. Concentrate instead on what you can do with whatever tool you have. Find inspiration. Look for photos that you like that were captured using a similar set of lenses and see if you can come up with a better photo. If you can’t even take a decent shot with your kit then no camera or lens can make you capture better pictures.

Inspiration. That is the best cure against gear acquisition syndrome.

So stop complaining, go out and do wonders with your camera.

My Dream Camera

I have owned and extensively used different cameras from different manufacturers and, from my experience, each one of them have their own shortcomings. I have owned a Canon 40D, Sony A700, Olympus E-P1 and currently shoot with a Pentax K5, Nikon D700 and Olympus E-P3. I have given up on trying to find the perfect camera. There isn’t one and I doubt if there will be one. In my native tongue, we have a saying that goes “libre ang mangarap”. It literally means it won’t cost you anything to dream.

So dream I will. I want it to be as realistic as possible so I will use current technology to build the perfect DSLR.

First, the sensor. I would like the dynamic range of the Pentax K5 in a full frame 35mm format with the noise profile of the Nikon D700. The K5 has this amazing capability to pull details from shadow areas without a shift in color even in shots that were underexposed by 2 stops. The D700 noise profile is like film, not the smudgy type you find in other cameras. I want a base ISO of 100 so I can do long exposures without the trickery that happens when you use extended ISO sensitivities. Even a max ISO of 6400 offered by the D700 is fine by me because I rarely shoot beyond 800 anyway. I would like 24Mp maximum. This resolution allows me to crop a 2:1 panograph at 18Mp or 3:1 at 12Mp. That is still huge! At 24Mp I can confidently shoot at f11 without noticeable drop in sharpness due to diffraction or unnecessary blur from mirror slap.

Color rendition. Nothing beats Olympus colors. They are simply the best. Although I shoot RAW, I shoot JPGs when using my E-P3 unless I’m bracketing for HDR capture. The D700 has the worst JPG colors ever.

Memory banks. I want 5 custom banks to store my favorite settings and I want them to be easily recalled via a twist of a knob. The Canon C1/C2 is the perfect example of this but I want 5. The custom banks must be fully customizable like the Canon 40D does. I would like to couple the timer with high-speed successive shooting and AEB in aperture priority mode. Aside from this, the timer should automatically enable mirror lock-up just like the Pentax K5 which means only the shutter curtain should be moving throughout the entire X number of frames in the AEB mode. This prevents blurring caused by mirror slap. Oh, the knob must be secured by a button like the one on the K5 and not the retarded set up of the D700.

Image stabilization. I like how Sony does it. Very reliable and very easy to disable because it has a dedicated button. Other cameras require you to hunt for it in the complicated menu. Pentax SR is almost useless and it totally ruins your shot if you forget to disable it when the camera is mounted on a tripod.

Viewfinder. Large and bright like the D700 but should cover 100% of the frame. The viewfinder door of the D700 is also very handy for long exposures because it prevents stray light from entering through it. The rubber cap should be round but not too large. The D700 got this right. Of course there should be a viewfinder focus adjustment for those who wear glasses like me.

Sensor cleaning. So far only the Olympus cameras have reliable sensor cleaning feature.

Build quality and ergonomics. The D700′s shape and build quality is superb but they should get rid of the built-in flash which is very vulnerable to damage especially from extreme weather. The weather sealing of the K5 is very good because it could withstand serious liquid and dust and temperature abuse. In terms of grip, I like the Sony A700. I also like the layout of the A700′s adjustment wheels. Very easy to reach and turn. The D700′s front wheel is quite tricky to use and I don’t like it. The battery compartment of the K5 is the best. There is a metal lock that twists to close the battery door. Very well done.

Focusing. D700 focus points but please spread them wider. The screw focusing motor of the D700 is fast enough for me. Those of the K5 and A700 are also fast. Canon, on the other hand, should have fired their engineers.

Adjustment buttons. The button layout of the Canon 40D is the best. I could change just about any setting with just my right hand. That thumb stick is also very welcome. But please not that HUGE thumb wheel. The thumb wheel of the D700 is the best. It has enough resistance and click feedback when you turn it. Those of the A700 and K5 are too clicky and too jagged for my liking. For the AEL button, the A700 is perfect. It can be configured such that the exposure is locked until it is pressed again. That means you can lock the exposure and take multiple shots then unlock. Perfect for panoramic stitching and when using exposure compensation.

Power switch. The K5 is perfect. It is similar to the D700 but is more clicky and easier to grab with your pointing finger. The A700 is ok but it requires the left hand. The one on the Canon 40D is nuts. Canon should fire the one who designed it.

AEB. At least 5 frames but 7 or 9 would be ideal. The bracketing range and intervals should be fully customizable just like the K5. The A700 has a very limited AEB. The D700 although it has 9 could not go beyond 1-stop intervals and worse, it could not be coupled with the timer.

Menu system. I like the A700 while I absolutely hate the D700. Canon 40D and Pentax K5 are also acceptable.

LCD screen. There should be two. The top LCD of the Nikon D700 is perfect as long as you don’t get confused by the inverted exposure indicators. You can also easily turn on the LCD light in the D700 from the power switch. The K5 LCD is fine with me. I do not need touch screen. I actually disabled that feature in my E-P3. I do not need a flip LCD because I feel that it’s just another thing that could easily break. The K5 silver limited edition LCD is supposedly shatter-proof.

Pop-up Flash. None just like in the Canon 5D2. However, there should be an option to do commander mode like in the Nikon D700. Not sure if that is possible but it’s just a radio signal so I don’t know why you have to fire a flash to do that.

Lens mount. Nikon mount is the best because of it’s compatibility with old, cheap but superb manual lenses. Pentax and Sony are also very good in terms of compatibility. It’s just that I have a huge investment on Nikon film cameras that I prefer the Nikon mount. Forget Canon. Aside from abandoning the FD mount you can’t even mount a modern EFS lens in a full frame camera.

Storage. I prefer the speed of CF cards but hate bent pins. A dual format CF/SD would be perfect. I like the huge bay door of the Nikon D700. The K5 and A700 do not open wide enough and are quite annoying.

Shutter cable port. I like the simplicity of the K5. The D700 is unnecessarily complicated while the A700 reminds me of how annoying it is to plug a computer IDE data cable.

Neck strap hook. I like the ordinary hook of the Canon 40D. I do not like the movable triangular hook of the D700 and K5. Aside from being noisy, they twist the neck strap as well.

Color. Although black is fine I probably would want the chrome finish.

And that is my realistic yet impossible dream camera. At this point in time, the Pentax K5 is the closest match followed by my previously owned Canon 40D. I think the new Canon 5D3 would be the closest to my dream camera but I have not and may never use it due to monetary constraints.

If you have managed to finish reading this lengthy post, I hope you will realize that there simply is no perfect camera for everyone. Being a fanboi is just insane. Use the right tool that suits you best and don’t be afraid to switch brands if needed. For those who are new to photography, trust me when I say that any camera is good enough if you put enough effort into photography.

Fantastic Landscape Photography with 50mm

It’s quite amusing to read about majority of amateur photographers, especially the new ones, who think that their normal zoom lenses are not wide enough for landscape photography. I shoot landscapes and I shoot with normal, cheap, zoom lenses. Well maybe my photos are not good enough for them to believe me

Well lucky them, because I accidentally stumbled upon the online gallery of a landscape photographer who shoots mostly (90%) with a standard 50mm (35mm frame) lens. And the best part: he shoots FILM!!!

Without further ado, let me present to you the pure awesomeness of this online gallery:

http://www.slusarczyk.net/main/

Now go, pick up your kit lens and shoot.

Two-minute editing for landscape photography

Some of the techniques I use to edit my photos. Nothing fancy. Just basically brightness control and contrast adjustments.

The sample photo was chosen from a set of bracketed exposures in an attempt to create an HDR image. Instead of creating an HDR, I have chosen to use the -2EV exposure because that shot has managed to preserve the highlights. The Pentax K5 has this amazing ability to pull lots of details from the shadows.

Fighting GAS

Gear Acquisition Syndrome, or GAS, is a non-seasonal disease that affects hobbyists. The symptoms are more pronounced in the male species although not rare in females especially if they are of the geeky kind. The disease is very contagious, affecting the lives of new comers to the hobby and becoming chronic over time. It is characterized by very strong fanboyism, deadly obsession for gear quality, loss of money and severe degradation of real output.

I still have some symptoms of the disease but I am coping quite well. Before my obsession in photography, I almost completely surrendered my self to guitar playing. There was a time when I became so engrossed in computer upgrades. In all cases, I have managed to heal myself naturally from the disease because I found a very potent cure:

INSPIRATION.

Allow me to tell you about how I managed to cope with this disease in my other hobbies. I remember myself practicing the guitar six hours a day and actively playing in a band. We played originals and even started making an album. When I changed jobs that required me to travel a lot I had to quit the band. I had no more time to play the guitar but my gear doubled! How did I stop buying guitar equipment? By finding inspiration. Bryan May of Queen played only ONE homemade guitar for 30 years! He plays way way better than I do and has managed to produce several albums with a guitar that was made of household stuff. So I stopped my obsession on guitar gear.

Computers. This was even worse. I got so hooked on computers ever since I got my hands on an old 286 machine in high school. I learned several programming languages and even created my own virus from scratch while teaching my self how to code in assembler. I taught my self how to run Linux and was tinkering with the kernel during my first two hours of playing with this new (1997) operating system. Then came the addiction. I was totally obsessed with building new computers all the time. The upgrades never stopped. I bought and sold laptops every year. I thought it would never stop until I found inspiration in the creators of UNIX. My laptop is a gazillion times faster and better than a PDP-8 but I have not managed to produce anything closer to even a simple operating system. That was an eye opener for me.

Now let’s talk about photography. I had several P&S cameras before I even started getting serious with this hobby. My first digital was an Olympus 1.3Mp. It got replaced by a Fuji then a Canon then a Kodak then back to Canon. I was just taking snapshots. Then I got my first DSLR from Thailand which was a Nikon D60 which got upgraded to a Canon 40D then a got a backup Sony A700 and replaced the 40D with a Nikon D700 and the Sony with a Pentax K5. Seriously, THAT is so much gear whoring. I had real intentions on why I made those purchases. After the Sony A700 I realized that I had to simplify. The D700 can share the old lenses from my old Nikon film cameras but it sucked in landscape photography so I got a K5. Yeah, right. I knew it had to stop.

Where did I find the inspiration? From the old greats. There’s Ansel Adams and Henri Cartier-Bresson, to name a few. They had crappy cameras and yet …. If you want modern photographers, go to 1x.com and you’ll be shocked at how bad your photos are. I have contacts in Flickr that have lesser cameras yet their photos look absolutely fantastic. Truly, it is not the camera.

I’m not saying stop buying new gear. What I’m saying is that make sure that you have maximized your equipment before thinking of getting a new one. Only you can make that decision but you have to be really serious about getting better. I hate my D700 for landscape so instead of letting it gather dust, I looked for situations in which I can make good use of it. Portraiture is an example, although certainly it’s not my favorite type of photography. Forcing myself into doing something I am not familiar with takes the boredom away while at the same time making full use of the errant purchase.

Go find your own inspiration. Just a tip: you probably won’t find it in “photography” forums.

Megapixel Wars Resurrected

Back when digital photography was in its infancy, people were after the camera that had the most megapixel. Resolution was king. And rightly so. Digital photos looked crap when printed large especially when compared to the enlargements made from film. It wasn’t until sensors hit the 6Mp mark that digital photography became a viable alternative to 35mm film photography.

But it didn’t stop there. Megapixels kept climbing. Even point-and-shoot cameras with their tiny sensors reached a whooping 14Mp and that trend continued until the present. Megapixels were the easiest way to trick customers into buying the latest model. People upgraded their 8Mp camera to 10Mp!!!

Now photographers have learned that megapixel isn’t everything. Even some camera manufacturers have learned their lesson. The Canon G10 with 14Mp was upgraded (or downgraded) to 10Mp with the release of the G11 and G12. The megapixel wars are slowly dying…up to a certain point (the latest Nikon D800 has 36Mp!!!).

You’d think that would silence the gear whores. Unfortunately, there’s a new kind of war that’s raging in the “photography” forums and it goes with the initials of “I.Q.”. I’m not talking about intelligence quotient but in fact, it’s actually a dumb war. IQ stands for “Image Quality”.

Image Quality. What exactly are they looking for? Let’s have a look at the “requirements”:

1) High ISO performance. If your new camera can’t produce clean images at ISO 6400 then it’s not good enough.

2) Sharpness. If it looks blurry at 200% zoom then it isn’t sharp enough.

3) Bokeh. Anything slower than f2.8 for zoom lenses or f1.4 for primes isn’t good enough.

4) Add more stupid requirements here.

The war has become uncontrollable and has grown n times!

Seriously, WTF people?!

Let’s tackle those 3 items one by one.

High ISO performance. This is my favorite. Back when real photographers shot with film, people didn’t complain about grain the size of boulders. Grain actually added character to the photograph. Weddings were at times shot with ISO 1600 film when the light dropped considerably. The unfortunate ones who brought only ISO 400 film had to push them during development which made the photos look more “interesting”.

Sharpness. I went to an exhibit of Henri Cartier-Bresson’s photographs and let me tell you that a lot of his photos were really blurry. But they were so awesome that you would never even pick on the picture quality. I was there dragging my jaw on the floor.

Bokeh. People buy these outrageously expensive, fast, heavy lenses. For what?! So you can shoot wide open at f1.4 and complain that you can’t get your focus right? They say it’s for shooting in low light. Yeah, that’s why you want that ISO 6400 as well right? Let me see, where can I find a place that “requires” f1.4 at ISO 6400? Hmmmm…. Uh, none?! Of course somebody out there will always manage to trap himself in a dark cave…everyday…and that makes the purchase fully and truly justifiable. If you really need to shoot in very dim light then use a tripod. You know, that cheap thing with three legs. But I’m sure a tripod isn’t good enough for them so let’s stop right there.

Measurebators will always find a reason to justify their purchase. Go find a pulitzer photograph and see if there’s any that meets the IQ requirements. I actually proposed this challenge to a measurebator and he gave me the photograph of the Afghan Girl that was captured by Steve McCurry. I had to stop myself from laughing inside the train. This guy probably thought that the photograph was captured by a digital Hassy or a Nikon D3s I had to explain to him about 135 Kodachrome and told him to go get himself a 6Mp point-and-shoot camera if that was his reference for image quality.

Just for laughs, somebody posted HCB’s photo of the cyclist and winding stairs in a critique forum in Flickr and people started bashing the photograph like it was captured by a n00b who can’t even take a sharp image.

I have to be honest and I am not afraid to tell you that I have been there. How do you think I ended up with a Nikon D700?! I thought that my photographs will become so much better if I upgraded my Canon 40D to a Nikon D700 that was three times more expensive. To my disappointment, the D700 produced exactly the same photographs. My photos still looked like they were captured by me. Actually, I have grown a hatred for my D700 because it sucks big time in landscape photography. I’m not talking about IQ. This darn camera gets in the way of how I work (please refer to my comparison of the D700 and K5).

Been there, to some degree, and done that. Image quality has very little to do with capturing a jaw-dropping photograph.Take it from me, your camera is not to blame if your photos are crap. I own two cameras that others dream of having. My D700 and K5 still have not saved me from taking crap photographs.