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標題: A Better Camera [打印本頁]

作者: 快樂牛郎 時間: 2011-1-28 11:06 標題: A Better Camera

This essay actually revisits many of our prior discussions

A Better Camera, by Randall Kelley

I just want to take a little time here to respectfully disagree with what a lot of professional photographers like to say about this camera (or any high end camera for that matter). “A better camera won’t make you a better photographer.” Or some version of that statement. Here’s my take, and I decided that I do disagree.

If you are a “photographer” there are two parts to everything you do Art and Craft. There is a reason people have been referring to “Arts and Crafts” forEVER. They are inextricably linked. People get into huge debates over what medium is Art and what is Craft. Easy end of that debate, all expressive medium is BOTH. The MARKET for PRODUCT may make distinction, but the person doing any expressive work is practicing both.

This is why I disagree with those who say a better camera, or a better tool of any sort in any medium, won’t make you better. Talent can be expressed on the cheap, craft as well, but you can radically improve your craft by working with better tools.

If you don’t think so, find the professional photographer making his living shooting a Holga. You might find some, but show me one and I’ll show you someone NOT shooting ad campaigns and weddings. Shoot someone’s wedding with a Holga and tell them it’s OK cause the “Style” is more important than the quality. I don’t care if you MAY get an award winning picture of the Vice President with one, you can’t count on consistent quality images from something that can’t replicate the same shot twice.

And go shoot Ansel Adams’ same landscape with a point and shoot and enlarge it to 20 inches or so and do a quick side by side. I’m betting you and any non expert in the room will be able to distinguish the two. Can you get a good landscape? Depends on your talent. But just HOW good it can be depends not only on your talent but on your skill, and your materials, and your tools. Or do you want a Balsa wood house built with a sledge hammer?

If you take the most talented carpenter doing finishing work and ask him if he can do as well with a sledge hammer, he’ll think you’re crazy. Could he get it done? Probably. Would it be as good? Doubt it. A GOOD tool allows finer more precise work. That’s an element of craft.

So the question becomes, will a better tool make you a better craftsman? Most jump on the art angle and answer no. And I would rather have talent and a poor tool rather than no talent and a good one. But what if you have the opportunity to have both? Do you eschew the better tool because it won’t improve your talent? I hope you don’t buy that, because it can, and here’s how.

If I am cutting framing boards with a chain saw, chances are I’m not really hairline accurate. If I only have a chainsaw, will I get better? Yes, but only to a point. After that point I need a more accurate tool to keep getting better. Should I skip the upgrade because it won’t help. I hope not, or at least I hope I don’t live in that house.

If I get a blurry shot from my point and shoot, or even my nice zoom lens DSLR, how blurry is it? Is it movement? The focus? A limit of the lens? When you get a camera and lens that produces radically improved images, you WILL see your errors much more distinctly. Can you learn from mistakes that are obvious faster than you can from ones that are obfuscated by lower quality equipment and materials? I say yes. I hope you are able to see my point.

On to point two. Does learning about all the elements that go into creating an image make you better? I think so. You can grab a really good DSLR, set it on auto and crank out really good photos. But I’ll bet you that if you fully understand every element of the process, you could do even better.

Switch off auto everything and you WILL learn. If you learn, you WILL get better. Will you get more talented? No. But if you have talent you will get better at your craft. Why practice a craft if you have no desire to get better?

So I put it to you that when the statement is made, “A better camera won’t make you a better photographer.”, it is either meant to talk ONLY about your talent… and perhaps to make you feel a bit better about not being able to swing “high end” equipment, but it is inaccurate, or incomplete at best. Good equipment, and especially equipment that pushes you to make more of your own decisions, will improve your results if you are willing to learn and if you persist.

When you see the sharpness of some lenses, you will suddenly know what part of the blur was YOURS and what was the equipment. If you use that to find a solution you will get better. If your equipment is low end enough to never be that sharp, then you just learn how to make blur work. That skill will still come in handy when your camera and lens stops doing it for you and you want to induce it yourself. So pay attention to when you like it and when you don’t. But don’t be misled into thinking that not having the ability to produce a sharp image is not limiting, and that you can do just as well with any piece of equipment. That is just not the case.

The other way this type of equipment will improve your photography is (and this crosses the line into talent and I’m saying it) it WILL make you see differently. And that can improve your talent. When you look at images and the detail is not highly resolved, it is easy to see composition, shading, light, etc. A lot of critical artistic elements are NOT limited by the resolving power of your equipment. But DETAIL is. And when you start to suddenly see a lot of detail in you images that you didn’t even notice when taking the picture, you then start to look before you shoot for those same kinds of detail.

It’s like getting a new prescription for eyeglasses after years with a bad one. You can really notice things you missed. And IF you choose to take that to heart and start looking, you will observe better. Photography is a lot like acting, in that a good observer picks up detail to add to their work that is missing in someone who is not as observant.

This is really a big deal, and was the last straw in motivating me to write this down. I always suspected the statement, “A better camera won’t make you a better photographer.” was off on craft, but walking around the other day, seeing things I wouldn’t have even noticed before, I thought, “This really is making me better at seeing.” Now if I can get that into my work, I’ll be thrilled.

Don’t spend money on better equipment thinking it is going to make you some other photographer. But DO get it if you want the chance to push yourself beyond where you are. Equipment this good, and this demanding, will make a difference.

I’ve never said “WOW!” so much looking at my own images as since I made this purchase. And I’ve never said, “Crap!” so much either. This stuff is so different. I have not thought, “This is nice. Should I print this one?” very often in the past, but it is constantly on my mind now. Until everyone has thirty inch or larger monitors and endless bandwidth, there is a level of quality you can’t share digitally.

If you can’t afford something great, don’t feel bad, do whatever you can with what you have. But, I feel about the M9, and Leica in general, like Ferris Buhler did about driving a Ferrari, “It is so choice. If you have the means, I highly recommend picking one up.”

Randall Kelley

作者: Lik 時間: 2011-1-28 11:47

I never said that a better camera will not result in better pictures wor? It's just that between the photographer's talent and the camera, the photographer plays a much bigger role than the camera can ever hope to in determining the final outcome je.

-Lik

作者: fibbi 時間: 2011-1-28 11:59

工欲善其事，必先利其器.

Even for card making, we still need certain kind of tools...

作者: Look4chrisng 時間: 2011-1-28 12:11

A new pair of eyes would help Mr. Randell more than the M9.

作者: ricrick 時間: 2011-1-28 12:14

最心痛是d靚野通常落係d蠢人手上，我甘有才華但係就窮，真係天妒英才

作者: sheep 時間: 2011-1-28 12:30

有好多效果嘅野
真係要靚機先會出到
我都好希望有副靚架生

作者: 快樂牛郎 時間: 2011-1-28 13:36

A new pair of eyes would help Mr. Randell more than the M9.
Look4chrisng 發表於 2011/1/28 12:11

but since you can't get a new pair of eyes
a better tool would help to push you further a little bit

i guess the truth is that
a better tool can't make you smarter or more talented
but it would let you realize the potential that was not possible (or very difficult) with a less than capable tool

you mentioned how you can get the background to be oof with a ultrawide angle
with a lens that has distance scalings, you could've used zonal focus and hyperfocus. But if you use a cheap kit lens with a bad autofocus mechanism, then you are out of luck.

作者: 快樂牛郎 時間: 2011-1-28 13:38

shot this one on my 25mm at f2.8
the background is about 2m from the mannequin and is already very out of focus

作者: sheep 時間: 2011-1-28 13:57

in digital photography,
depth of field is not only determined by focal length and F stops

作者: Look4chrisng 時間: 2011-1-28 14:03

本帖最後由 Look4chrisng 於 2011-1-28 14:06 編輯

I was thinking 4inch dof. I am a dof junkie. more like MF feel.

Kind of like this, very wide and very thin dof, although I think he maybe tilted the lens, but you got the feel.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/shima11/4648074052/

作者: 快樂牛郎 時間: 2011-1-28 14:57

I was thinking 4inch dof. I am a dof junkie. more like MF feel.

Kind of like this, very wide and ...
Look4chrisng 發表於 2011/1/28 14:03

i like everything sharp so i actually hate to use large apertures
but anyways
when you want to get something like that
you wouldn't pick up a point & shoot
so equipment is important

作者: 快樂牛郎 時間: 2011-1-28 14:58

in digital photography,
depth of field is not only determined by focal length and F stops
sheep 發表於 2011/1/28 13:57

i am not sure what you mean

作者: sheep 時間: 2011-1-28 15:12

Sensor do plays a part

作者: 快樂牛郎 時間: 2011-1-28 15:28

Sensor do plays a part
sheep 發表於 2011/1/28 15:12

i think we are all talking about full frame here

作者: sheep 時間: 2011-1-28 15:50

that's why

作者: Look4chrisng 時間: 2011-1-28 16:13

yes, the physcial limit you can't overcome.

作者: BiscottiGelato 時間: 2011-1-28 16:38

A better camera is very subjective...

Whenever a friend ask me about buying a DSLR, I'd ask how serious he/she is into photography and if he/she is willing to put in a lot of time in photography. Particularly be prepared to spend 10~30 seconds in taking a single shot, minimum.... cuz otherwise, DSLR tend to give worser result than cameras that are designed to be full auto.

The pricier a DSLR is, the more it tend to allow more control to the photographer... end result is that if the photographer is dumber than the camera, then the result will just become worse. IMO, for full auto mode, most small DC does a much better job than DSLR, particularly because it's really easy to screw up because DOF is usually more shallow in DSLRs.....

anyways, pricier cameras definately does not mean better photos. Not too sure about 'better' camera tho....

作者: 快樂牛郎 時間: 2011-1-28 16:49

A better camera is very subjective...

Whenever a friend ask me about buying a DSLR, I'd ask how ser ...
BiscottiGelato 發表於 2011/1/28 16:38

agreed
to me a better camera just means it would give me as much as I want within the constraints

so if IQ is my biggest concern, the a camera with good IQ is a good camera to me. It has nothing to do with prices. That's why to me the Sigma DP1 and DP2 are much better cameras than entry level DSLRs with cheap lenses.

作者: 嘉嘉 時間: 2011-1-28 20:25

A better camera is very subjective...

Whenever a friend ask me about buying a DSLR, I'd ask how ser ...
BiscottiGelato 發表於 2011-1-28 16:38

agree here too
some people are not even into photography yet they think a better camera, DSLR, would help them to take good pictures
turns out they were all blurry/out of focus/under exposed (not to mention about composition)

And to the essay, I didn't read every single word but I do see the point that the author was trying to make. (well, one of the points....)
I agree that better image quality can help to identify areas of problems, but only if the person has some knowledge to photography..... and this is the only out of many points from his paragraphs that I would agree with

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