When the timing is right.

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Big Pete, originally uploaded by norbography.

Are you a gear whore seemed to stir up plenty of conversation on a couple of photo forums and Flickr groups I posted it on. It was mention in one discussion that no matter the gear, if you managed to capture what Cartier Breson called the “decisive moment”, it would make for a good photo. The shot above is one time I have managed to do exactly that. Pete is a friend of a friend, who I have only met 2 or 3 times, but this photo captured him perfectly. The boy can giggle. This shot was taken with one of my old film cameras, a Nikon FE with a Sigma 24 f/2.8 lens. Shot under pretty ordinary lighting, it captures Pete having one of those moments where you just let it all hang out. We had just all been told a rather dirty joke that obviously tickled Pete’s fancy. Although the photo isn’t technically great, the content more than makes up for it. I get a bigger buzz out of this sort of photo than some technically great shot or some arty shot that I fluked.

Love to hear peoples thoughts.

Gear whores, does it make for better images?

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We all know them. People with the latest and greatest gear. Actually, I am probably one of them myself, although, I don’t suffer from this affliction like I used to. There was a time when I wanted all the fastest lenses and best camera available. I thought better gear would mean better images. Well, it does, if you know how to get the most from the superior equipment. But what if you don’t. I can remember reading about fast lenses when it was all new to me. I had to have one. I didn’t have a clue what it meant, I just wanted fast glass. This was a time before I understood what an aperture was and what it did. These days I unerstand and appreciate just what fast glass is, but, does it make for a better photograph? Well, yes and no. I have taken so quite good shots on my old 300D and kit lens. And I can assure you I have taken some shocking photos with my 5D and L series lenses.

So, why, if you are able to take acceptable photos with lesser gear, do we go out and spend our last dollar on the lastest gear. Well, the better gear does make it easier to get that good shot. Take viewfinders for example. On the 300D, I used to struggle to see unless I was out in dalylight. There were 2 reasons to this. First, I had slow kit lenses on the camera. You can only get so much light passing through a f/5.6 lens. The second reason was the viewfinder seemed tiny. When I got the 5D, the biggest change from the 30D was the viewfinder. It seemed enormous. So with a larger viewfinder, and say a f/2.8 lens, suddenly, I felt like I had night vision. Obviously, being able to see the subject you are trying to photograph, will help you take a better photo.

So, I can see the subject better with a better camera, that doesn’t mean I will take a better photo. I can still manage to stuff it up. What else can help? Image stabilisation? Fast frames per second? USM focussing lenses? Live View, which rules out a viewfinder altogether? Well they may help, but even all those things combined, wont mean better images. You could place me in front of the best lathe in the world, with the finest timber available, a skilled trademan by my side, and I doubt I could turn a high quality candle holder to save my life. In much the same way as some really talented people are using rubbish cameras to turn out amazing photos, the skilled tradesman could probably make a superior product with a wobbly lathe and some drift wood.

Drifted

Candleholder?

So, does all this mean that the gear whores out there take rubbish photos? Hardly. There are plenty of people with loads of talent that are gear whores. Just like there are plenty of people with little or no talent who have all the latest and greatest gear. I suppose todays lesson is this. Buying the best gear won’t mean instant awesome photos. Learning to use your camera to its fullest will not only be more rewarding, but stand you in good stead when you want to mortgage the house for that Nikon D3x.

Why do you post photos?

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Flickr, SmugMug, Picasa or any other photo website. Why do you do it? Kudos from strangers, friends etc. To learn?

I was asked yesterday why I post photos on Flickr and photo forums? It is a good question. Like most people, I like having others say positive things about my photos, but I think there is more to it than that. By posting my photos, I think I have improved as a photographer. I have learnt a lot. My views have changed. All by getting feedback to my photos. Flickr is probably not the best place to go to get constructive criticism, but some of the photography forums I visit certainly are. To have someone point out small details in an image that could have been done better is a great way to learn, but it isn’t for those with fragile egos. There are plenty of things that others would like me to change in a photo that I am not willing to. This shot for example.

Blue and Yellow

Although I posted it on Flickr and asked people to refrain from asking me to clone out the power lines, plenty of people on photography forums who didn’t see that request told me the shot would be improved by cloning out the power lines. One person even did it for me and I agree, the image did look better, but I am a bit of a stickler for not manipulating my images, so they stayed in. Had I not posted it, I would never had seen the result of the image with out the power lines.

Its the same with numerous images I have put on Flickr. People have suggested crops, levels changes, saturation changes etc etc, all of which I probably wouldn’t have even considered unless some new eyes had seen the image. It is a fantastic way of learning. Whether you take on board all the suggestions, it does give you a new perspective on a given image.

So I suppose the main reason I make public the photos I take is for the kudos, but the constructive criticisms I have received have made me a better photographer. And that on its own is worth the time to upload my photos to a public place.

What drives you to place your photos in the public eye?

Bokeh, why, oh, why?

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Anyone that frequents photography forums, or Flickr, will have heard of bokeh. People talk of photos with creamy bokeh. They ask what lens to buy based on the bokeh it produces. Dear lord, Flickr even has HBW, Happy Bokeh Wednesday! My question is this, is it really that important? I would have thought having the main component of the image in focus was more important than the shape or creamyness of the out of focus area.

So what is bokeh? Well, different things to different people it seems.

Wikipedia says

Bokeh (derived from Japanese boke , a noun form of bokeru, “become blurred or fuzzy”) is a photographic term referring to the appearance of out-of-focus areas in an image produced by a camera lens using a shallow depth of field. Different lens bokeh produces different aesthetic qualities in out-of-focus backgrounds, which are often used to reduce distractions and emphasize the primary subject.

Right, clear as mud. If you happen to be a Poindexter, there is an even more in depth article here. Be aware, its heavy going, but if you love chatting about circles of confusion and aperture shapes, your blood pressure will rise with every passing paragraph.

So it seems bokeh is all about the look of the out of focus part of an image. Right.

So when did bokeh become popular? Again, Wikipedia say “The term bokeh has appeared in photography books at least since 2000.” That may be the case, but it seems to be tossed around with gay abandon in plenty of photography forums, and it seems to be happening more and more. It has even gotten to a point where I saw a question asked today on Flickr wanting a point and shoot recommendationbased on the bokeh the tiny tiny lens will produce.

Yellow Dots

Creamy???

I did a 30 second survey just now on Flickr. Two simple searches. Here are the results.

We found 32,076 results matching “sydney opera house“.

We found 405,609 results matching bokeh.

Who would have thought Bokeh would be more common than an Australia icon? Not me, thats for sure.

So, can someone explain the appeal in this bokeh trend? Is the backgraound more important than the foreground in a photo? Help me understand! Please.  🙂

Life photos, now on Google.

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If you have ever found yourself flicking through an old Life magazine at a doctors surgery, this might be of interest to you.

“We’re excited to announce the availability of never-before-seen images from the Life photo archive,” Software Engineer Paco Galanes wrote in the Official Google Blog. “This effort to bring offline images online was inspired by our mission to organize all the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”

Amazingly, some 97 percent of Life’s library has never been seen by the public before.

“Only a very small percentage of these images have ever been published,” Galanes observed. “The rest have been sitting in dusty archives in the form of negatives, slides, glass plates, etchings, and prints. We’re digitizing them so that everyone can easily experience these fascinating moments in time.”

Initially, only 20 percent of the library has been uploaded to the Google site, but more photos will be added incrementally over the coming months. If you’re looking for some real eye candy, go with all due haste to the Life Photo Archive Hosted by Google.

Read more at http://blog.megapixel.net/blog/

Some amazing images are already up. A link direct to the Google page is here.

A 1958 camera rocked my socks.

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Monday this week, a package arrived. Nothing out of the ordinary there, ever since the obsession with old film cameras has had me checking the Vintage Camera section of eBay every day, it seems I find some old gem that I must have and part with some hard earned for an ancient beauty. I have talked before about this sudden obsession with film and how it has changed the way I look at photography. But for months now, I have been trying to grab a TLR camera. And last week, I made a successful bid on a Yashica 635 TLR camera. See below.

New Old Toy

Wow. What can I say? The viewfinder alone is enough to send the pulse rate up. This version of the Yashica TLR also has a 35mm kit that lets you use standard 35mm film in it. Why you would bother is beyond me, but it does make it pretty unique in the world of TLR’s.

I have just finished my 1st roll of 12 exposures (which by the way gave me an excuse finally to use the old Yashica light meter I bought ages ago). I expect I will develop that film over the weekend, but I don’t have a film scanner capable of scanning 120 film. Oh well, looks like its time to do some more ghetto scanning. If the camera works ok, I am even contemplating grabbing some colour 120 film and seeing how that looks. Exciting times for this mug photographer.