Category Archives: Photography

There’s a frequently made assertion in photography books and blogs that the choice of kit doesn’t really matter, and a good photographer will make great images regardless. I don’t altogether agree. While I think it’s laudable to encourage photographers to focus on their images rather than gear acquisition, I also think this is quite misleading.

For all that’s written, you won’t find many professionals using low-end cameras to do their serious, paying work. There’s a reason why a hairdresser’s scissors cost £200, and I’m perfectly happy with a pair which costs £10. At the same time the hairdresser is probably perfectly happy with a laptop costing £200, while I expect to pay more like £2,000 for my main professional tool as a roving computer consultant, plus I’ll always have a spare of similar spec.

If you’re earning a living from photography (or doing expensive trips/shoots even on an enthusiast basis) there are some of the same considerations. One dimension is simply the durability of the more substantially-built models – you need a device which will just go on shooting after, to take my example, being bashed on a rock, in a bog, in the middle of nowhere, in Iceland. In some cases it’s about capability. OK, if you’re Jaques Lartigue you can get decent sports photographs with a view camera, but if you’re a mere mortal then you’ll get a substantially higher hit rate with the lightning autofocus and high frame rate of a Canon 7D. I love my little Panasonic GX7, but it doesn’t do action, and it doesn’t do getting wet!

Of course, there’s no guarantee that by spending more money you are getting a better tool for your work. My counter-example is, ironically, the same Canon kit. I’m becoming more and more aware of just how ghastly a lens the Canon 15-85mm is/was. Take a look at the shot above. Even at web resolutions you can see that the reflection of the house’s roof in the pond is sharp, but the roof itself, optically at the same distance and without water in the way, is blurred. The results from my newer Panasonic cameras, even with the inexpensive, diminutive 14-42mm power zoom lens, are just consistently sharper than than those from Canon even with a good, sharp, lens on it. And of course the 15-85mm died dramatically on the Iceland trip even before the incident where I knocked the 7D on a rock.

In a very real way the Canon 7D & 15-85mm combination actively held back my photography. I got into the bad habit of relying on the long zoom range, I got tired of carrying the weight, so didn’t use it as much as I should, and I’m now seeing from straightforward back to back comparisons from my Morocco trip that the image quality was definitely poorer, visible even in web-resolution versions, let alone pixel peeping at 100%. I’m coming to the conclusion that it’s either not possible to build a good zoom lens for APS-C with a good zoom range, or Canon can’t be bothered to do so.

I think, therefore, that the right way to view the camera/photographer equation is as a combination of two components. Both must exceed a certain minimum: a brilliant photographer may struggle with a very poor camera, and a poor photographer will not achieve much with an expensive camera. Beyond that, it’s a sum but where the photographer’s skill probably has a greater weight.

In terms of "what camera should I buy", the first thing to understand is that equipment purchases won’t compensate for your skill deficiencies. A camera purchase is also an engineering compromise. You need to understand your requirements (in particular what subjects and working style you want to follow), and choose kit which best fits that scope. If you really want to work without changing lenses, for example, buy a fixed lens superzoom! A little while ago I found the following wonderful decision tree. It’s designed to some extent for laughs, but there’s also a lot a truth in it. And without any cheating, it says I should go Micro Four Thirds, so it works!

https://www.andrewj.com/blog/2014/what-camera-should-i-buy/

A friend asked me a few weeks ago about how I get such depth of colour in my images, and whether it was related to using automatic modes on my cameras. I had to explain about shooting RAW and correcting exposure and colour during development of the final image. That’s most of the answer, but as always it’s not quite as simple as that…
Most of the time I do trust my cameras to do most of the work. Well over 95% of the time I shoot in either aperture priority mode (if the subject is not moving much) or shutter priority (if it is). I also use auto focus almost exclusively. I may move the focus point around a bit, but more often I tend to use the old SLR trick of focusing with the subject centred and the shutter button half pressed, and then recomposing.

I do adjust the camera’s auto exposure if necessary, usually by dialling in some exposure compensation, or adjusting the metering mode if the conditions are tricky (such as a concert), but I only worry if the automatic exposure is at least a stop out, assuming I can correct anything less in RAW development. However I’m finding that the metering of the latest Panasonics is accurate enough and the development latitude sufficient that the requirement to meddle is reducing. That said it’s very important to me to have a quick and easy adjustment Indepedent of the primary exposure controls, and annoying that Canon have inexplicably complicated this on the S120 compared with the S95.

I usually leave the camera to decide the ISO setting and white balance. With the latter it’s easy to correct the rare mistakes in RAW development, and too easy to get it wrong manually.

Very rarely I go manual, typically when I’m planning some sort of multi shot technique such as a stitched panorama and I need to be sure of consistent behaviour across the source images. It’s no longer required for HDR as all my cameras now do accurate, fast auto bracketing, but it can be required for panoramics or focus blending.

So on my Canon 7D and the 40D before it I had custom mode 3 set to “manual everything”, which worked well for panoramas from Italy to Iceland. It was perfectly possible to replicate the same on the Panasonic GX7 and GH4, so I did. Gotcha! Whereas “sunny” white balance is a good default for most outdoor photos on the Canons, for reasons I don’t entirely understand it’s not a good default choice on the Panasonics, and can produce some downright weird results. The above shot from Morocco required a lot of correction from an almost blue starting point, even though it was a bright sunny day.. The only thing I can think of is that the cameras are thrown by the effect of the polarising filter, but that’s not something I’ve seen before.

It looks like the best approach is to set auto white balance, but then apply a fixed manual value when generating the JPEGs to stitch. I may not yet be using “auto everything”, but it’s just come a step closer.