Re: Green with envy over your beautiful photos
Posted: Sun Oct 10, 2010 12:20 pm
I bet I can easily capture better small images with a cheap few megapixel compact digital camera and small tripod than 95% percent of camera toters regardless of the amount of gear they are lugging. So gear is not the important part of the equation at least initially but rather technique, experience with one's gear, and understanding and study of light in nature. One must invest some time understanding how to capture images and how to use their often complicated digital cameras and post processing photo applications in order to have good results. Unfortunately the vast majority of camera users don't although nearly all serious photographers do which in this day are many. One doesn't need to take some expensive course but rather simply buy any of the dozens of how to guides and actually read them and their camera manuals.
One of the prime faults of ordinary camera users is they don't understand how film or sensors capture light so they often point at contrasty subjects. As Galen Rowell emphasized, film (or digitial sensor) does not react like the human eye as the contrast range is significantly lower. So what looks good through one's eye will not necessarily be a good subject to try and capture. And they often aim their cameras in auto mode at wrong contrasty directions resulting in ugly shadows and blown highlights. Another common misunderstanding is the nature of depth of field. Thus amateurs often have considerable out of focus zones and elements in their image results that are not aesthetic. Finally few amateurs use a tripod causing blurry results for anything but small web sized pics.
Generally no one that shoots digital images, posts results right out of a camera without processsing. In my own case I purposely adjust my G10 for underexposure and undersaturation in order to be able to capture subjects without blown highlights or weird color so I can post process an image for results that have better fidelity to what I actually experienced with my eyes. As to your comment about image enhancements and maniputations post processing, it is true that 95% of more serious photographers today included those on this board have embraced manipulations and have little interest presenting images that have fidelity to what they saw with their eyes. However there are some of us whose style is still in presenting images that are reasonably accurate representations of 2-dimensional frames of what our eyes experienced. Although some of my images would look better if I jacked up contrast, increased saturation, changed hues, and cloned out awkward elements etc, long before the current generation of photogs, I learned to take top landscape images without having to resort to such even if that takes more time and effort.
David
One of the prime faults of ordinary camera users is they don't understand how film or sensors capture light so they often point at contrasty subjects. As Galen Rowell emphasized, film (or digitial sensor) does not react like the human eye as the contrast range is significantly lower. So what looks good through one's eye will not necessarily be a good subject to try and capture. And they often aim their cameras in auto mode at wrong contrasty directions resulting in ugly shadows and blown highlights. Another common misunderstanding is the nature of depth of field. Thus amateurs often have considerable out of focus zones and elements in their image results that are not aesthetic. Finally few amateurs use a tripod causing blurry results for anything but small web sized pics.
Generally no one that shoots digital images, posts results right out of a camera without processsing. In my own case I purposely adjust my G10 for underexposure and undersaturation in order to be able to capture subjects without blown highlights or weird color so I can post process an image for results that have better fidelity to what I actually experienced with my eyes. As to your comment about image enhancements and maniputations post processing, it is true that 95% of more serious photographers today included those on this board have embraced manipulations and have little interest presenting images that have fidelity to what they saw with their eyes. However there are some of us whose style is still in presenting images that are reasonably accurate representations of 2-dimensional frames of what our eyes experienced. Although some of my images would look better if I jacked up contrast, increased saturation, changed hues, and cloned out awkward elements etc, long before the current generation of photogs, I learned to take top landscape images without having to resort to such even if that takes more time and effort.
David