We're Usually Right

Photography for Enthusiasts

I remember in the early days of digital cameras, way back when a lot of pros would barely consider them, reading a long-running discussion on a web site devoted to photography. I don’t remember the person’s name, but this one guy, a professional photographer, would patiently and over a period of many months, explain why digital camera sensors could never exceed 5 megapixels (I may have the number wrong but it was something close to that). He explained this in great technical detail to a great many people and with many references to the manufacturers themselves and citing specifications and engineers. He was totally believable. He was also totally wrong.

As we have been jet-propelled into the digital age of cameras, there is one truth that repeats itself over and over; every single new innovation that has been resisted and even scorned by professional photographers, while at the same time being embraced by the enthusiasts, has gone on to become the standard in the industry.

Nowadays, the pros still insist; those who swear by, say, their DSLRs, insist that you could never get the same depth and quality of pics from a mirrorless camera that you get from even a mid-range DSLR. They insist that the sensor on a micro 4/3’s camera could never match the quality of pics from an APC sensor, because it’s, well, smaller. They insist nothing can match a prime lens. They insist that full frame is where it’s at. They insist on optical viewfinders. They insist on so many things it makes your head spin.

So I always go back to that first guy, who really, really seemed to know what he was talking about, and remember that he didn’t. And when I’m looking for a new camera, I do this; I take an SD card with me to Henry’s (my photography store here in the Toronto area) and I get the salesman (when he’s not busy) to bring me 3 or 4 different cameras and then I shoot exactly the same four or five pics with all of them. And then I take them home and look at them, normally and blown up to as much as 400%.

And I can, as a non-pro not-know-it-all, report the following;

1. Forget the myth of prime lenses - it just isn’t true anymore. And believe me, I’ve used them. I just took two shots of a pencil holder, one with a very well-reviewed Sigma ‘Art’ 60mm f2.8 prime and one with my everyday 18-105 f4 Sony, both on a Sony A6000. The non-prime pic was cleaner, clearer and better. Blown up to about 350%, there was also less noise. Why? Well for one thing, the non-prime is stabilized, something that matters more than a whole lot of other things. I’ve tried shooting from a tripod, and the staticness it brings to photography drives me crazy. Mobility matters, at least to me. So stabilisation matters. Get lenses that are stabilised or better yet a camera that is. And use a zoom lens - they are so much better than they used to be. That minute extra level of fine detail that might be available on that $1500 90mm f1.4 prime isn’t worth a nickel if you can’t hold the camera steady. Ma’am, could you hold the baby still just a minute while I unpack my tripod and set it up? What do mean the sun went down? In the real world of handheld photography, where 95% of us will take 95% of our pics, a stabilised zoom lens is what you want.

And of course a zoom lens lets you do one of my favourite things - zoom bokeh. Haven’t heard the term before? That might be because I just made it up, but it is nonetheless a real thing. Step back from your subject, zoom in so it nicely fills the frame, and watch the background melt into buttery magic. There is a great (unanswered) debate among photographers about whether focal length affects depth of field - I can safely say I don’t know. But I absolutely do know this; it affects bokeh. There may not be a greater area out of focus, but it is out of focus differently, softening itself as the focal length gets longer. One could speculate that this might be because the longer focal length fore-shortens the background, but it really doesn’t matter, because it is just a soft, lovely blur anyway. The great irony is, photographers shooting full frame with their big and expensive large aperture lenses have a very different problem - too little (i.e. narrow) depth of field. They commonly stop down several settings so they can get a whole face in focus instead of just an eyelash.

Brief zoom quiz; if you have say a 18-105 zoom lens with a constant aperture of f2.8, does the 2.8 aperture setting give you the same opening in the lens throughout the range of its focal length? The answer is, no it doesn’t. It changes with focal length, because f2.8 isn’t actually a number, it’s a ratio that ties in directly to focal length and determines the diameter of the opening. With the lens zoomed to a 100mm focal length and aperture set at f2.8, the actual diameter of the opening is 35.7mm. With the lens focal length set at 50mm and with the same f2.8 aperture setting, the diameter of the opening is 17.8mm. Interesting stuff - but of course you knew that already right?

And when getting a zoom lens, don’t get one lens that goes from say 18-55 and another that goes from 55-200. Why? Because that 55-70mm focal length is the sweet spot and you’ll be switching between them all the time. 18-105 or 18-150 sort of thing is ideal. And most of all, do what I did with the cameras - go to the store and take shots with different lenses. The results are often stunning, with many ‘kit’ lenses outperforming very expensive alternatives. Trust your eyes. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve looked at pics from a $1200 macro lens and a $400 zoom and not been able to see a difference. But what about edge sharpness and chromatic aberration you say, the sort of thing the pros rant on about endlessly? The truth is, most of today’s lenses made by the same manufacturer as the camera actually digitally correct those things in camera, and they don’t mean a whole lot anymore. All the glass is ground by computer controlled machines and the parts stamped and moulded to specs I suspect were not even imagined in the 1960’s.

And last but not least, there is nothing wrong with plastic parts on a lens, another thing the pros love to carry on about. Many of today’s plastics are very high tech and are often better than many metals at things like distortion due to temperature changes. This was the sort of silliness construction workers used to rant about in the 60’s and 70’s as plastic replaced metal in things like circular saws. Today? There is no such thing as an all metal circular saw and they are as good or better than they used to be. No rust, for example.

Really. Just trust your eyes.

2. Focus is another area where they miss it. Is focus important? Is the pope Catholic? I would say more shots are lost to incorrect focus than to anything else. I can recover exposure, shadows, highlights, white balance, color cast, you name it, but I can’t focus to a different area of an already taken picture (the programs that say they can do that don’t). So, you would think one of the prime selling points of a new camera would be accuracy of focus, right? Nope, not really. Instead, everyone focuses (sorry) on speed of focus, and whether their camera is using contrast detection or phase detection and whether they have 150 or 79 or 35 focus points. This is driven by the the demands of the pros. Personally, I don’t care if they use a little miniature Sherlock Holmes in there to do the detecting and I don’t care if it takes longer to focus instead of shorter, I would rather have it right. An enlarged area on the screen, not to adjust to but rather to show you exactly what your spot focus (the one you should use) is actually focused on, would be nice. Seeing a nice big eye of the person in your portrait, or even the iris, and knowing this is in focus, would set one’s mind at ease. Having a thumb knob to move your focus spot (and have it stay in focus) and maybe a wheel for the other hand to enlarge the focus spot to so much as a speck in the eye, all while holding the shutter halfway would be invaluable, and yet I don’t know of a single camera maker who does that. It’s all speed, speed, speed. To what end? How many of us non-pros shoot sports? Car racing? The Tour de France? Most of the time, we want to compose our subject, and final focus means everything.

3. Do you long for a full frame camera? My advice is, forget it - it just isn’t worth it unless you are planning to print 10’ posters. Full frame means one thing - it means big. Big cameras, big lenses, big bucks (what about the Sony’s you say? Wait until you buy the lenses and then talk to me). You can travel with a 4/3’s or APC mirrorless camera setup with maybe a three pound bag - a full frame bag that would do the same would be 10-15 pounds. This matters. APC and 4/3s are a lovely meeting point of not too big and high performance. Don’t be seduced by the pros who would rather break the bank to get a 5% improvement 5% of the time.

Let’s do a brief history of photography. In the old, old days you needed a mule or pack horse to carry photography equipment. There were huge camera boxes and big tripods and big plates that pictures were taken on. Great pics, for sure. Then along came 35mm film, and it revolutionized photography, bringing it to the masses. Was it as good as large format or medium format? Of course not, it couldn’t be, but it was excellent quality of pictures in a camera you could carry around with you and that was wonderful. And then came digital, and again photography was changed forever. Was it (and is it) as good as 35mm film? Of course not - someone estimated that you would need about 320mp images to match 35mm film. But was it good enough for anything other than 36” wide posters? Yes it was. And that’s the point; micro 4/3, APC and full frame are in fact all good enough for what any of us are going to do with a camera almost all of the time. Which begs the question, why the obsession with full frame? Everything in photography is compromise, with performance and size being balanced against each other. Let me give you a simple example; Olympus makes two 14-150 lenses, one a constant f2.8 and the other f4 - 5.6. The difference? The f2.8 is about triple the price, double the size and double the weight. So if you want something you can actually comfortably carry with you, the choice is simple. But what is the trade off? Read on.

4. Do you long for large aperture lenses? You know, one of those f1.4 primes or that 14-150 (full frame equivalent 28-300mm) f 2.8 mentioned above? I’m going to ask a simple question - why? And when you break it down, there are only three reasons; speed (you can shoot faster with a bigger aperture lens), the ability to shoot better in low light, and a shallower depth of field allowing for background blur (bokeh). The interesting thing is, in today’s real world of real lenses, I can get all of that with the cheaper, smaller zoom lenses with smaller aperture capabilities. It’s a little thing called ISO. The better cameras out there today have what no 35mm film camera had - the ability to change ISO at your whim. Not only that, but the newer ones easily shoot cleanly at 1600 ISO and sometimes quite a bit more. Everything in photography doubles and halves as you raise and lower it, so shooting with a f1.4 lens at a speed of 1/400 sec. with an ISO of 100 is exactly the same (speedwise) as shooting at f4 at 1/400 sec. with an ISO of 800! And you say, yeah but the ISO gets too high when I try to shoot in really low light. And I say, true, but how often do you shoot in really low light? Be honest. Maybe a few times when you bought the camera to see what it could do? Maybe once after that? And bokeh we covered above - yes, my zoomed background blur might look a bit closer than your non-zoomed background blur on the same shot, but it’s blur - who cares?

5. Electronic viewfinder vs. optical? Many pros still swear optical is the only way to go. Them and the dinosaurs should do lunch. The best electronic viewfinders are stunningly good and do what no optical viewfinder can - they show you the picture that you’re actually going to take, an invaluable aid incapable of being overstated. Do they get a little odd in low light? Yes they do. Now tell me again how many times you actually shot in really low light after you first tried it out when you bought your camera? Don’t even consider optical, but do be sure to get a camera with a good electronic one - they are a pure delight to use.

Anyway, here is what I recently compared. Fuji XT1 vs XPro2? No diff in picture quality - actually, to be honest, the XT1 looked better. Nikon D7200 vs. mirrorless? Olympus EM 1 and Fuji XT1 are actually better. Sony A6000 was a step behind. When Ken Rockwell (who occasionally says good things but it far more often a pro dinosaur) says DSLR’s take better pics than mirrorless, I don’t know what he’s talking about. Better colour on a DSLR? How can a mirror affect colour? Especially since almost all the sensors for all camera manufacturers, whether DSLR or mirrorless, are made by Sony. On the same SD card, side by side, shooting the same things with similar lenses, no human being could tell the shots I took with the Nikon D7200 from any of the mirrorless’ shots*. So why not go smaller?

Even the salesmen in the camera stores perpetuate the myth when they say, almost by rote, that 4/3 and APC sensors are smaller and therefore can’t be as good as full frame (or likewise, 4/3 can’t be as good as APC). No one bothers to say to what degree, and by that I mean this; the loss in quality from 35mm film to all digital images is greater (I’m going to estimate) by about 20 times than the difference between full frame to APC or 4/3. Do you want to go back to 35mm film? All the top end digital cameras in the larger formats (4/3, APC and full frame) take really, really good pictures. I want you to do two things;

1. Read some of the reviews by Steve Huff where he compares a micro 4/3 camera (Olympus EM1), an APC camera (Fuji XT1) and a full frame camera (one of the Sony’s) - the results are surprising to say the least. http://www.stevehuffphoto.com/2015/02/23/mirrorless-battle-micro-43-vs-aps-c-vs-full-frame/

2. Look at a diagram some time of how a single photograph is processed on a digital camera - there are about 8 different steps, not counting the incredibly complex electronic stuff that goes into the analog to digital conversion itself. The sensor is but one of those steps, and it actually precedes the conversion I just mentioned. The point being that there is much, much more at work in processing a digital picture than just the sensor. You could, for example, probably spend half a lifetime trying to figure out exactly what ISO (or gain) on a digital camera actually does.

Just don’t think smaller is cheaper. It’s no less and no more. But there is a great way to save money - wait for the new model to come out and then buy the older one. Trust me, it works. Yeah, you might not have 4K video (that you can only notice on the 4K TV you don’t have and you’ll probably never shoot two minutes of video on your camera anyway. But wait, the new Olympus EM1 Mark 11 shoots 30 frames per second! How can you pass that up? Well, just think of how many times you might actually use it - like maybe twice - and then upgrade in 3 years when the price is half what it is now). Even dare to buy used (Henry’s has a terrific used selection) if you think you are going to change cameras a lot.

And always remember this, the next time you read the gospel from some pro - we, the enthusiasts, are the ones who have actually been getting it right for the last 20 or so years of the digital revolution. We are the ones who, step by step, have led the way. Let’s keep it up.

*By the way, I look at pics on a very expensive colour balanced 26” Viewsonic monitor.