Much Ado
I wandered into the middle of a typical camera opinion shitstorm on DPReview. It was an old one, from 2014, but it was very much par for the course, where people quickly started calling other people idiots.
It was over one of the things that is near and dear to me, and that many pros and snobby enthusiasts go to battle over - the worth of exposure preview. A blog writer from Chicago had the nerve to suggest that beginning photographers not buy Nikon cameras because their lower level versions (D600, D7100 and down) don’t have exposure preview. You can imagine how the Nikon enthusiasts reacted to this. It is, however, true, and a really puzzling move by Nikon to omit, as virtually all the Canon’s have it. In fact, Nikon used to have it (I know, I owned three of them) and then they got rid of it. I'm sure Nikon marketers know what they're doing and it probably allows for lower cost cameras, but still, to me, puzzling.
To explain exposure preview in simple terms, on my cameras, when I change any setting, whether it be ISO, exposure compensation, white balance, aperture, speed, you name it, I see those changes instantly on my camera, whether looking at the back screen or through the viewfinder, and I find it an invaluable aid when shooting.
The purists pooh pooh it. They say you’ll never really understand how to use a camera and all its settings unless you actually learn it, a trial and error sort of thing. Take a shot, it’s 3 times brighter than I thought it would be, shit, I left my ISO at 1000 after shooting last night, etc. etc. They say (and they’re right) that you need to look at and determine those things before you shoot. Here’s where they’re wrong; there is absolutely no better way to learn what changing settings on a camera will do than to actually watch what they do as you change them! Really. How can you complain about that?
The purists go on to say stuff like, you need to understand what things such as ISO actually are to understand what changing them does to your picture. And while there’s a lot of truth to that, I bet there aren’t a handful of them that could actually tell you what, in the digital world, ISO really and truly is. Here’s the thing - if you’ve gone to the trouble and expense of buying a camera that lets you change things like ISO, you are probably the kind of person that wants to learn about it. And if you’re not, who cares?
Even the people that defend exposure preview often get it wrong, as they defend it in the name of beginning photographers. It’s great for everyone (if you don’t like it, heck, go to the menu settings and turn it off). It probably tells you all you need to know that all the very high end cameras, including the Nikon’s (D800, D4 etc) have it. Why is that do you suppose?
Can't have a blog without a pic now can I? Wonderful focus stacking of Olympus at work, where I tripled my normal depth of field. Hand held (the 9 frames take about 3/4 sec. to shoot), no flash, indoors at night, 800 ISO, 1/13 sec. with 30mm (60mm equivalent) lens, f3.5, nothing done in post. I'm calling it 'Mug and Mouse'. Not to blow my own horn, but yes, I am probably the Henri Matisse of photography :)
