Photography Basics

[PaRaGaS]

After long consideration I've bought a Nikon D80 and a Tamron 17-50/2.8 lens fairly recently.
I have yet to go out and shoot with my friends.
I've gotten a fast lens primarily because of concerts,
I'm also going for a Sigma 50-150/2.8 and probably an SB-600 or SB-800 flash.

It's so freakin' sweet
Can't say I take decent pictures, but I'm learning very fast.
My small gallery so far, shot with random cameras (all P&S): http://paragas.deviantart.com/gallery/
Don't like those pics at all (also, I overprocessed some of them a bit... need to fix that).
'Cept for the one taken with a mobile phone

[Sparky]

Slightly off topic, but I must share this old joke:

A professional photographer is invited to a friend's house for dinner. He has recently returned from a trip overseas, and his friend asks him to show them his portfolio. He does so, and the friend and his wife are very impressed. "What wonderful pictures!" says the wife. "You must have a very expensive camera." The photographer smiles and says nothing.

Later, as he leaves, he says to the wife, "Thank you for everything. Dinner was delicious. You must have a very expensive set of pans."

[PaRaGaS]

Slightly off topic, but I must share this old joke:

A professional photographer is invited to a friend's house for dinner. He has recently returned from a trip overseas, and his friend asks him to show them his portfolio. He does so, and the friend and his wife are very impressed. "What wonderful pictures!" says the wife. "You must have a very expensive camera." The photographer smiles and says nothing.

Later, as he leaves, he says to the wife, "Thank you for everything. Dinner was delicious. You must have a very expensive set of pans."

That is so true.

[protege]

Kodak and HP... the two worst names in photography

I hear ya. The first digital camera I had was a Kodak DC215. Piece of crap. It worked fine for about 3 years, then started having issues. The main one being that the battery tray wouldn't stay in place, and if it did, the damn thing wouldn't work. Kodak wanted about $250 up-front just to look at fixing it...and I told them to get bent. For that $250, I bought a nice Fuji digital camera (on sale, yay!), and with my father's discount, ended up with $100 in change So far, the Kodak's been used as the "workshop" camera. That is, if I'm going to be working on the car, or painting a model, I'd rather that one get paint or grease on it. In other words, if it breaks, I don't care

Dad's HP was OK, but it didn't last long. We kept having some strange problems with it--it wouldn't save the photos now and then, and wouldn't always sync with his computer. He got tired of messing with it, sold it on Ebay, and bought a Fuji like mine. He's not an idiot by any means--he got started taking pictures with a Canon (great camera...I used it in college, too bad he sold it ) manual years ago. Turns out the HP's problem was a bad board. Oh well.

[the_std]

Off topic!

In my years of classes in photography, the best piece of advice I heard from my favourite photography prof was this:
"Being a commercial photographer is like being a porn star. You can't have a bad day."

[auntiem]

I've finaly figured out my SO's digital, but only use it if I need to post something quickly on a forum (like a swap package).
I'm one of those die hard film camera folks. The thing that always gets me is the people that say "but film is so expensive!". Like a $1000 camera and 15 - 29 cents a print not to mention the printer isn't? Hmmm, $5 a roll $10 developing - I'd have to shoot a whole lot of film to spend that much. I'd rather save my money for more toy cameras I don't need.

[Pedersen]

Hmmm, $5 a roll $10 developing - I'd have to shoot a whole lot of film to spend that much. I'd rather save my money for more toy cameras I don't need.

Well, I'll just use me and my last vacation. We took 2700 photos on that trip.Yeah, a big chunk of them turned out badly, but we still got quite a few pictures. Only one of them did I get professionally printed/framed. The rest I share online with people.

The cost for all 2700? About 10G of disk space on a web server that I own and was already being used for other stuff.

If I had printed them? Well, at 36 pics/roll, and at $5/roll for development/printing: 75 rolls, to total up to $375.

I fully expect to do the same on my next trip. In other words, I will have saved money already after two vacations. Since this camera is a Nikon D50, it's the sort that you keep for a long long time. Any other expenses (lenses, etc) are going to be usable on other bodies (normally).

For me, it's a great investment.

[auntiem]

For me though, even on vacation I can only shoot at most a roll of film a day (and that is only if I'm at a botanical garden), some trips I only shoot one roll for the whole trip (if I've been there many times for example)*. Maybe one or two shots are really bad - like I look at it and can't even tell what I was trying to take a picture of, but usually the whole roll turns out pretty good - once in a rare while one will be great.

*the Fringe Festival is an example of this - I was sorting thru my photos to realize that I couldn't tell which year which set of photos were from and decided that I did not need one more photo of the castle, bagpipers or street performers. I do however need new photos of the "Barbie guy" every year.

[Pedersen]

Maybe one or two shots are really bad - like I look at it and can't even tell what I was trying to take a picture of, but usually the whole roll turns out pretty good - once in a rare while one will be great.

One of the few pieces that I remember from my photography classes was a simple rule: Take 5 pictures: 2 steps below the normal f-stop, 1 step below, equal, one step up, and 2 steps up. It helps to improve the odds that you are going to get one good picture, plus one great picture.

That adage is probably only true for beginning photographers. However, from what I understand, professional film photographers do take multiple of the same view for that same reason.

End result: That adage carries through even more to digital for me. You see, a lot of the pictures are so similar that they might as well be the same, just with mildly different settings (f-stops and exposure times being the most frequently changed).

So, I took 2700 pictures. I probably only had about 1500 unique. Of those, I've set about 500 to music to make my own DVD slideshow.

So, one way to look at all this is that I've tossed out 2200 pictures. This means that I would have wasted the development costs for those 2200 if I had had them all developed on film.

I got to do what was best for me. I know that digital is not what's best for everybody. But, for me, I wouldn't get rid of it for the world

[Brentos]

I'm a HUGE fan of film, don't get me wrong, but for consumers, digital only makes sense. Not only is digital easier to use than film, you get the instant feedback that film will never provide (I've actually had SCs ask for a film camera that has a preview screen, but that's for another day) and the cost of digital is WAAAAAY lower.

Cost comparison...

Digital

decent pro-sumer/entry-level digital SLR with an OK lens would be between 600-800 (or a good PaS for $300)
Large Memory card, or a couple smaller ones for roughly $150
the cost is essentially done at this point... new lenses can be bought if your passion requires as such...
An infinite amount of pictures can be taken on the memory you have, if you invest correctly a lot of brands have lifetime guarantees.


Film

A decent new film SLR camera (if you can find one) might be $300 (were much more expensive back in the day) or an ok PaS for like $100-200 (but let's face it, a film point and shoot ain't gonna perform anything compared to the technology in the digi point and shoots)
So, yes, initial costs are lower BUT to make up that $300-500 it really isn't gonna take that much...

Film - 1 Roll x 24 exp - $7 roughly
Developing (24 exp) - $7 roughly
Digital Conversion (24 exp) - $5 roughly (and who knows if the lab'll do a good job of that)


.... so that's $19 to do what your digital camera pretty much does for free, one would argue that with the film, the prints are included, while I disagree as the photos are getting more use nowadays in their digital format than they ever did in print form, for argument's sake Shutterfly does 4X6 prints for as low as 12 cents each.

24 digi x .12 = $3 (actually less, but let's not get picky)

So, film still costs $16 more than digital, so it'd take 20-30 rolls (give or take) before it costs more than digital, or 480 pics, roughly about how many pictures fit on that one memory card you purchased.

...I've taken 480 pics in an hour...


Now, I know things can be gotten for cheaper, but also keep in mind that this is general consumer costs and while many places charge a lot more than $.12 for a print, I know at least 3 ways to get digital prints for free (and no I will not divulge that information - sorry - the most obvious one though, is to work in a mini lab), so let's keep this to the"slightly above average intelligence" consumer costs.

[karma_gypsy]

I took three years of photography in high school (and I loved it). I can figure out any digital (point-&-shoot) camera pretty easily. And considering I post auctions on eBay for my store, I am often pottering around with camera in one hand, taking pictures of some big-ass item that won't fit on my table

One guy even approached me to show off his 8+ megapixel, itty-bitty digital camera, in comparison to my 4 megapixel. I'm sorry, but I don't need pictures that large ...

I'm jealous of those who can afford a digital SLR. I would really like one someday, but I stick with my ol' trusty vintage 35mm SLR Ricoh (which still takes beautiful pictures, I prefer that over my digital any day!!).

[auntiem]

One of the few pieces that I remember from my photography classes was a simple rule: Take 5 pictures: 2 steps below the normal f-stop, 1 step below, equal, one step up, and 2 steps up. It helps to improve the odds that you are going to get one good picture, plus one great picture.

I think we called it "bracketing the shot" in our class, I hadn't thought of that - digital would be much better for making sure you got the shot you wanted. Instead of my method which is to take one shot, come home have it developed and find out that my point and shoot camera thinks pretty birds are boring but the branches behind them are facinating. *sigh* (I don't take my "good" camera on vacay).
The other drawbacks to film are - you have to shoot what is loaded at the time (so my 3 Thanksgiving shots are in B&W cause that is what I had on the camera) and you have to "shoot out the roll" if you need a picture quickly (that part always irks me - but I have a whole photo album of "end of roll" shots - some are pretty funny).

If they made a digital quad cam or pop cam I'd be all over it in a heartbeat, I'm constantly wasting film in mine (one shot out of twelve will turn out to be useable).

[SuperB]

We don't even stock film in the store anymore. Everyone has digital and those that don't usually don't even have their camera so the throw-a-ways work for them.

One thing I've learned, it's not always the camera. I've gotten some great shots with my little Kodak easyshare. Recently I decided to get a decent Digital SLR and chose the new Nikon D40x. I'm in love with it.

[mattm04]

I have a 4.X MP Sony Point-and-Shoot and if you know how touse it right you can get some very good shots. I have used a Digital SLR in HS and was fairly good at it but would not buy a really expensive one until i made sure I knew what I was doing.

[Horsetuna]

I had been trying for years to find a camera that takes good super-closeups. So I can take photos of my miniatures.

Finally I got one. I can't remember what kind, its a Sony I'm sure. lost somewhere on my desk. I had no clue what a 'macro' was at the tiem (and still dont). But I'm happy as I figured out how to use the macro at least, and I can even zoom in to individual feathers on my parrot if I wanted to