Tackle help wanted.

[grrclark]

I was having a chat with a chap the other day who is a very enthusiastic photographer and the point of the chat was about how you visualise images in your own head.

I think the easy go to option for most to visualise is the telephoto type shot where you can get up close to the subject, highly cropped, pin sharp in detail that you just cannot see with the normal human eye in the same way. So to do that very well means big heavy lenses which typically requires a big fat wallet and lugging around tripods to make sure that big heavy lens is steady, etc.  Then it also means hours and hours in pursuit of that perfect shot with the old adage being true, the harder you work at it the luckier you will get in getting that perfect pic.

What most don't seem to be able to visualise is the wide open shots, the expanse of landscape that shows the environment we are in from a different perspective that we don't normally see either.  I think that is partly due to an inability to put ourselves into the frame in the right place to get the picture, what i mean by that is that it is easy to turn a zoom ring to crop into a shot to give you the different perspective rather than the physical effort of putting yourself and the camera in the right place, or having the visual imagination of where you want to be to get that shot.

It is also easier to be opportunistic with a longer or zoom lens, to get a close up of a bird you don't need to have pre-planned your shot to get yourself in the right position first, you can point, zoom, and shoot.

What i would suggest is that before thinking about gear is think about what you want to achieve.  What is the photography going to be about for you and what do you want from it? Is the final product in your head that killer shot of the osprey with fish in talon staring straight down the lens, wings fully outstretched as it tries to climb with its prey, the water droplets held in timeless suspension, etc (we all want that shot i suspect) or is it the effort of the planning, the building up of your knowledge and skills to be able to get yourself into that right position to have a chance of that perfect shot?  The shooting analogy would be trying to shoot a rabbit with a sub 12lbft air rifle versus a .17hmr.

If it is about the journey, learning to see and visualise things in a certain or different way, overcoming the limitations of what you have available to you and still get an amazing picture, then work with what kit you have now, learn to be creative and imaginative in your compositions and make the most of what you have.  Think about how you can get the bird to be 5 feet from you to use your current camera instead of wondering what lens to buy that means you can take the pic from 50 or 100 feet away.

A small good quality pocket camera than you can take everywhere will give you bucket loads more opportunities than a stonking great SLR with a fast telephoto and tripod.

If you are going to spend some money then buy some books of the images that really appeal to you and read about what it took for the photographer to get that image and not about the kit that they used.

Finally don't ignore what is round and about you every day, what wildlife do you look past every day without appreciating, just like John's ladybird above.

[Retsdon]

 

On 13/11/2019 at 15:40, grrclark said:

If you are going to spend some money then buy some books

Good advice that I pre-empted and I've put off buying any hardware. I mentioned further up the thread that I had ordered Byran Peterson's book, Understanding Exposure. Anyway, it arrived a few weeks ago and for someone starting out like myself I can't recommend it highly enough. I'm learning loads about the mechanics of how photography actually works and having a lot of fun tying to emulate his examples in the book that illustrate how to combine aperture, shutter speed, and light to produce 'different' pictures of exactly the same subject.

Photography is like most everything else I suppose in that the more you learn about something the more you know what you don't know, and I've got the feeling that I'm going to be on very steep learning curve for a while. And for a camera to learn with, my current X-M1 is proving itself to be more than good enough. So I'm going to save my pennies and delay any upgrades until I know exactly what I want and why.

Thanks very much for the in-depth advice!

[TIGHTCHOKE]

Simples!

 

[johnphilip]

A photo is about 3 things  , subject , light  and time . If you want to start coming away from the auto setting , ( it works fine)   then here are two basic things you need to know  .

If it does not move , then apature  priority  ..... if it moves shutter priority  . You will get people say use manual .  , I say I have payed a lot of money for my camera  its up to date,  it can work things out far faster than I can , by the time I have thought about the settings , the subject has moved . Yes it good to learn about apature and shutter speed and combine  them to get the right exposure  . I started 40 years ago with a camera with no meter,  you had to use a hand held one to get all your meter readings , hey you had to even focus it yourself . I then learnt about darkroom . And development of my negatives and did my own prints and slides.  Now I have a camera that does all that , plug it into  my tablet and transfer my shots , . Yes i loved the learning , , but i now love my camera that does the work for me .............. anyone want to buy a full darkroom setup  . It sits there doing nothing and cost a lot of money . . It's about enjoy it getting out there in nature . 

Edited November 15, 2019 by johnphilip

[grrclark]

11 minutes ago, johnphilip said:

A photo is about 3 things  , subject , light  and time . If you want to start coming away from the auto setting , ( it works fine)   then here are two basic things you need to know  .

If it does not move , then apature  priority  ..... if it moves shutter priority  . You will get people say use manual .  , I say I have payed a lot of money for my camera  its up to date,  it can work things out far faster than I can , by the time I have thought about the settings , the subject has moved . Yes it good to learn about apature and shutter speed and combine  them to get the right exposure  . I started 40 years ago with a camera with no meter,  you had to use a hand held one to get all your meter readings , hey you had to even focus it yourself . I then learnt about darkroom . And development of my negatives and did my own prints and slides.  Now I have a camera that does all that , plug it into  my tablet and transfer my shots , . Yes i loved the learning , , but i now love my camera that does the work for me .............. anyone want to buy a full darkroom setup  . It sits there doing nothing and cost a lot of money . . It's about enjoy it getting out there in nature . 

About 25 years ago part of my job was to take black and white pictures for the school that I worked at to be sent to the press, part of that of was developing the negatives and then making the prints in the darkroom.  It was a load of fun, so much so that I got a basic setup at home too.

Being inventive in how to dodge and burn and use masks to make up for an imperfect exposure in a 100% manual camera was part of the process.  I also had to decide which film speed i would use in advance then load up the spool(s) from a bulk roll of film.  No sense in wasting a shop bought 24 or 36 exposure film if you only need 6 shots on the day and the final prints have to go to the paper that same night.

It is a real shame that the darkroom is by and large a thing of the past as so many have missed out on the genuine magic of photography.  However, if i could step back in time to do that job again, would i have a digital camera with lightning fast autofocus that i could take 12 +/- bracketed images at .3 stop, change the iso on the fly and could then overlay and merge to get a perfect exposure across the full frame and then manipulate on a screen ?  In a heartbeat.

[grrclark]

4 hours ago, Retsdon said:

 

Good advice that I pre-empted and I've put off buying any hardware. I mentioned further up the thread that I had ordered Byran Peterson's book, Understanding Exposure. Anyway, it arrived a few weeks ago and for someone starting out like myself I can't recommend it highly enough. I'm learning loads about the mechanics of how photography actually works and having a lot of fun tying to emulate his examples in the book that illustrate how to combine aperture, shutter speed, and light to produce 'different' pictures of exactly the same subject.

Photography is like most everything else I suppose in that the more you learn about something the more you know what you don't know, and I've got the feeling that I'm going to be on very steep learning curve for a while. And for a camera to learn with, my current X-M1 is proving itself to be more than good enough. So I'm going to save my pennies and delay any upgrades until I know exactly what I want and why.

Thanks very much for the in-depth advice!

A very sound approach and much more rewarding too I think.  I wish that I had taken my own advice many many years ago and saved a small fortune to discover that getting a great image is much less about the kit and much more about the person using it.  Like pretty much everything else really.

[Retsdon]

34 minutes ago, grrclark said:

It is a real shame that the darkroom is by and large a thing of the past as so many have missed out on the genuine magic of photography

When I was a child my father used to develop his own pictures, and I can still recall the wonder of watching an image appear on the paper as he rocked it back and forth in a plate of developer. There was a specific smell too, that would be instantly recognizable even 50 years later.

[grrclark]

10 minutes ago, Retsdon said:

When I was a child my father used to develop his own pictures, and I can still recall the wonder of watching an image appear on the paper as he rocked it back and forth in a plate of developer. There was a specific smell too, that would be instantly recognizable even 50 years later.

That smell is so recognisable, I was watching a tv show just last week when they were developing images and that smell came back to me watching that scene.

[johnphilip]

12 minutes ago, Retsdon said:

When I was a child my father used to develop his own pictures, and I can still recall the wonder of watching an image appear on the paper as he rocked it back and forth in a plate of developer. There was a specific smell too, that would be instantly recognizable even 50 years later.

You have nailed it all there , the smell , the image appearing in front of your eyes  . The hours spent in there , and thinking heck I have to get up for work in the morning .

[johnphilip]

6 minutes ago, grrclark said:

That smell is so recognisable, I was watching a tv show just last week when they were developing images and that smell came back to me watching that scene.

Yes and sting hanging everywhere  with prints hanging on tiny clips over the bath . The biggest I ever did was 20 x 16 inch , they were fun racking up the enlarged  .

[grrclark]

1 hour ago, johnphilip said:

Yes and sting hanging everywhere  with prints hanging on tiny clips over the bath . The biggest I ever did was 20 x 16 inch , they were fun racking up the enlarged  .

I remember attempting one where the head was turned around on the enlarger stand On the edge of the bench and the paper on the floor.  It is fair to say it was not a resounding success.

[KB1]

Look at some of TIGHTCHOKE's photos of planes on here, and ask him what gear he is using……….  Better than a lot of professional mag photos👍

[johnphilip]

42 minutes ago, KB1 said:

Look at some of TIGHTCHOKE's photos of planes on here, and ask him what gear he is using……….  Better than a lot of professional mag photos👍

Yes digtal cameras are amazing now . You can get some beautiful prints of a good quality  printer . If you think back  a film and developing was around £ 10  for 36 shots . A new camera would soon pay for its self .