I think we all still think of digital photography as being free. The fact that we no longer have to pay for film, processing and printing every 36 frames makes us think that there is no cost to clicking away with our digital camera, phone or iPod.
But photography is certainly more expensive in the digital era.
Today I finally bit the bullet and ordered a new second hard drive for my main workstation. The time taken to shuffle working files around to create space for new work was just getting too much. Granted I took the old one from my old laptop so I can’t really complain
Now this drive is just for the ‘active’ images – those jobs where I’m still expecting print or album orders – the archive is separate (and I’m slowly filling that up too).
I remember doing a broad check on the cost of the pro-level Nikon SLRs back from the F4 days to current D3 generation. I didn’t do a full NPV calculation but the cost of those bodies hasn’t changed an awful lot – of course you get a lot more technology for your money.
But now you need to add a whole lot of extra stuff to the cost of your pictures: computing power, storage, backup.
And in the end you’ll still have to print your best images if you really want to enjoy them at their best.
Digital Photography has changed the way we take pictures for ever. Many of those changes are positive (and there are a few more subtle negative ones). But you get nothing for nothing.
Its an old joke in the camera world: amongst the many modes your camera has are ‘A’ and ‘P’ – they stand for ‘Amateur’ and ‘Professional’ :o)
Well of course not really. In fact quite the opposite. ‘P’ is for Program Mode in which the camera makes all the decisions about everything and therefore gives the photographer no control. At least in ‘A’ mode you get to choose your Aperture (‘A’ is for Aperture Priority BTW) so you control how much of your scene is in focus.
Teachers and Pro Photographers generally scorn Program Mode and I understand why. Many courses will start you out with the most basic camera in Manual mode because it really is the best way to learn how photography works (because if you don’t get it right you don’t get a photograph).
This definitely works (although it can be frustrating for people used to instant success in a modern world). I ‘grew up’ on manual cameras (mostly because as a student I couldn’t afford anything else).
But I don’t agree with the ‘you have to shoot Manual – always’ mantra that you pick up on a lot of the Fora. Once you have the skills and experience (which you get from shooting manual) then your camera is a very functional tool with features to help you in many varied circumstances.
Moreover, these days they are very good at what they do: why not use the auto features if you can control them and predict what they’re going to do for you?
I use: autofocus 99% of the time – but I decide which focus point to use; auto ISO most of the time (it is an entirely predictable algorithm); Auto exposure – in Aperture Priority Mode – with a mix of metering patterns and manual compensation when it doesn’t quite give me what I want; and auto white balance sometimes does the job of tricky mixed lighting (and it can easily be changed afterwards).
Using these tools gives me a very high percentage of in-focus, well exposed images so that I can concentrate on my subject.
So, as usual, I think the right answer is ‘never say never’. If you understand how a tool works, you can control it, you know its limitations and you know what to do when it isn’t working for you, why not use it?
The understanding is the key – and that is where the hard work lies.
This holiday, my daughter was sent on a mission by her mother: get a picture of Dad on holiday for once. Prove that he was here. She took this up with some enthusiasm and between Mum’s camera phone, and her iPod she did well.
One evening I took the D700 to the playground to get some overall pics of the place in which we were staying for the holiday album. Daughter Number One asked to use my camera for her Mission. I set it to ‘Professional’ mode, auto iso, auto focus, auto focus point selection, auto white balance. I hung my big, expensive camera around her 9 year old neck and I told her which button to press.
Amongst them is a shot which I might well have taken myself:
I’m obviously feeling my age this week – the threat of a big birthday hangs over me!
Last Thursday I shot 20.8GB of images.
Now, this is probably nothing special for a wedding. And I admit that in the heat of the moment I have a tendency to take an extra shot or two as insurance to bracket my settings and just in case someone blinked. That’s one of the advantages of digital.
But creating 20.8GB of data in a day (albeit a long one) got me thinking about the data milestones in my life to date.
The first computer I ever used (on a school science camp) had 1kB of memory
The first computer I ever owned had 16kB of memory (which I later expanded to 48kB)
My first year at college the PCs we used had the luxury of 5.25″ floppy drives which took double density disks at 360kB – we had one of these with the OS on and a spare for our software projects
By the time I finished university we all had a small box of 3.5″ high density floppies which could take 1.44MB each.
When I started my first job in IT we didn’t actually all have a PC each. Nor did we have e-mail. I did the software bit so I just worked with UNIX based ‘Workstations’. They were pretty responsive but I have no idea about the spec.
My first big project was based on a rack of embedded processor boards which had a memory ranging from 256kB to 1MB. It had to go through a lot of certification so admittedly at that stage the hardware wasn’t state-of-the-art.
I then got spec a training and simulation system from scratch. When we ordered the server we spec’ed a pair of 1GB hard discs (one for OS, one for data) and thought we had at least 50% spare capacity. By the time the order was processed the 1GB discs were obsolete and they supplied 2GB discs. I remember laughing with the hardware engineer on the project about how much disc space we had that we wouldn’t use.
I didn’t buy a PC for a long time because I worked with them everyday. But about 7 years ago I got one so I could be on-line at home. It came with a 20GB hard drive and shortly afterward I added a ‘massive’ 80GB second drive. I discussed this purchase with a colleague at the time and we agreed it was likely to be all the hard drive I would ever need.
Around the same time I bought my first digital point and shoot camera. It took 4MP Jpegs which ran at around 1MB each at best quality. My first Compact Flash card was 128MB.
I now shoot with a 12MP camera. The RAW images are just over 10MB each. I use 4GB memory cards. Last week I shot over 20GB of images in one day. My data archive from the last 15 months is filling a 1TB drive.
Thankfully I don’t shoot video…
I have no profound comment to make on this (yet). I am always impressed by breakthroughs in technology but at the same time somewhat staggered that someone thinks that there is an application waiting for this stuff (and in many cases there isn’t).
If someone had told me as a teenager that I would fill a 1TB drive with useful data then I would have wondered what kind of space-age cutting-edge job I was going to have.
It is not all good news. It has taken all weekend to backup the 1TB drive (and still going). Data is easier to create than manage.
I don’t usually post techy camera stuff on the blog (hey, it is all about me!) but a couple of things caught my eye this week.
There seems to be a bit of a clamor on the forums at the moment about the lack of a (possibly) overdue Nikon D700 upgrade or replacement. How Canon is kicking Nikon’s butt with the 5DMkII, ‘I’m moving to Canon’, ‘Nikon doesn’t love me’, blah, blah.
As a D700 user myself (and a very happy one) I’ve been tracking this a bit out of interest. I love the way people get so stirred up about the technology of cameras.
So enter this post which gives a credible and tangible background to something that seems to be coming out of a number of the more trusted and independent lens review sites: that the latest sensor resolutions in SLR cameras is starting to outperform the resolving ability of even best lenses (which most people aren’t using) and challenging the engineering of the small SLR sized bodies they are put into. The comparison to the cost of the cheapest cinema lenses is most telling. It is a simple question of engineering tolerances verses costs.
Then Thom Hogan hit the nail on the head (as usual) with his prioritised list of where to spend your money on upgrading: basically photographer first, camera last. I like Thom’s posts a lot. Although obviously a good techie, he is only interested in technology if it helps him take better pictures and he only moans about something if it prevents him taking better pictures – and he takes some pretty good ones!
So before you spend a few €1000 on a 18MP camera consider what you’re capable of with your current equipment. Consider what it is that is limiting your photography: odds on it’s not the equipment. For most photographers, the best investment you can make is time taking more pictures and critically reviewing them.
My phone line went down yesterday and took my broadband connection with it.
Wow! It is only when you’re disconnected do you realise how many times a day you check something on-line.
Being ‘always-on’ makes you ‘always-on’.
But how much more productive was I yesterday because I wasn’t able to periodically check e-mail, news feeds, photo sites, magazine sites and all that? And what exactly did I miss out on yesterday because I wasn’t on-line? Well, not very much actually: a lot more e-mails and links to Crystal thingy.
In the days of continuous news feeds and 24-hour news channels it is easy to forget that (real) news doesn’t really happen 24 hours a day.
So thanks to Eric for a loan of his WLAN this morning. I really do need to be on-line for my business but probably not quite as much as I think I do!
And finally if anyone needs to contact me urgently please call. If I don’t answer, please leave a message. I’m not on regular e-mail until this is sorted. In fact given the nature of what I do, this is usually the case.
I came across this post on the BBC website by Phil Coomes. The New Statesman have hired a photography editor to take control of the delivering their photographic style.
Wow.
As a youth my parents occasionally took the Guardian newspaper and even through that haze of teenage memory, I remember being struck by the photographs it carried in almost every issue.
I have since regularly read and heard journalists bemoaning the change in the industry, both in written, radio and photojournalism. Don McCullin’s auto biography is very interesting on the subject. John Simpson has even reflected on the changes at the BBC.
I have a selection of World Press Award books dating back to the early 90’s and even in that short span you can see a change in the style of photojournalism – or at least that which is being recognised within the industry. Don McCullin’s stunning and moving photographs from various conflicts through the 60’s and 70’s rarely featured dead people: they reflected on the impact of death in conflict rather than death itself. It is stark contrast to the images that came out of the Gulf Wars.
There seem to be very few news or feature periodicals that seek to make a specific statement in their visual content. So All Credit to the New Statesman. Good Luck to Rebecca McClelland, a true, classic style is a much harder thing to develop than following trends and using gimmicks. I’ll definitely be watching her progress in Easons.
I spotted this photo of the US Open on the BBC website.
Spot the Chimp
I mentioned chimping a couple of times already. The ability to review your shots has helped digital take over from film in many aspects of photography. But this is a classic example of missing a shot due to chimping.
Maybe he had it in the can already. But this guy is obviously a pro, he has a nice big Canon camera and a big lens with IS, what are the chances that he actually missed the shot? And if he had missed it, wouldn’t he be better off shooting some more versions of this key moment, rather than checking his LCD?
How many times have I been at a tourist spot and nearly fallen over someone who has stopped dead in the middle of the path to check the shot he just took?
Digital cameras are very fancy these days. They miss very few shots in most circumstances. Any many times with action shots, if you miss them, you miss them. Taking your eye off the action to check what you might have missed just makes you miss something else. Take the shot, look for the next one or put your camera away and enjoy what’s next.
It’s not that I don’t chimp. I come across many difficult lighting scenarios and the ability to review the shot, check the histogram and adjust wherever possible is invaluable. But I try to keep my eye on the ball.
This video on chimping is excellent. There is a bit of ‘we film guys were good enough without chimping and you digital guys are all soft’ to the whole thing. And to be honest I see what they mean – photographers who shot film had it a whole lot harder and all the more credit for them to get the pictures they got on film. But in the context of sports photography, there’s a lot to be missed by sparing at your LCD and not the game in hand.
Apologies to both the BBC and Getty for snipping this image.
