Slashdot Mirror
The Difference Between Film and Digital Photography (Video)
Sally Wiener Grotta and her husband Daniel wrote some of the first books and articles about digital photography. Sally was an award-winning photographer in film days, and has maintained her reputation in the digital imaging age. In this interview, she talks about how to buy a digital camera -- including the radical idea that most people really don't need to spend more than $200 to take quality photos. (We had some bandwidth problems while doing this remote interview, but the sound is clear so we decided to run it "as is" rather than try to remake the video and lose the original's spontaneity.)
I read that as "The Difference Between Film and Digital Pornography (Video)"
Please slashdot, direct me to the 200$ camera that makes good shots, and video (this is 2013, cameras should do video without too much moire or sensor overheat) of low light theater settings.
I was thinking a nikon 5200 with some hdmi recording to compensate for the 29 mins recording artificial limit. Or a non eu market panasonic gx7 which looks cooler. All of the above means shelling out some $$$.
---- MISSING MISCELLANEOUS DATA SEGMENT --- [sigdash] trolololol
At this point dSLRs should only be used by professionals,
Thank you for pointing out your beliefs that only certain people should be able to use certain products. I guess your opinion is also that only those who drive for a professional living should be allowed to buy a Porsche or those who make their living from cooking should be allowed to buy $300 knives.
Apparently it's your belief people shouldn't be allowed to buy what they want with their own money just because they enjoy a product.
A dSLR camera is useless if no one sees your photos.
Yup, there's the confirmation.,
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
A sixty-second commerical? Nope.
We're nerds. Not blind consumer-sheep. We want to know what she thinks, how the sensors work, what makes the cameras good. We don't want to know that the interviewer has a smartphone with an integrated camera, and that he's about to buy his new camera as a phone from BestBuy because he dropped his old camera.
This is a professional here, stop thinking you know *anything* about the intricacies of her job and show some respect. Imagine interviewing Linus or Wozniak and telling them that you're going to buy a new keyboard because you spilled coffee on the old one. Then asking them for recommendations on what brand of bluetooth keyboard you should get to go with your $120 tablet. I'm surprised she didn't hang up out of sheer frustration.
Help I am stuck in a signature factory!
dSLR's "should" be used by whoever the hell wants to use them. That's as absurd as saying that pianos should only be used by professional pianists because anyone else can get a harmonica. Who says?
Taking advantage of the conversation audio was probably much better than trying to reshoot it while reading off a transcript. Good call there. That said, cutting from video of a person to a similarly framed still of a person is not a big improvement from a cinematic perspective. If you want to do more of these, and you want something to show when the video goes wonkey, you should get some other cutaway material. A great example in this case would have been some stills from her portfolio, Ken Burns style, with some simple annotations of what we are seeing. Another easy option would be occasional reaction shots of the interviewer. Obviously, you have4 complete control over that half of the connection so you can always capture decent quality video on your side. (It's a good excuse to clean up your bedroom, if nothing else.) You could also have images of the things that are being talked about. Pictures of cameras, screenshots of software, etc. At around 10:30, you say "I will have this cheapie as a spare" as you cut away from the video. Would have been perfect to cut away to a shot of the cheapie tos how what was being talked about. Or a shot from the cheapie. Etc.
And of course if you have more technical interviewees, you can ask them to record video of themselves on the call and send it to you after, while you have an audio Skype call for the interview. You can spend as long as you need downloading the already recorded video after the fact.
That said, good job providing the transcript below the video. Excellent model to follow.
At this point dSLRs should only be used by professionals,
Thank you for pointing out your beliefs that only certain people should be able to use certain products.
I read that not so much as 'should be able to' as 'will be able to benefit from'.
Or, in other words, unless you really know what you're doing, you're probably wasting your money.
For myself, I tend to buy the cheapest item available of any category until I understand why the other ones are more expensive.
William of Ockham had no beard. The most likely explanation is that it was chewed off by squirrels every morning.
Shooting video of your son's hockey games with the Canon SLR will be a disaster unless you are prepared to manually focus all the time; the autofocus systems in SLR's don't work in movie mode. (Some of them don't work at all, and some of them just suck; I don't know which the T3 is.) The one exception is the Canon 70D, which has a fancy split-pixel sensor that lets it AF during movie shooting.
The exceptions are the Sony SLT cameras, which send 2/3 of the light to the sensor and 1/3 to a dedicated AF sensor, and the Olympus and Panasonic Micro Four Thirds cameras, which can use the readout from the main sensor to autofocus. (This is the same thing that the SLR's try to do when autofocusing in movie mode; the Micro 4/3 cameras just manage to not suck at it so badly.)
You just used one of the oldest misdirections in the book - pivoting from "what people should do" to "what people should be allowed to do." Start watching for this and you see it all the time.
For 95% of what people take pictures of in the real world, yeah, a camera built into a smart phone is probably good enough. However, if you're shooting:
Then you need something like a DSLR with a real shutter & aperture and honkin' big sensor, and hopefully expensive lenses that can take advantage of all of the above. Spending $200 on a hands-on photography class will have much more impact for most people than spending the money on an expensive camera, and then hoping you getting better results when you push the button (which ain't happening).
I'm not a professional photographer, but I do not like point-and-shoot cameras, shutter lag, limit of lens choices (actually no choice just the one), terrible f-stop range, terrible noise on sensors, tiny sensors, and they are way too light to be able to make steady shots, and not seeing through the lens at what you're shooting is totally weird with the electronic lag of CCD to LCD display.
With a DSLR I can shoot with very high shutter speeds, having the ability to change lenses allows me to get either macro close or very far objects closer up. You can also clip on filters to change the image, like polarisers.
Most people will not need a DSLR, but to claim that those cameras are only for professionals is rubbish. Even a cheap DSLR will out do a point-and-shoot. And let's not even get into thiny pinhead size sensors in mobile phones and claim that it's genuinely 8MP+.
Take Nobody's Word For It.
Maybe in your universe. In my universe, camera phones are still relatively poor even when compared with even my original Canon 300D DSLR from a decade ago. Compared with my current 6D, the difference is night and day. Literally. The amount of light is proportional to the square of the lens diameter, which effectively means that I can take high-ISO handheld photos with my 6D in an only partially lit parking lot at night that are similar in quality with pictures shot using my year-old cell phone during the day.
This is not to say that camera phones aren't good. They're great within very well-defined limits. On various photography boards, they have a saying that the best camera is the camera you have with you. If I don't plan to take photos, I always have my phone with me, which lets me shoot acceptable photos so long as the lighting is at least moderately decent, and so long as I can get close enough to not need to use the zoom. However, when I'm traveling or doing anything where I think I might want good pictures, I always drag my DSLR along, because A. there's never enough time to foot-zoom a quarter of a mile, and B. I appreciate shallow depth of field.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
I liked what she had to say, especially: "The camera doesn't take the picture, the human does." -- that's very important. It's always been possible to take *great* photos with very inexpensive gear, if the composition, subject and lighting are all great.
Most people don't need anything more than a decent $200 or even $100 camera. The trouble is that if you want to go to the "next level" -- you need to spend two or three times that (or lots more), and you can then get into low-light territory, which (IMO) is where all the excitement is. A truly *usable* 6400 or 12800 ISO is unbelievably liberating, and that's now here for well-under $1000.
Well, there's a lot of different mindsets on things.
Me? I've always been one of those that when I set my mind to something or wanting something, a nice camera for instance...I'd research the hell out of it, drive everyone around me mad incessantly talking about it, and then saving and buying the absolute best of xyz I could afford. I never liked much the idea of compromising and buying something 'small' or cheap, learning to use it, then buying slightly better...then upgrading that...etc.
That may work in some cases, but I just never wanted to go that route....I'd much rather put off immediate gratification, and save and buy NICE and QUALITY the first time around, as best I could.
I've been that way on lots of things. My cookware, is mostly All Clad SS. My knives are Wusthof Trident. Yes, each piece can be pretty $$. I didn't buy the whole set at once....but piece by piece as I could afford it. And along with some choice cast iron stuff, I will have cookware that will last my lifetime and is quite good as a kitchen tool.
I've done the same with my camera. I got the bug about a year and a half ago. I ended up on a video shoot I saw them filming with a Canon 5D2...I'd never seen a DSLR used for video and was curious.
I researched and was getting close to pulling the trigger on one, and found the new 5D Mark III was coming out...so, I waited about 6 more mos...saved and bought one in June after their release.
I have been THRILLED with my choice. A whole new world has opened up to me. I'd never had a real digital camera before, aside from phone and one old point and shoot someone gave me a decade ago. But this new 5D3 is amazing. It can shoot in extremely low light conditions.
I've since then, been learning lighting (both video and stills), I've been learning the post processing tools now...I work with Davinci Resolve for color grading. I got the Adobe Production Premium CS6 suite of tools to learn PS, Premier, AE, etc....
So, I think the thing is...if you're really interested in something...research it, find what you really want....save and buy the best you can. Good tools will last you longer, and in some few cases, can save you money in the long run if it is something you will stick with.
I don't generally fritter my money away on crap. I save and when I have enough for something I want, I pull the trigger and buy something VERY nice, once or twice a year usually. I never have buyers remorse either.
At this point, I'm spending even more money (photography *is* an expensive hobby if done right) on lighting equipment for video, flashes and soon strobes for stills. And glass...that is where you DSLR money is best spent. I just rented the Canon 50mm f/1.2 lens, for a video shoot I did recently for charity. I hate sending that lens back, but I know now...next thing I'm saving for, is a copy of that lens for myself.
If you're not into photography, don't bother buying something nice....but for any hobby or any thing you like doing and appreciate quality and being able to do things....save and buy the best.
Ever since I was a young kid, I worked and saved...and have always had nice stereos (still important to me), nice cars, etc...and now cameras.
In many cases, you get what you pay for.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
http://xkcd.com/1014/
> Or, in other words, unless you really know what you're doing, you're probably wasting your money.
Ignorant nonsense.
A better device allows for taking photos under conditions that a lesser device is simply incapable of managing. As a camera, a phone is actually a step backwards from film cameras in terms of features and ease of use.
While it's true that more expensive "pro" cameras are a matter of greatly diminishing returns, they too have their uses and situations for which they product useful output rather than a pointless blur.
It doesn't take a lot of skill to benefit from better gear. That's one of the great things about modern technology.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
"People who don't make their living from pictures but insist on using equipment this expensive have more money than sense"
A lot of fancy cameras could be considered jewellery given how many are owned but never used to their potential. Lots of camera enthusiasts think of Leicas as jewellery no matter who is using them (thanks to their hilariously high prices)
What's obscene here is the idea that you have to buy a device with Facebook built into it in order to publish things via Facebook. One should be able to easily combine devices that conform to open standards to achieve things with technology the engineers never thought of.
Profanity is not an inappropriate response to proprietary walled garden nonsense.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
For myself, I tend to buy the cheapest item available of any category until I understand why the other ones are more expensive.
While this works for a great deal of things, there are some that this shouldn't apply to. Such as cars, parachutes, chainsaws, fire extinguishers....
A dSLR camera is useless if no one sees your photos.
It's really quite stupid to state that photos not on a social network are useless:
You might want pictures to put on your own wall?
Portraits of your own family?
Perhaps social networks mean that people are more inclined to view hundreds of slightly interesting pictures instead of a a few nicer ones (since the cost of a photo is now approximately zero), but not everyone shares that opinion. (This is not to state that "good" photos can only be taken on expensive equipment.)
And well....some people have a lot more disposable income than others.
To them, $3K is not a lot of money, more like $300.
People seem to forget that a lot of people make a decent amount of money...so, much of it depends on what you have coming in...and what is important to you. Maybe owning a house having 3 kids is what you want. Others may want a smaller house, or just rent...no kids and have more disposable income to buy toys with. Nothing wrong with either one, but doesn't show a lack of "sense".
My first DSLR was a Canon 5D3. it isn't top of the line, but it was a bit pricey, and I've had a blast with it. I've been learning so much on how photography works and what can be done with it (and videography too). I put it on manual about and 2nd day I had it and have been learning since then how to shoot and get the effects "I" want.
Some people like and value nice things. I've never bought anything really that I can think of...as "jewelry" that others can see, with the exception of a couple of actual pieces of jewelry, and even those, like my cars and other toys...have been bought for ME, and no one else.
Nothing wrong with liking nice things...I doubt in most cases it is bought just to show off to others.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
No. No, it did not have that tone at all. Your reading is an enormous stretch, and does not mean that at all, and unbiased native speakers of English will not interpret it the way you have. I don't know if English is a second language for you or if you same some bias here, but your reading is not accurate.
The comment was no different than telling someone about to spend $5,000 on a PC that only hardcore gamers or media composers should spend that sort of money, that if you're just web surfing and writing an occasional paper something much less expensive will suit your needs. Absolutely no intent to institute some legal restriction can be inferred from such advice.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Selection bias. When sharing photos was expensive, only incredibly sharp photos were shared. Digital photo-taking developed with digital photo-sharing, cheap and easy.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Or, in other words, unless you really know what you're doing, you're probably wasting your money.
For myself, I tend to buy the cheapest item available of any category until I understand why the other ones are more expensive.
I did the opposite and started out by buying one of the more expensive consumer-level dSLRs (a Nikon D7000) without having a clue about photography. The idea was this:
a) A camera like that will not be the limiting factor - my own skills will be
b) It's expandable by a myriad of objectives and accessories if I want to get more advanced
c) If it turns out this photography thing wasn't really for me, I'll still get great vacation pictures with the auto mode!
I think some hobbies are just like that - you can't have gear with too poor quality or it will affect your experience so badly you'll lose interest. Learning to play the guitar on a cheap guitar that can't keep the tuning sucks. Learning astronomy on a cheap toy-level telescope is just as bad. Photography might be a different beast, but to me it seems you can't go wrong by buying quality gear from the outset.
I've done chemical photography since 1979, and digital since 2000.
What I have found to be the major difference betwen Digital and film photography is the way it handles light. This is very quantifiable.
Film has a portion ot light effect that it responds to in a linear fashion, which is to say that the film reacts fairly linearly to the amount of light hitting it. At the bottom (dark) end of the response of th efilm, it flattens out, as well as at the top (light) end.
While this is awkward to write about, in graphical fashion, it makes good sense, and if you have a doubling of light and graph it, it makes the traditional "S" curve. At the bottom, there isn't as much difference between doubling the amount of light, and also at the top.
In practical terms, this means that there is less contrast in both the darkest areas of a photo, and also the lightest areas of the photo. In the middle, there is "normal" contrast range.
In digital, the S curve is greatly diminished, leading to more of a straight line from the lightest the camera will show, and the darkest.The contrast range is more constant
This is a big part of what people see when they can tell the difference. between the two forms of photography.
If you want to come pretty close to imitating film response, take the image into Photoshop, select "Curves" and imitate that S curve.
Now as for the other technical issues, Cell Phones have a really big limitation. They use tiny little sensors, which in order to have a normal photo, need lenses of extremely short focal length. This ends up making for pretty "lensy" photos, and even the zooms don't actually zoom, they enlarge an area. This means no lens effect other than the wide angle look.
As for the other parts, the artistic issue, good photos can be made with any camera. People have been using plastic DIana Cameras for years to make art. A good photographer can make great art. Unfortunately, not everone has the eye or figures out how to do it, and we can now make really bad photos pretty easily. But we can always learn.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.