Skip to main content

Comparing cameras and lenses, and I'm off

Dear faithful readers, I am away photographing and won’t have easy access to the internet, nor the time to write my blog. I’ll be back mid August.

I’m sure that my travels will inspire new articles and I’ll of course share any interesting stories.
This mission will be a good test for my new EOS 5D. So far I’m very impressed with the quality and performance of the camera. It’s one of the best I’ve ever used; a real pleasure. I particularly like the way the 5D draws its images. The images look like medium format film. The camera is also a lot lighter to lug around than for example a Mamiya RZ and the quality when RAW files are processed correctly is certainly on a par.

There’s a funny thing about the whole process of comparing cameras. I know I’m not the first person to point the following out. Scientific tests give you dry academic figures often highlighting such miniscule differences that you’d need a powerful magnifying glass to see what they’re talking about, which is certainly not the way ‘normal’ people view prints.

As far as I’m concerned there’s only one way to evaluate a camera and a lens. Take pictures with the lenses and cameras you want to compare under a variety of lighting conditions. Then compare the prints as you would normally view them. You will see the way the camera draws the image. Each camera and lens produces an image with a distinctive feel. Your finely tuned photographer’s eye will instinctively identify the look you prefer. I don’t know of any scientific test that can pinpoint the huge combination of factors that produce the final image in print.
Even if there were such a test it would not take an individual’s visual preferences into account. So the only true test of image quality at the end of the day is the critical human eye.
Your views are welcome. Just post a comment below or send me an email.

See you in August. In the meantime please feel free to peruse more than a year’s worth of articles on this blog. You could try looking through the archive for some of the highlights.

Happy reading.

Paul

PS please visit my online exhibition at http://www.indigo2photography.co.uk/

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Overcoming creative block and self doubt

Every photographer, for that matter every creative, I've ever met comes to a point when they're not happy with the work they're producing. The pendulum between creative highs and dry spells swings continuously. For some the cycle is long and the bouts are quite mild for others the feeling of doubt about their work can be a crushing experience which returns all to frequently. It's actually quite healthy to have these periods of doubt because it can often be the beginning of something new and interesting which takes you further than you thought possible. Creatives in the commercial world have to always perform and although they may agree looking back that they've had a few patches where their work was less good, they always seem to bounce back. A very few creative geniuses deliver such high quality work that their poorest attempts still surpass the rest of us. But I have never heard of anyone, from tortured soul of Van Gogh to the supreme showman and genius, Salvador ...
22 comments
Read more

What You Photograph Reveals How You Think

  Photography is often described as a way of seeing. Less often do we talk about it as a way of thinking. What you choose to photograph, and just as importantly what you ignore, quietly mirrors how your mind works. Some photographers are drawn to faces, micro-expressions, emotional spikes. Others chase atmosphere, light, mood. Then there are those who gravitate towards structure, systems, order, the invisible logic holding a scene together. None of this is accidental. The camera becomes a sorting tool. It reveals what your brain prioritises. Where others see chaos, you might see alignment. Where some look for drama, you look for balance. Geometry, repetition, flow, layers, these aren’t just visual preferences, they’re cognitive ones. Strong graphic images tend to come from people who think spatially. Who notice how things relate before they notice what they mean. Lines before labels. Structure before story. And yet, the best images rarely stop there. They gain depth when human pres...
1 comment
Read more

Is professional photography still a viable career?

I am not against amateurs and semi-professionals selling their photography. It's a great way to earn some extra cash. However I am concerned about the level of high quality published work and the standards that clients and the public accept these days. It seems that just about everyone is a photographer. The line between amateur enthusiast and professional is fuzzy to say the least. Photography enthusiasts are selling their images through stock libraries and microstock websites, directly to magazines or through their own and third party sites. They're accepting commissions to shoot weddings, being hired to shoot for magazines and selling fine art prints from their websites. They're teaching photography on the weekend and guiding photographic holidays and safaris. Photography became accessible to the masses with the first non-expert cameras and the famous Kodak slogan"You press the button, we do the rest." The digital camera age has taken the whole thing to a ne...
14 comments
Read more