Dicky Tong's Photographic Blog: What camera to buy? - Part 3

The final part of what to look out for when buying a camera is improving your skills. Whilst the best equipment in the world might help get a crisp and sharp image, it doesn't help in terms of composing a photo and some shots I've taken have been taken using just a $300 point and shoot camera. Of course this doesn't mean I'll give up my big Canon camera for wedding jobs but provided you know the limitation of your camera and you are able to overcome them, then I believe anyone can take a great photo. Below is some tips that I believe should help any photographer take much better photos.

Rule of Thirds

Amongst the myraid of information on the internet (including this one), there's only one composition methology that impacts greatly to getting that great photo. The first one that makes a big difference is the "Rule of thirds". By using this "rule", it will improve any photo in any situation.

The basic premise of this rule is that a photo is divided into thirds and the aim is to place the object of focus in 4 intersecting spots. So in simple terms, don't put the object you're photographing in the middle of the photo.

Whilst it's called the "Rule of Thirds", it is like a road rule, it's meant to be broken so don't follow this to the letter of the law. Creativity occurs when the rules are broken.

Below is an image of how this is applied. You'll notice the head of this sculpture is placed on the lower right corner of the frame and by placing it down there, it allows a larger perspective as to the space this sculpture is looking at.

Check your background

The other tip I can provide is to look out in the background of offending objects. Below is a classic example of a photographer not doing their job. In the foreground, we have a car which obviously is what the photographer is taking a photo of for a news article, however in the background, the photographer has failed to notice the "Wrong way go back" sign (albeit blurred).

It may be an oversight from the photographer but if someone wants to communicate a hidden message, this is certainly one way.
















Take more photos

The last piece of advice I'd give to choosing the right camera is to use it and use it often. There's nothing worse than seeing people buy a nice camera and end up gathering dust after the honeymoon period.

What camera to buy? - Part 2

Now that we've worked out one of three items when searching for a camera, we'll move onto the second component when looking for the right camera for you.

Between the camera sensor and the object you are photographing, there is an equally important part of the camera called the lens. In plain English, it's the glass between the sensor and the object.

Why is the lens important?

To harness the good sensor you have chosen in the camera, wouldn't it be logical to have the best lens fitted? Sure, but price generally determine what lens that comes with the camera. This will apply to any kit lens for Digital SLR (Single Lens Reflex) camera or a P&S (Point & Shoot) camera.

So what do I need to look out for?

Generally for consumer P&S camera, you're pretty much looking at firstly the range of zoom of the lens, the "speed" of the lens and the brand.

Range of zoom of the lens

Unfortunately for non-camera people, marketers have really dumbed down the effective zoom range of a camera lens to something like 5x, 7x zoom. I really don't like how it's expressed and it gives little meaning to the usefulness of the lens.

The zoom range of a lens is pretty much the zoom at its widest view to the telephoto view. If the lens starts at a relatively telephoto setting at its widest view, then having a 5x zoom would only be useful for taking photos from the sideline of a football game and useless inside a karaoke room packed full of people.

So how is zoom measured in?

Generally how much zoom a lens has depends on the "focal length" of a lens. This length is measured in millimetres. With 35mm SLR cameras, it's a pretty easy thing to work out however with the P&S cameras, it's much more difficult to find out . I recommend visiting the manufacturer's web site and they'll have a 35mm converted focal length range as a universal standard.

Whilst you don't really need to know how focal length is measured, you need to know what the number means. As a general rule, anything <28mm>

Speed?? What are you talking about??

Well, in photography terms, speed talks about how quick the camera can capture an image in a given light condition. The faster the lens, the quicker the shutter can be. This is especially important when you're in a dimly lit room where you're able to take a photo without resorting to a tripod or putting the camera down on a non moveable object.

As the lens goes from wide angle to telephoto angle, the amount of light that the lens can deliver to the sensors changes. Imagine your whole monitor as the amount of light going into a camera sensor. By using the whole screen, you'll invaribly have more light to capture than if you used a smaller bit of the monitor which represents a telephoto condition.

However with more expensive cameras, the amount of light transmitted to the sensor may not change. With fancy glassware inside the lens, this is easily achieved.

OK, get to the point!

The speed of a lens is also known as the aperture. I'll go into more details in another blog but in short, the aperture in the camera is similar to the pupils in the human eye. The larger the pupil, the more light you're able to see.

Aperture is also quantified by a "measure" called F-stop and all you need to remember is that a F-stop of 2.8 is faster than a F-stop of 5.6 or another words, the 2.8 lens will allow more light in to the sensor than 5.6. Great news if you have a 2.8 lens indoors with little light.

Brand

Whilst I'm not one for being a brand snob and could be seen as a marketing ploy, reputable names wouldn't put their names to a lens if it didn't reach a certain level of performance.

Brands such as Leica (Panasonic) and Carl Zeiss (Sony) are generally very very desirable in the SLR world are a good place to begin but do look at the lens and the specifications to make sure it isn't a lens that has a purely marketing flavour to it.

However, this is not to say brands such as Canon, Fujinon and Nikkor doesn't make good lenses for P&S so this is not to say that you shouldn't consider them. In the SLR world, they make sensational lenses but just look out for cheap cameras.

What camera to buy? - Part 1

A question that is most commonly I get asked is, "What sort of camera should I get?". Whilst the question in itself is quite easy to understand, it's one of the most difficult questions to answer. To properly answer this question, you need to understand a little about the internals of the camera and in particular, the sensor and lens "focal range" (aka zoom range). These are the 3 elements that will determine whether or not a camera would suit you.

In a 3 part blog, I hope to break down the items you'll need to look at in order to choose the right camera for you.

Back in the days of film, we had a choice of going to the local photo lab or supermarket and pick up a regular canister of Fuji or Kodak film in various ISO. With the digital age, the camera sensor now replaces that film and since the advancements of sensor technology has moved, so has the quality.

So why do I have to care about the sensor in the camera?

As mentioned above, the sensor is now your film except that there's no longer a need to change canister every 36 shots. So being your film, you'd want the best sensor there is. Right?

As usual, there's nothing simple in the photography game with the myraid of names you'll come across. CMOS, CCD, Super CCD, etc etc. You don't really need to decypher all of them but what you need to do as part of your research into which camera to buy is to check out a few cameras with similar sensors to see what sort of results they produce.

With advancements in the electronics market, 6 months can mean the difference between new technology and outdated, in the discount bin special however, all is not lost as the photographic industry has somewhat slowed down in terms of new technology being released in the interval of years rather than months.

Let's face it, with compact point and shoot cameras, the most common thing people use them for is for parties, travel and happy snaps. More often than not, they're usually held indoors or in the evening after work. Unless you're inclined to carry a big Digital SLR around with some fancy lens, you're not going to have any half decent happy snaps to put on Facebook.

Which sensor impress you?

I'm glad you asked. Ever since I read about how the Fujifilm point and shoot low light ability of their Super CCD, I've always longed to have one of these portable low light beast in my hands. I currently have the Fujifilm Finepix F200EXR with the latest Super CCD EXR sensor and so far, it's lived up to its name as a low light winner.

With most compact point and shoot cameras most common complaint about them is:

1) Noise
2) Noise
3) Noise

Apart from the lack of real adjustability of the lens and slow shutter response, noise is (I think) one of the biggest issue that decrease the level of detail in a photo because more noise means lower levels of detail.

You are so full of it! How can "Noise" be on an image? I can't hear a photo!

Put simply, noise in photographic terms used to describe the graininess of an image.

With any camera, there's a base level of noise that a camera produces and this can be anywhere from super low and smooth or pretty high. This varies from camera to camera models.

As mentioned above, the most common use for P&S cameras is indoors, at a party and in pretty dark conditions. A way to compensate for that is to increase the ISO settings. Back in the old days, this meant rewinding the roll of film and popping in a higher ISO film. This resulted in a higher sensitivity to light being recorded on the film. It is exactly the same except the camera does this electronically.

Whilst it's great the sensor is not more sensitive to low light, the camera now has a much lower range of light to work with. This pretty much results in noise appearing on your image and is more noticable in the really dark patches of the photograph.

When noise comes into it, the level of detail decreases significantly as shown in the picture above where details such as the grass is quite lacking due to the rough nature of the image taken in such low light conditions.

As a side note, ISO doesn't really mean anything but the number that goes after it does. The ISO rating represents how much more times the camera can increase its sensitivity of light by double the previous ISO number. For example, ISO 1600 is 4 times more sensitive than ISO 100 (i.e. ISO 100 --> ISO 200 --> ISO 400 --> ISO 800 --> ISO 1600). The higher the ISO, the more capable it is to increase its sensitivity but this does also mean even more noiser photos.

In the next blog, we'll talk about the item between the object you're photographing and the sensor. The lens.

First Posting

After some deliberation and procrastinating, I will endeavour as part of a ritual is to post at least one blog per week. Pretty much the basis of what I'll be blogging about is answering some of the most common questions I get asked as a photographer when newbies wanting to learn how to take better photographs.

I hope to bring some thoughts and tips as well as share with you an insight of how I started out as one of those boy hobbies to becoming pretty much an obsession.

Hope to be posting up something real soon.

D