go go dslr!

f16sunshine

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I had an experience Thursday Night that brightened the lights a bit on what all these new cameras mean to pros and serios performance requirements (Not just IQ but battery and Capture storage buffer ).

Good Fortune of friendship brought a pair of seatss to the Pacific NW ballet as the company conducted their final Dress Rehearsal before opening tonight for Kilian Pite(starting friday Nov 8).
The 4 pieces performed where inspiring and well worth a full price admission …. If you live in Seattle take the time to experience these works during their short run.
The performance I experienced was in fact the final rehearsal and, there where some photographers at the Orchestra pit barricade taking advantage of a full dress rehearsal and comped audience evening.

As has become my horrible habit around pro workers, I took notice of their kit ( I would like to say "other pro workers" .. although, I use my own images in my job. I can not say I’m a pro photographer as such ….really. Whatching these two position for a nearly static subject confirmed …. I’m not a pro photographer!).
One woman was using an Eos 1DX model. I don’t know which exactly. The other a later Nikon D something of the large variety. I’m assuming the D4. Both had pro bodies 😉
The Canon shooter was obviously the house/company photog as she stayed through the entire performance as well as stepping on stage after each piece while the choreographer was giving notes to the dancers and crew.

OK, I’ll just say it! That nikon went off like the sound of an old Pontiac sedan having it’s passenger door slammed! Really it was as loud as the MD4 and F3hp combo I tried for a while in my late 20’s.
I never have really been distracted by a camera sound before this at an event or performance. Sure it was the ballet and their where some quiet sequences where anything would seem loud.
That said,The sound of that Nikon beast in particular was very detracting and nearly percussive. At the same time the canon was quite silky sounding like the old Contax RTS or RX/ST.
I’ve always marveled at the Nikon system. The heritage, the glass. the dedication of service and “pro” loyalty from some of my favorite image makers over the years. I’m no longer intrigued at trying the system over my 5Dii’s. Canon scores another point at last! The first point being adaptability of my old Zeiss Contax Lenses.

DSLR cameras are not so popular on RFF as they are useful in the real world. I have now long used my 5Dc and 5Dii’s as my “work” cameras. If I expect at all going into a project that I might print large or the client wants some large archive or printable files...I drag the old 5Diesels along. The Canon sensor and RAW file is very robust and looks authentic unless the reds are very saturated or super lit. In those cases I rely on my editing which often is just as poor although less enthusiastic as the native in camera canon algorithms. H3LL Super lit natural Reds have been a problem since the beginning of color photography as far as keeping authentic detail. I guess I give Canon some slack .

I could not imagine how many more keepers these two pros each had on their cards or hard rives than I would with my xpro, x100, or old m8 I covet as discrete event cameras .
Never mind the fact that ..Ms Canon changed batteries once in 3 hours (that I noticed anyway).
Ms Nikon shot for an hour before leaving no battery change …. her job for presumably for a review, NP, or Magazine completed before the show ended.
Both where shooting no less than 3 frames every 5 seconds…. Bangin for buffer and maybe transmitting to wifi rather than card.
I could see that any talk of Canikon being threatened by some featherweight small buffer and battery challenged experiment from Sony, Fuji, or anyone else with the R+D balls to challenge is quite frankly not going to cut it in the field! (Full frame or not!)
Maybe these little mirror less wonders that keep coming out have a place in hobby, art, Photojournalism, or interview work. When it comes to banging away in the trenches doing live work for a few keepers. There is no replacement for a whole lot of horsepower and a lot of fuel in the tank! Go go DSLR!

Cheers!
 
The malevolent old PJ in me hopes that these pray-and-spray morons missed every good shot because they were too busy pushing the button to be paying any attention to what was actually happening that they should be specifically catching.

My bet is that the "keeper" rate was miserably low.
 
My bet is that the "keeper" rate was miserably low.

So what? The whole point about the spray-and-pray thing is that the person in charge today is the picture editor - from a editors point of view the perfect photographer is just a robotic tripod recording the surroundings at 50fps and 360°. Anything more selective will limit the choices offered to the editor...
 
The malevolent old PJ in me hopes that these pray-and-spray morons missed every good shot because they were too busy pushing the button to be paying any attention to what was actually happening that they should be specifically catching.

My bet is that the "keeper" rate was miserably low.


Well to be quite apologetic on the part of the working crew....

The light was very low and the movement of the dancers was constant.
I very much doubt that one out of 10 frames was technically a keeper (in focus minimal motion).
From those maybe there are a half dozen out of 20 that are artistically interesting at the least.
This was a full dress rehearsal. My seat was comped as where all the other audience members.
This was exactly the opportunity for photographers to work.
Spray and pray? I think that is underestimating the work these photos had at hand.
It's no small task to vet 100's of low light shallow DOF images from such a performance.
I certainly do not envy the assignment having been present to observe the task!
 
People tend to forget that there was photography before motors, and some extremely good pictures were shot then, in very difficult situations.

If you remove skill from it, since the photographers appear to have already abdicated taking responsibility, perhaps we should just extend Sevo's concept, and they should be shooting video, and letting someone else go through it frame-by-frame picking the winners. That's what advertising photographers are doing these days.
http://petapixel.com/2013/01/03/motion-image-photography-pulling-stills-from-super-high-res-video/
 
Being old enough to have had to manually focus and hand wind and push film versus using a professional DSLR with fast glass, continuous AF, all that... yes I can appreciate what people did back in the day but we simply get better pictures with a wider range of selection than ever before. It's a good thing.

As for the photo editors, maybe for largest sporting events they will be making decisions but for 99% of the sports and events shot it is still the photographer doing this.
 
Being old enough to have had to manually focus and hand wind and push film versus using a professional DSLR with fast glass, continuous AF, all that... yes I can appreciate what people did back in the day but we simply get better pictures with a wider range of selection than ever before. It's a good thing.

Amen to that! 😀
 
Being old enough to have had to manually focus and hand wind and push film versus using a professional DSLR with fast glass, continuous AF, all that... yes I can appreciate what people did back in the day but we simply get better pictures with a wider range of selection than ever before. It's a good thing.

As for the photo editors, maybe for largest sporting events they will be making decisions but for 99% of the sports and events shot it is still the photographer doing this.

Well said, as a working newspaper photographer, the difference between getting a picture in the paper and not is so small today I will take all the help I can. Better to have shot too much than not enough what does it matter with a nice big buffer and fast memory cards. Fast digital cameras have made average photographers good photographers and good photographers brilliant photographers.
 
Well said, as a working newspaper photographer, the difference between getting a picture in the paper and not is so small today I will take all the help I can. Better to have shot too much than not enough what does it matter with a nice big buffer and fast memory cards. Fast digital cameras have made average photographers good photographers and good photographers brilliant photographers.


True.
With the performance improvement of equipment and subsequently photographers as a result. ..The expectations of clients has also been raised.
Comments about other having been successful in the past with previous generations of technology pass over your excellent point.
Those earlier photogs would have become even better if they could use todays technologies. Well, maybe better is the wrong word in the case of speed and capacity which is what I long widely refer to in the OP.
How about more prolific.
 
Weird. Modern Nikon without silent shutter mode?
Or more like equipment in the wrong hands?

We went to ballet at Niagra-Falls USA, casino. Nutcracker. Where was a moron at assignment, he has AF confirmation beep on. What a .... beep...
 
What a let down. I was hoping for some photos of pole dancers 🙁

Sorry, just remembering the good old days.

As with any full motion event, you need to take a lot of photos to get that one moment that just clicks. Being able to anticipate the exact moment a ballerina's hand will be in the perfect position is somewhat hard to do, even if you have the entire performance memorized. The photogs of before were limited in what they could give their editors with rolls of film restricted to only 36 frames at the most (unless they were shooting with a Leica Recorder or 72, or any SLR 250 back), so they were either going to miss shots while reloading, or carried two cameras for the extra capacity, with an assistant to reload while they were shooting the next roll. And even if they shoot a couple hundred exposures, the article may only carry two or three shots. Editors will always ask for more choices, so I say let them bang away till their cards are full.

PF
 
We went to ballet at Niagra-Falls USA, casino. Nutcracker. Where was a moron at assignment, he has AF confirmation beep on. What a .... beep...

I shoot events, plays, poetry readings, quiet Yoga exercises and Thai Buddha religious sessions... etc., etc,. in NYC with my Nikon "BEEP" focus confirmation on at all times. Not once did anyone confront or comment to me in this matter. For the most part all were more than happy I was documenting their event.

Maybe you need to get down on the good foot.
 
I shoot events, plays, poetry readings, quiet Yoga exercises and Thai Buddha religious sessions... etc., etc,. in NYC with my Nikon "BEEP" focus confirmation on at all times. Not once did anyone confront or comment to me in this matter. For the most part all were more than happy I was documenting their event.

Really?

I never know if people are too stupid to recognize that others are distracted by that or they are too ignorant to care. Don't know what is worse.

Indeed.
 
I have no experience with the 1Dx but the 5Diii has a silent shutter mode which is really something to behold; I assume the 1Dx is similar, perhaps even quieter due to the more massive body. Not only is it extremely quiet (for a DSLR), it dampens the mirror vibrations to the point where you can hand-hold at maybe 1 stop slower than normal (in my estimate). Depending on the lens used, some of the Nikon noise may have been the stop-down mechanism (unless they were shooting wide-open of course) - the terrible "clank" was always something that bugged me about Nikon DOF preview; the D700's shutter was pretty loud too, but in many other respects a truly excellent camera.
 
Fast digital cameras have made average photographers good photographers and good photographers brilliant photographers.

Fast cameras with higher fps have made it easier to shoot action and higher ISO have allowed us to take pictures in conditions we couldn't before.
It hasn't made anyone a better photographer though, it has helped them get better results in those use cases; but it hasn't made them 'better' at photography (there is a subtle distinction)

The next generation of 4k and 8k 60fps cameras, ones that upload directly to the server and allow the editor instant direction are in development now.

They don't make the operator a better photographer, they just allow him to get a shot that will illustrate a story.
 
The DSLR is is still 'the' most versatile photography tool available. If someone sent me off on a mystery photography assignment where I had no clue of conditions or subject I'd only choose one camera ... my D700.

We seem to love to hate them though! 😀
 
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