Steve Bellayr
Veteran
When did photography become an inexpensive hobby? When I purchased my first camera everyone I knew thought it was too complicated and much too expensive. I recall them saying, "A Kodak instamatic is good enough for me."
The curse of expensive equipment?
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Godfrey
somewhat colored
Experienced photographers go at it the other way around. They don't wander about anxiously looking for something to shoot and hoping to see something worth shooting, carrying a selection of different lenses to choose from. They have an idea of what to shoot, and pick from their lenses those that they feel will do the job of achieving what they desire. They're selective, they curate what they see as suitable for a photograph. They don't willy-nilly carry a big bag of gear and hope they have the right lens fitted at the right time. And when they see something unexpected that worth shooting, well, they've chosen a lens then know and then try to fit the lens' characteristics to the opportunity properly.
The equipment does influence what the photographs capture. That's why I have various film formats, various digital formats, and a range of lenses for each: I choose what I'm looking for when I pick up a piece of equipment to use, and then I make of it what I feel is "best exploit" when an unexpected opportunity arises.
Obviously I'm not going to have a lot of success shooting "birds in flight" if I happen to be carrying a Hasselblad SWC or Polaroid Spectra. I'm similarly going to find few opportunities in a small apartment with an Olympus E-M1 and a 400mm lens. But if I have a Noctilux and I understand what it sees, how it renders, I'm going to have a good time when I'm looking for the sort of photograph that only it can render to my mental vision ...
As previously stated, I don't really care what anybody else thinks of the gear I buy and use, or what they think of me based on what I buy. I care only that the gear satisfies me—I like using it and it returns the photographs I hoped it would. The rest is irrelevant.
G
Monochrom
Well-known
Speed, bokeh, W. Turner and Snooky Polizzi
Speed, bokeh, W. Turner and Snooky Polizzi
Hi,
I´ve to say yet a few words on expensive gear.
I live in a country where people prefer to buy expensive cell phones than saving for their children´s education
So, Mother, Father and their three adolescent children have all the latest i-phones and expensive snickers but their vocabulary is reduced to yes, no, i want, i want, i want...
Every time i see those f1 shoots at night i remember this crazy fact like a brick flying into a window!
But beyond that there is another issue about expensive gear and computer screens
F1 pictures may look terrific on screen, but once they´re put in paper they collapse like a flamming zeppelin...there is no Joseph Mallord William Turner going on, pictures end being an ink blob when they go into the real.
...this redirects me into the sub-culture of bokeh which is like an over exercised chap who goes to the gymm, tans inside a radioactive capsule and then acts in a reality show where he meets an ellegant girl called Snooky Polizzi.
Better is to close the diaphragm down and make enough time to concentrate in composition, content and in making a place in photography for you.
Bokeh and Speed are residuals of technique and not the main issue of photography.
Thus I don´t need speed, bokeh nor expensive gear to make good pictures!
🙂
Speed, bokeh, W. Turner and Snooky Polizzi
Hi,
I´ve to say yet a few words on expensive gear.
I live in a country where people prefer to buy expensive cell phones than saving for their children´s education
So, Mother, Father and their three adolescent children have all the latest i-phones and expensive snickers but their vocabulary is reduced to yes, no, i want, i want, i want...
Every time i see those f1 shoots at night i remember this crazy fact like a brick flying into a window!
But beyond that there is another issue about expensive gear and computer screens
F1 pictures may look terrific on screen, but once they´re put in paper they collapse like a flamming zeppelin...there is no Joseph Mallord William Turner going on, pictures end being an ink blob when they go into the real.
...this redirects me into the sub-culture of bokeh which is like an over exercised chap who goes to the gymm, tans inside a radioactive capsule and then acts in a reality show where he meets an ellegant girl called Snooky Polizzi.
Better is to close the diaphragm down and make enough time to concentrate in composition, content and in making a place in photography for you.
Bokeh and Speed are residuals of technique and not the main issue of photography.
Thus I don´t need speed, bokeh nor expensive gear to make good pictures!
🙂
Michael Markey
Veteran
So you don`t like it then .
I was with you until I got to the bottom of your post ... M9. 🙂
David Hughes
David Hughes
Hi,
We often talk about signatures, fingerprints etc yet I wonder...
How many of us have carried two cameras, both with the same film in from the same batch and the same spec. lens (meaning aperture at max. and focal length) and then photographed everything - in our usual way - on both cameras with the same exposure given etc?
Just curious.
Regards, David
We often talk about signatures, fingerprints etc yet I wonder...
How many of us have carried two cameras, both with the same film in from the same batch and the same spec. lens (meaning aperture at max. and focal length) and then photographed everything - in our usual way - on both cameras with the same exposure given etc?
Just curious.
Regards, David
Sparrow
Veteran
No, clearly that isn't the case ... how could it be?
"sorry Mr Niépce, it's nice but, well, really ... the lens, it's just the wrong chioce for that type of urban landscape"
nongfuspring
Well-known
Come now, that's a little obtuse. Lenses certainly are different, perhaps the difference in cost is not relative or justifiable to the difference in performance, but obviously not all lenses render in the same way or have the same abilities or limitations.
leicashooter
Established
If you can afford it, buy it ,use it or don't use it , it doesn't matter , you have to spend your money on something just as well buy a Noctilux or buy 2 if you feel like it !
Sparrow
Veteran
Obtuse? no I fully accept that "not all lenses render in the same way or have the same abilities or limitations" ... what I doubt is the ability of anyone to predict the outcome under any particular set of circumstances for a particular photo.
I use a nikon 105 for portraits because it tends to take nice portraits, beyond that tendency I have no idea what they'll actually look like until I see the photos because lighting, subject and processing have the greater effect
leicashooter
Established
Sejanus.Aelianus
Veteran
This is true.
More importantly, if that's the lens you have with you, people can argue until they're blue in the face that you should have used a whatever and it's just so much hot air, for the demonstrable reason that you didn't have the whatever with you at that place and time.
Michael Markey
Veteran
I`m not suggesting that and I don`t think anyone else is either.
Nether am I suggesting that you can fully predict the outcome.
All I`m saying is that certain lenses have a different affect on the shot depending on the circumstances.
Nobody is blue in the face certainly not me although I do wonder sometimes what a shot would have looked like if I`d used this or that lens in the same way as some may wonder how the neg would have looked if they`d given it a bit more or less agitation or used a different developer.
You can`t predict that either.
hepcat
Former PH, USN
Seriously? You don't know what the DOF will be at a specific aperture, or how the lens handles backlighting, flare, or pinpoint light sources? You may not know how your subject will look because of the lighting and processing, but I'd think you'd know what to expect from your lens.
YYV_146
Well-known
I think the signature applies when we shoot, at a sub-conscious level. If we use 50mm lens A with good bokeh, especially good foreground bokeh, we are more comfortable placing elements in front of the focal plane. With a lens B with worse Bokeh but very good-looking flares (of course, this is subjective), then we shoot with less concern about the position of the sun...
Digital has negated much of uniqueness of lenses, but if we are talking about film and you can't sharpen or process out vignetting without significant effort, then I think it is important to get a lens with the "look" that you like.
YYV_146
Well-known
I can certainly see the difference a lens makes with regards to a shot. I could recreate the look of a Mandler Summilux from an image made with a modern lens, but it would take me hours in front of the monitor. I would need to tweak contrast, change the color tones slightly, change the overall Bokeh structure, add in coma, fringing and all the other issues typical of a 60s piece of optics.
And I guess the accumulation of the things I need to change is, essentially, the "character" of a lens.
My example is that, while I was in Hong Kong, I was interested in recreating the street scenes of the Kung Fu movies of the 70s and 80s, which I have loved as a child. I can choose a location that looks unchanged for a few decades, but I can't make the scene look "antiquated" using a Summilux ASPH or modern Zeiss. But when I use a pre-asph lens, the "look" comes naturally, with little need for processing.
YYV_146
Well-known
The Bokeh on the Mandler Noct is not something I personally like - sometimes it can drown out the main subject. Same goes for the CV 50 1.1, but it is altogether a much more modern lens, and performs as good, if not better than the old Noct wide open.
I like the 0.95 because it opens up possibilities of exploring thin DOF and shooting in available light without having too unique a look. When I see a Noctilux F1 shot I almost always know, because only that lens has that particular combination of low contrast, swirly bokeh, coma and falloff...
zauhar
Veteran
I should add that I was not being dismissive of your choice in buying that lens - so long as you use it regularly, that lens is not expensive, any more than a $10,000 car that you drive every day is expensive.
Randy
nongfuspring
Well-known
I doubt how you can believe yourself. Anybody can take a very educated guess at what a lens will do in a given situation, your tendency to use your nikon 105 for portraits shows that.
semilog
curmudgeonly optimist
Time for just a bit of bluntness. If you actually cared that much about about low-light shooting, you (and some others on this thread) would be comparing T-stops and not f/ stops.
Which is precisely what people who buy really expensive lenses for cinematography do.
Ah. Here's someone who's sufficiently persnickety.
YYV_146
Well-known
Thanks, I understand the concept of T vs. F perfectly well. The issue is, Leica does not publish transmission figures for their lenses, neither did Minolta.
I don't think it's far from the truth to assumed that an F1 lens transmits more light than an F1.2 lens, that both will incur a bit of light loss because of glass-to-air surfaces and such.
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