61–67 of 67 posts
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My wife's a pretty good family photographer (i.e. doesn't do it professionally) and she used to get the same. I bet nobody goes up to authors and says "Great book - what pen did you use?"
You might be surprised how interested people are in the tools of any trade https://www.tagari.com/is-stephen-king-still-typing-away-on-... https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-27407502 https://www.cassidycash.com/quill-pen/
This is a subject that comes up frequently in photography. I think this is because many novice photographers think they need a fancy camera to take good pictures. Gear, particularly the lenses you use, matters depending on your preferred genre of photography. Beyond that, the difference between and low and high end cameras tends to be build quality and the ease of use. It's important to remember that these are just t…
Date the camera, marry the lens. With the slew of mounting adapters these days, you can keep using even 60-year-old lenses on most camera bodies. Like the Helios 44-2 (ca. 1958), still being used today on big features like "The Batman" in a few scenes. They mixed footage from that $500 vintage lens with $50,000 ARRI anamorphic primes.
Having studied technical optics (in the analog camera age) it's just so hard for me to imagine that those tiny, tiny apertures we have on our phones can replace a well designed lens. However, I'm not a skilled enough photographer to beat what my mid-range phone can do and I'm happy not to have to lug my DSLR around very often. Part of my day job is optical metrology so I realize that traditional optical design will n…
> it's just so hard for me to imagine that those tiny, tiny apertures we have on our phones can replace a well designed lens. I don’t think they can, but they usually don’t need to. If you manage to extract a modern phone lens and stick it in front of the film of a 35mm camera or a ten-year-old digital camera, you will get utterly terrible pictures :) Nice old lenses had nice flat focal planes. For a camera phone, wh…
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> I guess if we repeated that experiment nowadays it would be the other way round. As somebody with a long unused DSLR packed away… I’d say it depends on the lens. Maybe. One thing that iPhones still can’t do as good as a DSLR is very low light (eg starfield), however the current crop of phones are getting pretty good at even this. Those DSLR’s are huge and quite frankly their workflows aren’t as smooth as on phones.…
The lidar on iPhones makes low light way better than cameras. If you don't do astronomy it will usually be better. The Samsung NX had wifi and upload to fb.
It's important to consider similar generations - yes, the iPhone 14 or Pixel 8 does better in static low light than my 2004-era crop sensor DSLR, but not better than a 2017-era full frame DSLR and dramatically worse than a current-gen mirrorless setup.
I'm at the early stages of learning photography. I've always taken lots of photos, but without much skill or care. I have an entry level DSLR and understand that the quality of my photos is almost entirely determined by my skill as a photographer. However, I don't really enjoy using the DSLR due to the size and weight. Any recommendations on what might be a better setup for me? I like travel and nature photography, b…
I should note that not all u43 cameras are small - Olympus / OM have a top-end "1" model that is large and clunky. But the "5" and "10" models are nice and compact. I think the Panasonics and the Olympus / OM PENs are pretty small too.
There is then a useful range of lenses that lets you trade off performance, zoom range, and size; there are great, tiny primes; decent, tiny zooms; and great, chunkier zooms.
In particular, the Pansonic Lumix G 12-32mm lens is 24 mm long. I can put that on my E-M5 and carry it in a jacket pocket. People have managed to take photos with it:
The answer I always give is "gear can matter - what is your gear stopping you from doing"? Generally people don't have a very compelling answer. If you are limited by your gear, you're going to have lots of shots that fall a little short in ways that gear might address. Well framed shots and the edge of possible shutter speeds that just need one or two more stops of ISO, shots where the colors can't be fully captured…