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This page of the site contains the latest 10 articles to appear on bythom, followed by links to the archives.
Is That All There Is? (Image Sensors, That Is)
Sensor evolution is not stuck, it's been diverted.
Could we have 100mp full frame cameras today? Sure. But except for those of us obsessed with information in data capture, what would you be using such a camera for? Diffraction and other attributes start to raise issues you can't ignore. 100mp implies a 38" print, and exactly who's making such things these days? A 96mp pixel shift (e.g. 24mp sensor) deBayers the data, reduces aliasing and increases dynamic range, which would be bigger benefits for most people.
Could we have more dynamic range today? Not really. The current sensors are extremely good at rendering the randomness of photons without adding any significant electronic noise. Any dynamic range gain would likely only come through getting rid of the Bayer filtration, which is an area that is being constantly explored, but because of likely costs, we'll probably see in phones first. Even then, it might be only a stop or so.
So what is actually happening with image sensors?
Simple: they're getting faster at what they do. In particular, that comes in two basic areas: (1) analog to digital conversion; and (2) data offloading speed (both internally on the chip as well as externally from the chip). Speed has given us better focusing, higher frame rates, and blackout free viewfinders, to name three major improvements. Most of us would rather have those three things than more than 45mp or even another stop of dynamic range.
The next step is likely intelligence on sensor. We've already seen benefits from stacking electronics behind the image sensor, but so far that's mostly a one-way process aimed at increasing data speed. Nikon has a patent (and prototype sensor) that demonstrates what can happen when you apply two-way processing in the stack. That example is mostly centered on treating exposure differently in small blocks of photosites (16x16), which is another way of getting to a dynamic range improvement. But I can imagine other two-way intelligence that would impact focus systems, as well. Heck, I remember how we did white balance on the original color QuickCam, and I could see that being applied, as well.
Speed and intelligence in the stack leads to all kinds of camera improvements. Do you really need more pixels? Do you really need to more accurately record the randomness of photons? I think not, and from what I can tell, neither do the camera engineering groups designing tomorrow's cameras. Oh, don't worry, the marketing departments think the numbers game works to sell cameras, so we'll see some pixel count gains and small dynamic range boosts, because those will produce better "numbers" than yesterday's cameras. But as we've already seen with Sony's 61mp full frame image sensor, the benefits are minimal enough to be ignored by most. Again, for landscape work, I'd rather have that 24mp pixel-shifting camera than a Sony 61mp camera.
The Great Manipulator
Here’s something I don’t understand the moral logic of: a rumor site that posts watermarked images clearly originating from another rumor site, who themselves watermark the posted images they obtained from elsewhere. It appears they expect no one to scrape and republish their scraped images while they don’t mind scraping and republishing from others. The best I can come up with is “see, I had it first.”
One of the things I learned in business school was not at all directly about business. It’s that everyone has moral positions that are often either (a) not thought through; or (b) based upon an unchallengeable first premise. You can’t talk about ethical business practices until you wade through those two things, and they turned out to be immense walls that almost everyone in the class had built for themselves and was hiding behind.
Now, you might not think this has anything really to do with photography, but it does. One of the challenges of the day is to accurately describe what exactly is a photograph and what is completely an artist’s creation. This problem raised its head early with the first version of Photoshop and other similar tools. Indeed, there became a clear separation between the capture process (film), which was tough to fake, and the output process (digital scan and processing), which was.
Probably the most “real” photos ever we re contact sheets. You took a photo, you developed the film, you directly duplicated that to paper (you might have to reverse values along the way, but that was a simple direct reversal). A contact sheet, particularly one annotated by the photographer themselves is about as close as it comes to “I saw this, pressed the button, and this is what was captured.”
You probably saw right through that last sentence, though. The photographer could have manipulated the scene, altered the exposure and tonal values (think filters), or did something in the processing that wasn’t the norm (think cross processing). Still, a contact sheet with a clear forensic trail is about as close I’ll ever get to “this happened, this is what it looked like, and here’s the proof.”
Today we’re in an age where anything is possible, and often happens.
Photoshop sort of pioneered the whole image manipulation idea, and with the Generative AI additions Adobe has recently made, trying to tie a pixel to something in the real world is now impossible. Moreover, startling things are happening.
Recently I was processing an older image a bit differently, including an area I had cropped out before because there wasn’t a way to “fix” it reliably (part of a vehicle was out of focus and blocking part of the frame). This time I used the whole frame and asked Photoshop to render something in the area I had cropped out before. What surprised me is that what Photoshop put in that area that was nearly exactly what my vehicle was blocking. Mopane trees often have distinct bark distortions, usually caused by elephants. That particularly tree had what I thought was a unique elephant mark. After all, I could see that mark clearly in some of my other images taken that day.
However Photoshop’s Generative AI managed to put a near duplicate of the tree into position for me, complete with what seemed to be the same mark! I actually spent several minutes comparing the fake tree trunk with the real one, and couldn’t find any clear difference. What should we make of that?
Long ago my mentor Galen Rowell and I talked at length about photographer ethics and morality. Every photographer has that (whether they know it or not). Most never think about it or even realize what their practices actually are. Some, like those in my business class, live behind walls they’ve constructed that on close examination are much like the Emperor’s New Clothing.
NANPA (North American Nature Photography Association), of what I was once a charter member, developed a Principles of Ethical Field Practices back in 1996. They’ve since expanded what was once a small card you could carry into a full book. Meanwhile, I was running Backpacker, and we practiced things like Leave No Trace. Today we also have a host of other similar well meaning organizations and statements of practices that just try to dot every t and cross every I. Yeah, that’s not what we need, either, though I support those efforts for the most part.
What you need is a small set of clear, reasoned, and practiced first premises. You then examine all your decisions based upon that.
I’ve written about this before. I once was flabbergasted to see a well-known professional photographer pull up a blooming, living plant at a World Heritage site, move it to where he wanted it, take his photo, and leave the dying plant where he had placed it. Apparently his morality was “whatever makes my image better.”
While I’ve been known to move rocks for an image, I also move them back. In fact, upon lifting a rock, I make sure that it doesn’t have a clear, active ecosystem under it before moving it, otherwise I put it right back down. Yes, I want my photo to look better, and that rock didn’t help (or would help more over there), but I also didn’t want to disturb the natural sense of things any more than I would by walking through that environment.
You can probably guess where I’m going with this. I get asked a lot these days about whether or not they should use any of the AI tools we now have available to us. My answer is yes, as long as you have an ethical stance and can treat AI like I do rocks.
For example, a common situation that happens in wildlife photography is that if you expose for the underside of a flying bird (which is usually in shadow), you’ll probably blow out the sky. Well, that’s not what we see in that situation (bird detail, no sky detail). Our eye/brain constructs the scene so we remember the beautiful bird flying against the (often interesting) sky. Well, that’s the photo I want to capture, too.
How do you do that within my “move/replace the rock” ethic? Simple. 1. Exposure for the bird and take as many BIF photos as you’d like. 2. Go back and expose for the sky (with no bird in it) on the same track. 3. In Photoshop, Sky Replacement using the well exposed sky with the well exposed bird layer. That’s what I would have seen and remembered, so why does pressing a camera button mean I have to give up one aspect of what I saw?
Of course we now have smartphones that sort of do that on the fly. Adobe’s Project Indigo camera app essentially is taking multiple exposures with my iPhone and processing them into a finished image much the same way (actually better, as it will stack out matching detail to reduce noise in it).
What’s not cool is not understanding what your morals are and what ethical practices that will enable (or destroy). Blindly using AI without thinking about what’s being done, how, and for what reason is lazy ass ethics, in my book. Whatever you do needs to be defensible, and defensible across repeated actions without having to add “but if X, then Y” constructs.
I want you to see the world I experience in my photos. That’s my job as a photographer. But my other job as a photographer is to make sure I don’t start sneaking away from that and start inventing things that I didn’t experience. At the point where I cross that line I’m no longer making photos, I’m creating art. In my Backpacker days, we labeled that “photo illustration.”
The thing you can never do with a camera is “capture reality.” You make a lot of decisions without realizing it. For instance, which lens is on the camera, which direction the camera is pointed, where you’ve focused, and when you press the shutter release (or when the camera does that for you). If you’re creating JPEGs, you’ve picked color, contrast, saturation, and sharpening aspects of the final pixels. Thing is, the photographer standing right next to you is making different decisions. So is his photo unreal and yours real? What’s just out of frame can be as important to the meaning of the photo as what’s in the frame, after all. Using a longer lens is a form of editing out things if you think about it.
My goal in taking a photo is “this is what I want you to see.” Generally, that’s what I saw and felt when I was there, all done without changing anything from the way it is or could be (those temporarily moved rocks ;~). Moreover, when I process an image, I’m going to process it in a way where I control how your eye takes it in so that you’re taking in the same thing I took in, and not wandering off paying more attention to the unimportant things in my photo.
Painters start with a blank canvas and add. Photographers start with a full canvas and subtract. We both seek the same thing: visual and emotional impact from what’s on the canvas.
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Bonus: The interesting thing is that I’m more manipulative of the things in my frame when I photograph Events and Weddings. In fact, I’m darned manipulative, because most human subjects go into what I call the “frozen stick” pose the minute they see a camera pointed at them. A few go into a “crazy pose” they’ve developed or learned. Neither looks natural, so I have to intervene. The great thing about my current cameras is that they don’t make a sound when I take a photo and can hold focus when I’m not looking through the viewfinder, so my subjects often are just interacting with me and not noticing that I’m taking photos. Great. That’s what I want: natural interaction. Or simplified: natural.
With sports, I can’t manipulate others, only me. I have to think like coaches and players and know the plays. Anything less and I get random images that may or may not capture the right moment. But if I have a strong feeling the next play is coming to a specific spot, guess where I am? I want my sports photos to feel like you’re right there at the point of action, so that’s where I need to get. I manipulate me.
But note the word I used: manipulate. When you take a photo, you’re making seen and unseen manipulations. The real trick to becoming a great photographer is taking control of those manipulations. Just make sure you have an ethical stance of what you can/should/will manipulate and why.
Out of Okavango
Yes, I'm back.
Sort of.
As noted last month, I'm taking time between now and about Labor Day to get a number of behind the scenes projects done. But my total quiet for the last three weeks was because I was deep in the Okavango without Internet service. You'll see more from that trip later this year; let's just say it was seriously productive (45 different lions).
I'm back to covering big news, but don't expect much in the way of new articles for the next two months. If I have time, I'll pop one of the hundreds of new articles I've been working on to the site, but for the most part, I'll be on low volume this summer.
First byThom Minimum, Later byThom Max
As I noted earlier this year, I'm taking a couple of long breaks from posting this year so that I can work on new products you'll want, including site rethinks and redesigns. You just saw one of my planned breaks as I worked on updating the Mastering Nikon JPEGs book and created the new Mastering Nikon Customization book. From the response so far it seems I was correct in anticipating demand for more information in these areas. With Nikon updating firmware and a Z5II book to still complete, there's plenty just in the book side of the business to do.
Since I haven't perfected cloning yet, when I deep end on these projects, I don't typically have the bandwidth to keep all the sites updated with new material. Given that I'm in the middle of site re-designs, I also don't want to add much new material when I'll just have to redesign it. Moreover, the less interrupted I am, the faster these things get done.
I'm about to enter another planned quiet period. Look for new site material in late July, after which I'll take another short break.
My goal is to come out of 2025 with sites, books, and more that are better than ever, and far exceed what you've seen in the past. It'll just take a little alone time for me to get ahead of you again.
How is it Better?
I think we've officially come to the point where every new product announcement needs the first paragraph to clearly enunciate how it is better.
With everyone now iterating full lineups (and Chinese lens makers trying to elbow in), each new announcement from a camera or lens maker tends to be something that existed before (or existed in someone else's lineup and is now being copied). Coupled with a slower development and release pace, "truly new product" tends to happen fairly rarely. In terms of cameras this year, that meant only three of sixteen were something noticeably new (Canon R50V, Fujifilm X half, and Fujifilm GFX100RF, and you might argue that the first is just a different body for an existing camera and the latter is mostly an existing camera with a bigger sensor).
Lenses haven't really fared any better than cameras. Of the 25 announced in the first half of this year, yes, I see some "stretching" being done—Sigma 300-600mm and 400-800mm and all the f/1.2 optics—but nothing has struck me as "wow, that's new."
For everyone in the camera industry, including you, the customer, your primary thinking about any product announcement now really has to consist of the headline question: how is it better?
The just announced OM-5 II is a good example to consider. The shape of the hand grip changed, you finally have the menu system that OMDS has been using since the OM-1 several years ago, a button has changed function, plus two new minor video features and two minor still features. Oh, and there's now a brown panda version. That's not enough "better" to get me to pay US$300 more for it (today's pricing; the OM-5 is currently on sale).
Compare that to the Fujifilm X-E5 or Nikon Z5II. Both those cameras got considerable feature/function upgrades from their previous models. If you were considering the previous model, you should be more impressed with the new one, as you can clearly tick off a substantial set of "better" items. On the other hand, the Nikon Z5II sells for US$700 more, so it had better be better.
But I mentioned "everyone" in the camera industry, so let's take a peak at how that looks for a few others:
- Camera maker — "Better" for them comes in one of two ways (or both): cheaper to make, or will sell more. I don't get much of that from the OM-5 II, but do from the Fujifilm X-E5 (the Nikon Z5II is tending to steal customers from the Z6III).
- Camera dealer — It's only "better" if it sells more. Dealers live off of inventory turns, and they only get that through sales volume. Dealers complain when a new product doesn't tweak the turn bar up, and strongly complain when the turns instead become boxes sitting on shelves.
- Rumors site — The more surprises—particularly ones that can be revealed in the run-up, something that Fujifilm's supported leaks do well—the "better," but they need a series of those, not just one big surprise at the end. The slower development schedules and the meh releases are hurting these sites, as there's not a lot of reason to visit them if they're not constantly giving you "sneak" tokes.
- News/Forum sites — When your news is meh, nobody pays much attention, and when your fora are discussing how meh a new product is, the cathartic post effect wears off very quickly. You can almost figure out the "better" product announcements by how many "should I update" posts there are, which these days are already well down from their peaks.
- Professional photographer — Starting to not care. Realistically the top tier products from every camera maker are more than sufficient enough to carry them through the next few years, and nothing in the lower end products is making amateurs snipe any more seriously at our tails. Lenses, on the other, do get our attention if they fill a hole we either knew we had or didn't know we had. But both those things require more than a press release that says "we added a new lens."
- Amateur photographer — I'd argue that even the entry bodies and lenses from all the camera companies are good enough to take pretty incredible photos. Plus, with apps like Adobe's Project Indigo now showing that smartphones can do even more than most thought, as long as you're not going larger than, oh, 11x14" in output I'd say that you don't need more, and even "better" cameras and lenses aren't going to give you any benefit unless you actually learn to use them for that benefit.
We're sort of in one of those lulls the auto industry kept getting into: "yes, we have new cars this year, but some of those are just new grills and a couple of other visible things that we think make it look snazzy."
Are You Better Than Average?
Just a reminder: Average means you're right in the middle. About half the folk are better than you, and the half are worse than you.
I was struck by a few of the results when I came upon the thanaverage Web site. In particular:
- 71% of participants think they are more perceptive than average.
- 58% of participants think they are more creative than average.
Perception and creativity are two crucial aspects to taking good photos.
You really have to perceive something in order to take a photo at all. Anyone standing in a certain area in Paris can perceive that that there's a very tall metal structure jutting up in the air. Most will take a photo of it (the Eiffel Tower, if you are one of those that 21% that think they're not smarter than average). Creativity after the perception is where great photos lie, though.
Galen Rowell used to often ask me about what I was feeling as we wandered landscapes together. The fact that we were using our feet to explore meant that we were almost certain to see (perceive) things that others wouldn't, as we were well off the beaten path most of the time. Even when we were exploring a beaten path, we weren't actually on the actual path all that much. "Perception" wasn't our problem.
Meanwhile, Galen's "feeling" question spoke to the creative process. If I felt something I was perceiving, the critical question was "how do I get those that view my resulting image to have that same feeling?" Often those feelings were clearly emotional, such as isolation, smallness, surrounded. When was the last time your photography instructor told you to capture a feeling or emotion like that?
I often I see students caught up in the "I perceive a thing" construct. They then proceed to point their camera at said thing and voila, press a button, and they're done. When they post those photos, I can pretty much guarantee that the viewer will quickly flick to the next one (or flick left!). Sitting in airports and planes I get a lot of time to watch people doom scrolling (yes, I snoop; I'm a curious guy). Flick, flick, flick, pause, flick, flick, flick.
Wait, what made them pause? Typically something they've never seen before (or perhaps not in this way), but more often than not I see they've stopped on an image that has a real story in it. It's not a photo of a thing, it's a photo containing a story in which the thing is a key player.
Perhaps it's all the filmmaking training I had early on that makes me go directly to story: films (and TV shows, and streamed shows) are pretty boring without a good story, right? Moreover, the director of photography—why isn't it director of filmmaking?—works hard with the director and actors to emphasize and embellish the story. For instance, they're more likely to light a drama in noir (dramatic lighting) than just turning on a bunch of big lighting panels.
Let me repeat something I've written before, there's a progression in photographic thinking: noun, adjective noun, adjective noun verb/adverb, complete sentence. Noun isn't much of a photo (elephant). Adjective noun is better (large elephant). Adjective noun verb starts to get interesting (large elephant trumpeting). Complete sentence or story is what I really want, though (large elephant trumpeting at predator making them uneasy). Curiously, the two extremes (noun and sentence/story) are the easiest to photograph: noun just means the thing needs to be in frame, while story means you have to show everything in the story. I'd argue that if the story isn't there, the photograph isn't there.
While I'd like you to come up with your own story, if you're just starting out on this journey into better photography, go ahead and cop a placeholder summary from Hollywood: adventure, drama, comedy, buddy, fantasy. When that elephant comes along, are you making an adventure, drama, comedy, buddy, or fantasy photo story?
The implication of the thanaverage results is that you're a perceptive, creative individual (okay, you're really just above average). My question to you is how is that showing up in your photos? Is it even showing up in your photos? What are you perceiving that others aren't, and how are you creatively tackling that to create a photo that's unique? If there's a photographer you admire, how are these two things showing up in their work?
Galen would travel to a new place with a bunch of pre-conceptualized stories based upon extensive research (fantasy photos that needed to be realized), but he also was very open to his perceptions when he was there, which always opened up entirely new stories. His best images were some of the former, some of latter. None were simply a noun.
If you made it this far, I'm going to suggest something outlandish, but instructive. Go to amazon.com. Search for "Dick and Jane level 1." There's a good chance if you're older as I am you encountered these books as a kid. Buy one. Take a close look at the illustrations. For instance, the book I'm looking at right now has a great potential photographic story from the get go in "Away we go." William S. Gray would have been a great photographer, and the vocabulary he was using was as basic as it gets, plus his sentences are tight and succinct. You don't need a huge vocabulary, incredible creativity, or pyscopathic perception to make an image do great work. But you have to tell a story, even a simple one.
You're above average. Now show it through your photography.
Compact Camera Reviews are Back
As part of my work on getting my sites re-arranged and re-designed, I've moved the old gearophile compact camera reviews here to the Gear section on byThom.
Better still, I've posted my initial Fujifilm X100VI and Leica D-Lux8 reviews. They're still devoid some example images in the performance section, but weather and other issues have delayed me getting those done.
ANNOUNCING: Mastering Nikon Customization (Updated)
Yep, another book. As part of my recent work on trying to collect all your Z System firmware requests, I noticed that quite a lot of those were about customization. Moreover, a number of emails I got requesting a "feature" indicated that some of you weren't aware of how customization actually works, and what you can do with it already.
I had already been grappling with how I might integrate customization more into my Complete Guides, but the more I thought about it, the more this seemed to me to be a subject that was less reference (e.g. Complete Guide) and more education (e.g. Mastering).
Since I have a bunch of other commitments coming up this summer and I didn't want to delay this work, I put the petal to the metal and created the second book in my Mastering series: Mastering Nikon Customization.
While this book isn't camera specific, it is type of camera specific. The Mastering Nikon Customization book applies to Z System mirrorless cameras. All of them. True, the Zfc doesn't leave much room for customization, but that's actually a reason you need to better understand what is and isn't possible. More importantly, how you prioritize what functions you bring into the customization process for your camera.
Be forewarned, while this book is the shortest I've created recently (at ~200 pages), it has some important homework assignments in it that you really need to perform if you want to get everything you can from the book. The book is another dense pack of useful information.
I also consider this book "preliminary," in that I can think of a number of things to add to it (and will) to make it as comprehensive as I'd like it to be. Therefore, if you buy the book while it's in this early form, I'm discounting the price to US$29.99. When I finish the additions, I'll update the book and adjust the price to the usual Mastering price of US$39.99. Those that bought the preliminary version will get the revision as a free update. The book has now been updated and the price reset to my standard pricing. Purchasers of the initial version should have received update links (check your Spam/Junk folder, as those notices come from an automated server and a lot of email providers don't like that).
Wait, you don't know what "customization of a camera" is all about or what you can customize? Well, then you need Mastering Nikon Customization. Customization is about making a camera work the way you want it to—at least as best as Nikon allows us to—because that speeds up and gives you more control over the photographic process. If you're always taking your eye away from the viewfinder and doom-scrolling through the menus to find something you need to change, then your camera isn't customized (or you haven't learned to use the customizations you made).
Mastering Nikon Customization tackles U# settings, Banks, i menu options, button and dial customizations. Each of those do a different thing and have a different purpose. I'll help you understand that and learn what to put where. I'll also discuss creating and saving a set of "base" settings you use for your work, and point to two options if you're tired of waiting for Nikon to provide named settings files.
I should also point out that working intensely on this book gave me even more insight to what Nikon should be doing in updating firmware and functions in the various Nikon Z System cameras. I've been advocating behind the scenes for a number of changes, and writing this book helped me focus my thoughts. As part of the firmware update request process I started two months ago, I'm beginning the next step specifically centered around the customization process. You can read my article on that and help participate as soon as I post the next installment.
You'll find Mastering Nikon Customization on the zsystemuser.com site today. If you're willing to spend US$39.99 to get the preliminary version, you can click here to get started.
And a bonus: Today I'm also updating Mastering Nikon JPEGs, including information some of you requested to be added. Check your email (including Junk/Spam folder) for your link to the update if you already own this book.
The book comes both as an ePub and PDF file. The PDF file is structured for printing (but can be read on your device, too).
Correctly Placing Blame
Okay, you went out and took photos at an event or in a place of interest. You saw other photographers doing the same thing, so you naturally eventually sought out their images to see how they compared to yours. Your conclusion? Your images sucked. Now what?
I've seen multiple posts lately that assert or imply that their images failed compared to those of others because of a difference in gear. Worse still, some believe it was because of a different brand of gear.
I suppose it's possible that other photographers were using better gear than you. Pro-grade lenses, in particular, can have a dramatic impact on what results can be produced. As much as I like, say, the Nikon 180-600mm f/5.6-6.3 VR lens, at both 400mm and even 560mm my 400mm f/2.8 TC VR S lens produces clearly better looking results, plus it has both light collection and background isolation capabilities I tend to take advantage of. Is Sony's 400mm f/2.8 lens better than mine? Well, it could use a built-in teleconverter, but at 400mm f/2.8 I'd take either lens and be happy. So in near apples-to-apples comparisons, I tend to say "it isn't the brand."
The real question you have to ask yourself when you start doing the comparo thing is: what did I fail at?
It's important that you realize this as a failure. Failure isn't bad. That's not just my Silicon Valley start-up mentality speaking, it's a reality: failure is one of the best ways to learn. But only if you (a) can admit that you failed; and (b) figure out what caused the failure.
Let's talk about that (a) part for a moment. More often than not when I see someone comparing their images to others they simply won't admit to failure. It's their image in the competition, so they like their's better. Often they even won't listen to criticism from others because they believe so much of their ego is on the line. As far as I'm concerned, if you're open to criticism, I think you're a far better person than the one that simply insists that they have done something good and accepts no criticism.
So before we even get into reason for failure, are you even admitting you do?
I fail constantly. I get giddy when I don't fail because it happens so rarely.
How do I fail?
- Not being in the right place at the right time. With both sports and wildlife, my two main pursuits these days, both things are critical to get the photo that everyone else will ooh and ahh over. In both sport venues and out in the wilds I'm constantly asking myself two questions: (1) am I in the right place, and (2) what do I expect to happen? If I can't answer those questions, I know I'm going to fail. Either that or I'm going to get damn lucky.
- Not having the camera set right. You probably think of me as a grumpy old man constantly criticizing Nikon's control choices. All of those things are true, but the last one would still be true if I were a happy young woman. Photos are moments in time. You may be prepared for one thing to happen but another starts to occur and you need to reset your camera for that. If I can't do that with a quick button press and maybe a dial twirl, then Nikon has restricted me in a way they shouldn't. Bad Nikon!
- Trying to do too many things. A pride of lions is on the hunt, what photo am I going to get? Well, I want one of everything! The stalker, ambusher, the chaser, the pull down, the bored male waiting for his meal, etc. If I'm lucky I'll get one of those. First, everything happens so fast and happens over such a large area, there's no way I can cover all those things. Second, lions are the fastest accelerators in Africa, so I'd better be fast on the shutter release. Don't like the wildlife example? Try sports. The team I'm covering is about to score and I know the play (yes, that happens when you follow a team closely and talk with the coaches). Do I cover the quarterback throwing the ball or the receiver catching the ball? I can't realistically do both these days, as sideline access is so packed you can't get the position where you might be able to do that. Now me being an analytical kind of guy, I say "receiver" because technically, he's the one that's scoring. Still, my point here is that if I think I'm going to do everything I'll probably get nothing.
I could go on, but you should be starting to understand the (b) part I described above. I'm always analyzing what exactly caused my failure. I should also point out that I might take 500-1000 images in a day's work. Of those, as many as 999 can be failures if I got the image I sought. Realistically, maybe 10-20 of my images in a day are one's that most of you would consider successes. But I also have days where none are. Yep, that's depressing, but it's sort of at the point of this article: what happened? Why did I fail so badly?
Broadly speaking, we have a few categories to consider:
- Wrong gear. I've written this before, but I had a sadistic boss when I started out covering sports; he sent me out with the wrong equipment for the job at hand. Always. He sent me to a track meet once with a TLR and asked for action photos of the running events. When you look down into the viewfinder of a TLR, everything that's moving left-to-right in front of you is moving right-to-left in the camera! This boss's thinking was "this will make him really think about what's important, and it isn't gear." He was right. Even 50+ years ago I was dealing with the "best camera is the one you have with you" thing. Sure, blame the gear, but don't think that absolves you. You were the one that failed. Maybe it was because you bought or brought the wrong gear. Fix that.
- Wrong technique. We've got a plethora of technique type things that can cause image failure: exposure, camera settings, aperture, shutter speed, handling discipline, and so on. These fall into two sub-categories: (a) you made the wrong choice; and (b) you haven't mastered something. Both things are solved by first understanding what caused the problem, then learning how to overcome it, and finally practicing until the right technique becomes second nature. Practice that.
- Unclear concept. A photograph is your statement about something. Do you know what that "something" is? If you know the something, do you know what you're trying to say about it (your "statement")? My mentor Galen Rowell used to spend weeks prior to big trips conceptionalizing. He knew well before hand not just what it was he was likely to encounter, but he knew its history and context. He'd think about the likely ways he could capture the "somethings" and make a "statement" about it. He did not wait until he was standing there having discovered "something" for the very first time and then spontaneously try to frame it before it went away. Moreover, as he was walking through an environment—Galen was mostly an outdoor adventure photographer—he also collected thoughts about how the place made him feel, and would contemplate how that might translate into a photo as he moved down the trial (or up the cliff). If you asked him, he always had a concept of what it was this next photo might be before he pressed the shutter release. Here's one way I deal with that with students: you can't press the shutter release until your photo has a name. You don't have a clear concept if you can't name it. Name photos.
- Poor choices. f/4 at 1/2000 and ISO 100 is the same exposure as f/22 at 1/500 and ISO 12800. One of those is probably not a good choice for a landscape photo where you want to resolve details. Sometimes gear choices intersect with this, as you can't do f/4 on some consumer zoom lenses at certain focal lengths, but I constantly find people getting all/most of the above right and still managing to do something clearly wrong with an in-the-moment choice. Note that it's always preferable to "press the shutter release" when a moment comes, but you need to realize that you are set wrong, make the setting change, and hope the moment is still there or comes again. Better still, you need to get good at anticipating the moment. Every photographic specialty has its moments, and you can learn which ones are likely so that you can be set correctly. Choose wisely.
- Bad processing. This one starts to happen in camera with wrong technique and bad choices, but much of the time it happens back at home when you're either trying to "fix" those things or enhance the image. Here's a little surprise for you: your camera has more dynamic range than you're likely going to be using. Your eye can only process a max of eight stops at a given time (pupil dilation increases that, but that's over time). A print maxes out to about eight stops, but is probably less for many papers/inks. The least common denominator of displays (sRGB 8-bit JPEG) is going to restrict you to six stops. Holy bit depth, Batman, that's not much! If you're twiddling the Exposure, Highlights, Shadows, Whites, and Black sliders in Lightroom, you'd better know what you're actually doing and what you're trying to show. In essence, you move tonality, spread it (add contrast), or contract it (reduce contrast), and do that with different ranges of tonalities differently. Most people do this willy nilly until it "looks good" to them, and often without considering how it's going to be viewed. But there's also the issue of did they control what the camera captured correctly. The number one sin tends to be underexposing in the camera in a way that forces them to move the primary subject's tonality significantly upward, which exposes noise, which leads to noise reduction, which leads to edges not looking quite natural. You know who thought extensively and wrote about all those things in great detail? Ansel Adams (though it helped that most of the time he was not considering color). Go Ansel.
I don't tend to fail at #1 or #2. I can sometimes make a #4 failure, too. #3 is something I used to have big problems with, but Galen set me on a path towards correcting that. I was also very lucky to work with and study a couple of the very best post processors in the business early on, so usually if I have a #5 failure, it's because I'm working too much in a hurry.
Oh dear, that just brought up another aspect to analyzing failure: speed. The only way you can work at speed and not keep failing is by practicing enough so that everything becomes second nature. Even then you'll make a mistake or two from time to time.
One thing I've noticed in watching people photograph—and I do that any chance I can get, because it's so informative—is just how many people are (a) get to a place; (b) pick up the camera; (c) take a quick photo; and (d) move on. No time contemplating, no time checking or making settings, no questioning their choices, and often very bad handling because they're moving so quickly doing things. I expect those folk to fail.
And again, failure is not a bad thing, as long as you take the time to learn from it. Be honest with yourself. Get others to help you evaluate what you're doing and what your results are. Seek advice. Be open and ready to change (and practice!).
Still need motivation to tackle this? Here's the kicker: people who fail a lot and take the time to learn from that are the ones who progress the fastest and the furthest. Fail long and prosper.
Article also added to Learn > Improving the Photographer
The Fujifilm X half Arrives
Well, at least it's different.
Fujifilm today introduced their odd new compact camera, the X half. It's half X100, half fad starting, half over-thought, half film nostalgia, and half half frame, all rolled into one. At first glance there's a lot to unpack. At second look, it's a pretty simple camera that is trying to win you over with its "differences."
That starts with using an 18mp 1" image sensor vertically, and thus the Rear LCD is vertical, as well (and small at 2.4"). While it looks like it has a viewfinder, that's really a static optical framing tunnel with no information relayed. You get two dials, one switch, one button (besides the shutter release), one swipe area, and one film-like (advance) lever. You can only take JPEGs (or half FullHD videos). It even has a near-lens flash to produce red-eye.
Much of what Fujifilm's trying to push here is style, not substance. The press release says "rediscovering and reinventing the charm of film photography in a digital format." To me that's a bit like doubling down on a cheaper and less sugary soft drink they already are vested in. It's "cool" to limit yourself to the number of exposures a roll of film can provide, for instance, though apparently Fujifilm thinks that 12, 24, or 36 isn't enough, so it's 36, 54, or 72 on the X half instead (ironically, the battery lasts 880 images CIPA ;~).
The Sigma bf camera was a rethink at simplification of the photo capture process. The Fujifilm X half is a whimsical impression of what photo taking should be like. It's nice that we're getting camera companies thinking outside the box they're in, but there's a lot of style over substance going on in these new designs. And in adding style, your options get simplified and focused, not necessarily where you'd want them to be.
No doubt the creator/influencer market will rush to Fujifilm X half and it will sell well, at least as long as whatever fad this is lasts. dpreview described it as "profoundly silly." I wait for a proponent of "take only one image a day" quests to take up this camera. They won't have much to think about except what's in front of the camera every day, and if they use the film mode, they'll be waiting at least a month before they can see a full "contact sheet" of their images and change to a different film simulation.
For about the same price (at least here in the US), Fujifilm also sells the X-M5 with a kit zoom. More and better pixels. More and better control. More and better speed. More and better focal length. More and better video. Same film simulations. That should tell you something about the X half. It's less than half the camera.
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