Random Synapses

Tip #4: Don’t fall into the “one lens fits all needs” trap

Normally, a good zoom lens won’t exceed a 3-4x zoom (max focal length / min focal length). That’s because zoom lenses make a compromise between zoom range, physical dimensions, image quality, and price. Very long zooms (18-200mm, for instance) have poor image results and varied results depending on the chosen focal length.

The “brightness” of the lens is also important if you want to take good shots in poor lighting conditions. It’s better to get a brighter lens than a dark one which compensates with image stabilisation. There are other factors you’ll want to take into account – sharpness, purple fringing, distorsions, bokeh, even size and weight.

Depending on the kind of photography you’re into, you will eventually have an assortment of lenses. You may have a 50mm prime for portraits, another prime (60mm or more) for macro photography, a wide angle for landscapes and city tours, a super tele for wild animals, a decent superzoom for most needs when travelling light. For travelling, there’s always the compromise of what you want to photograph and what you can carry with you.

Tip #3: Buying a dSLR camera is usually the first step for a long-term of expensive purchases, and the camera body will be among the cheapest of them all.

Lenses are also the most valuable pieces in a dSLR photographer’s kit. If you are serious into photography, in a matter of months or years you’re going to own an assortment of various lenses for different uses, and keep them for many years while exchanging several camera bodies. It pays to know what kind of photography you want to do, what kind of lenses you need, and invest properly from the beginning.

The “kit” lens is a decent piece of equipment and a good start, but soon enough You’ll probably want to get some prime lenses as well – fixed focus, no zoom; these will bring out the best image quality you can get.

Tip #2: It’s not the camera, it’s you.

There is no direct relationship between what kind of camera you own and the success of your photos. You could trade a brand spankin’ new Bugatti for state of the art, bleeding edge professional photo equipment, and still get bad photos.

There are famous artists whose outstanding works are studied in art majors, although they never owned anything than a basic film camera with a manual 50mm lens; yet they took brilliant photos with it.

(Actually, one of the stages of a learning photographer is to stick to a single lens for a while and see what he or she can make out of it, to learn to SEE and use what is available.)

Having a piece of high performance technology in your hand helps you make better decisions, but doesn’t do the thinking and seeing for you. Ultimately it’s you who takes the picture and have to get everything right. You are the one who must see something worth photographing, and think about composition and light. The camera just takes the shot.

It really makes no difference if you’ve got a camera phone or the most praised camera of the year if you continue to make the most common mistakes of amateur photographers. Fine, I’ll admit it – that great dSLR camera you had your eyes on will show much sharper and in more vibrant colors your poorly framed and composed, badly timed, wrongly focused shot. Although the outcome may be technologically better, the photo is still crap and not worth displaying even in your own bathroom.

Tip #1: A bigger, better, more expensive camera doesn’t mean you’ll immediately get better pictures; you will actually have to “work” harder to get them!

SLR revolves around the strength in bigger, higher quality lens. dSLR takes this a step further to enhance the result with a large, high-sensitivity and low-noise sensor, and powerful image processing.

A compact camera takes excellent photos with very little effort. When the average amateur photographer moves to a dSLR, they notice a sudden drop in successful photos, caused by the more sensitive optical components. With dSLR, you can get out of focus images much easier, you’ll have a shorter depth of field (objects at a distance from the point of focus are blurred more than with a compact camera), you’ll miss lots of shots because of the extra settings you need to adjust.

In other words, the strength points of the dSLR are far less forgiving with an amateur photographer than a compact camera. The tiniest mistake will show up badly.

If you plan to take photos in “Auto” mode with a dSLR, then this is going to be a very bad investment for you. If you just want to get great photos easily, stick with a compact camera. Its smaller lens and sensor is far more tolerant to mistakes, misfocus, bad light. A compact camera may even accomodate a long zoom.

And don’t fall for the marketing messages claiming a dSLR to be as easy as point-and-shoot. They’re not. By design, they are specialized tools targeting experienced photographers, giving the power of taking an artistic shot back to the human instead of making it a no-brainer click with the help of computer chips.

So, I’ve been fiddling with digital photography for a few years. I’m having a great time with it and love the few memorable shots that I produced.

It’s about time I dedicated this hobby its own section on my blog. And, to get started, every day in the next week you will find here a series of opinions to give beginners some oversight to dSLR photography.

I originally posted these tips on a discussion forum answering exactly the newbie’s question, “which dSLR should I buy?” I broken them down in a logical sequence and made some additions.

Enjoy — catch you again in a few hours!