Stylish way to carry an SLR? - Page 7

I really question whether it is possible to be stylish with a DSLR, given the average size, generic look, and the inevitable "chimping" DSLR users do after taking a shot or two. None of these factors are conducive to stylish photographing, in my opinion.

chimping?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chimping I, much like whoever authored the majority of that entry - think its a bit dumb to limit yourself to 1960's techniques and technology to take photographs. I mean, in my opinion, thats like criticizing someone for painting the wrong way. I'm not saying that Mister Pussycat has been brainwashed by the photographic elitist set, but hey, I like looking down to see (generally) what I just shot looks like.

+1

What really saddens me is a technique I wasn't aware of when I Was at machu picchu. There was wonderfully atmospheric mist and rain, but even though i stayed overnight and got up early, there were still tons of people in my shots. I only just learned of Photoaccute, which would have allowed me to remove the people from a series of shots. So I could have taken a series of shots in succession, and then the software could ahve removed the moving people, and I would have been left with some great shots minus the tourists.

Ugh. Just letting you know - that's not photography and shouldn't count as such. I chimp the first few photographs I take in a given series because I need to look at the histograms and see how I feel about the level balance before I continue shooting. I don't like changing in RAW what I can do with my camera.

If you've got a better way to get a picture sans-tourists at a place that has a thousand people streaming through it per day, please share. I got good pics of certain things without people in them, but it is completely impossible to get a picture of the whole site without at least 20-30 people in the frame.

No, in fact, I have not. I started in film photography over 30 years ago and it's simply the way I prefer to work. Trying the digital workflow is what made me want to get back into film photography. As for elitism, I don't deny the charge, but in truth I got into Leica because of the optics and feel very lucky to be able to afford the equipment.

An interesting anecdote, for what it's worth. One afternoon several months back, a friend and I traded cameras. He took my M6 out and I used his Nikon D40 (?). He had much more trouble adapting than I did (then again, the rangefinder requires a steeper learning curve than an SLR) and ended up with only about 2 or 3 acceptable shots (once the film was developed nearly a week later).
I found the DSLR rather unsatisfying to work with. It felt to me rather insubstantial and seemed to cheapen the process (I did no chimping and instead acted like I was shooting film, saving the culling of duds till I was finished shooting). The worst thing was the autofocus, which completely failed to work at all on an alarming number of occasions. I ended up with about a dozen good pics, though I can't say they interested me much. He said he would put them on CD for me but never did and I soon forgot about it, but I did notice that he put one of my shots up on his Flickr account without credit.

He later admitted to me that he had no idea what depth-of-field was, which rather disappointed me because I think he has an excellent eye for composition and color. Many of his photos are excellent, but after our little experiment I realized that he'd been cheating himself out of gaining essential skills by letting his camera do everything for him. He tells me that since our little experiment, he's been shooting mostly in manual mode.

The moral of this little epic is that the equipment we use colors our expectations about what the photographic experience should be. Ultimately, it's great to have so many choices. You prefer what you prefer and nobody is right or wrong.

Perfectly legitimate reason to chimp.

From my observations, a lot of people lose more time chimping than I do changing film.

I think the same person could have had a film slr and not known what depth of field was. However, back when you learned, I'm guessing zooms weren't so prevalent?

Not so prevalent and not as optically sophisticated as they are today. However, some of them were masterpieces.

But DOF and zooms are not inherently related. DOF comes into play with every lens. In fact, one of my biggest complaints about autofocus lenses is their lack of hyperfocal scale. Previewing DOF is one thing, but shooting hyperfocal is an essential part of the way I work.

The best way to take pictures without tourists in them is to go to a place without tourists. If there's a place that's so packed with tourists with cameras that it ruins your photos, its probably not worth taking pictures of anyway since obviously everyone else and their grandmother had the same brilliant plan. NR, your complaints are with the emergence of the hobbyist - every specialist profession has this problem. Every ones a "graphic designer" these days but it doesn't mean I throw out Illustrator in favor of a plaka board...

Yeah but with 1.5-2.0 crop factor dslrs and kit lenses that don't open wide enough, a lot of people can't even get shallow depth of field until they spend on more expensive glass, so all they know is medium or deep dof.

Panasonic just released a new DSLR that is very small but has all the features of the bigger cameras. Check it out: http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/200...1wgPODorcU24w) If you had money to burn, you could get a Leica M8.2, a digital rangefinder.

I have no complaint with hobbyists. The guy I learned from back in '76 was a hobbyist. Hell, I'm a hobbyist, for that matter.

My complaint is that the DSLR doesn't fit my way of photographing. I prefer manual, mechanical cameras, manual focus, and film by an overwhelming margin. I don't want a camera that presumes to think for me because the autofocus and auto-exposure nearly always get it wrong for me. The actually end up getting in my way.

The results are as different as the processes. I find also that digital photos have a quality that is not as pleasing to me as film. One friend who's a pro has said, "I prefer film velvet to digital silk." Someone else over at the L-Camera Forum has as his signature, "Digital is like shaved legs on a man - very smooth and clean but there is something acutely disconcerting about it." (There's a 3-page long thread over there of people who have given up digital to go back to film.) The crop factor is another deal-killer for me with digital, though we're seeing more full-frame cameras now.

Ultimately, there is no right or wrong way to photograph and neither medium is inherently superior. It's a matter of "your mileage may vary."

That seems a little unreasonable Brian. Just saying. If Macchu Picchu isn't worth trying to take pictures of, I don't know what is. Sometimes it's a matter of working people into the picture. But then again, I completely understand the desire to have the APPEARANCE that you were the only person there - even though in many cases that isn't feasible.

Saying that its not "worth it" to take pictures of something that many other people have taken pictures of is sort of bogus in my opinion too, on the basis that because it may be a ubiquitous or common thing to photograph, you are wasting your time. Do you wear chucks? You know how many other people wear chucks? Taking a picture of something that other people have taken a picture of is a way of making it "yours". It also doesn't necessarily mean that you are copying, or imitating anything either. With the nearly infinite possibilities presented by conditions both outside and inside the camera, its unlikely that any pictures are going to be exactly the same.



This shot has been taken millions of times, by millions of people. Does that stop it from being any less gorgeous? Does it mean that I should not have taken it and just been satisfied with the pictures that other people took?

You tell me. I don't see it that way.