Saturday, May 4, 2013

Click

    Mandatory disclaimer: As you all know that I am new to this photography field, whatever I have posted here is purely my perspective and this post contains all that I learnt from my Guru in the due course of time. Not to mention the amount of time, effort and energy he spent on training me, no I'm not flattering, this is the truth !! His training and my interest really went hand in hand, and that helped me to quickly grasp the basics :)  

    So previously, whenever I see someone's album, I usually have this set of questions running in my mind.  “Which camera did ya use to take this picture ?”,  “How costly is this Camera ?” or “How many MEGAPIXEL camera was used ?” ;)  I’ll tell you something, if the picture has come out well then it is not because of the costly camera , or the xy mega pixels it supports, it is because of the photographer and the choice of his lens (btw IMO all DSLRs are costly :D). It was only after putting myself behind the view finder, I understood that what I see through it is completely different from what others can see through it. Every photographer sees an entirely different shot. They call it perspective, but we wont be discussing about the technicalities here. This post is all about myth bursting !

    The first ever lesson was to understand this question "why a DSLR first ?" (i never knew the expansion for a DSLR at that time, I secretly wiki'd it while having that conversation - #ConfessionMaterial)  the answer was, I wanted to take better pictures and my point & shoot did not support various things like AF, bigger aperture blah blah.. Nope, its better to exploit the point and shoot that you have at hand, exploit it to the maximum, try all the shots that u wanted to take if you had a DSLR at hand, sit down with somebody and find out what is wrong with this picture. If you are not able to point out the problem with a certain picture, then probably you need to spend more time with it. DSLR's are modular cameras with a bigger Sensor. (Sensor here refers to the 35mm film's replacement that we have in our latest digital cameras). If you want to go for it, then you must be ready to carry your kit which is going to contain various set of lens', flashes, tripod(optional) etc., all through out the trip. Most of them go for a DSLR with a kit lens, and they decide to stay back with it. If that was your plan, there are different set of cameras you can prefer (Canon's powershot G15, FujiFilm x10 etc.,) rather than putting your hard earned cash on a "modular camera" that is going to stay with that same kit lens !

    I was thinking that only Framing / Composing the shot, working on the right exposure = Aperture settings + Shutter speed + ISO etc., are all the things that are considered while "making" a photograph, but I was wrong. When you see a shot, you must be pretty much aware of the post-production work involved in it ! It's a tedious task, and when I mention post-production work, kindly don't think about the filters stuff in photoshop NO ! I was talking about the Lightroom editing that is almost compulsory, it might even take 10-15 minutes for working on a single picture. Just imagine the amount of time you need to invest if you have 100s of pictures at hand !! Info : Try taking those pictures in RAW mode, the size would be big and so is the data contained in it. You can almost pull the rabbit out of the hat every time if you take in RAW (.NEF) 

    Coming to the main bet, it is not the number of mega pixels that determines the quality of your picture. If someone tells you that, then take a look at this !!  The point & shoot I have supports 14 Megs and the DSLR i have supports 12 Megs, it doesnt matter at all. The 32 inch monitor i have at office supports a resolution of 2560x1920 which is 5 Megs, are you going to view / print on something more bigger than that ? .. And more over, the clarity of the picture is because of the sensor size, the point and shoot has a very small senor when compared to that of DSLRs (just imagine the size of the sensors in your brand new smartphones which brags 8Megs Camera :P). Info : So here on just dont look at the number of megs your camera supports, if you use your point n shoot to take pictures at higher megs, it is going to increase the amount of noise since the sensor size is way too small for it to handle. 

    Finally, the blurry background portraits (BOKEH) that you see are not photoshop Gaussian blurs, they come from the prime lens' which comes with the bigger aperture. (I can hear you muttering, but just this : aperture is the opening present in the lens that allows the light to enter our sensor, bigger the aperture => more light comes in => shallow s the depth of field => i.e., subject is isolated more and so the background blur. Prime lens' are single focal length lens', which means zooming is not possible at all, you need to move all the time !! done  :) )