Frogman's Light School

As someone whose special interest is birds, I love this setting and use it a LOT, but I've never been able to find another camera with a setting like it, and at some point I told myself I didn't want to replace the camera until I could find one with a similar setting.

The reason I ask is because I've been following for a while, and I've come to respect your opinions on photography.

I tried researching your camera and figuring out what exactly the bird watching mode does and even the official manual did not say. If I were to guess, it just sets the camera up with certain parameters that are usually ideal for photographing birds, but I don't think it does anything special that other cameras can't do. You would just have to set a different camera up to those parameters rather than the camera doing it for you.

If I were to guess, it probably enables a certain autofocus mode for small subjects and limits how slow the shutter speed can go so you don't get motion blur when very zoomed in.

However, I know exactly which features are important to get good bird photos, so as long as the camera has the following features, you don't really need a dedicated bird mode. Though if a camera has a "pet mode" it would probably work similarly to the bird mode you are used to.

Most important bird photography features...

Good autofocus

Good zoom range

Image stabilization (Either optical or sensor, not digital)

Autofocus has come a long way in the last few years. It's difficult to assess the autofocus from specifications alone, so you will probably need to rely on reviews to know if the camera locks in on subjects well. Some cameras have pet and wildlife autofocus features that can be very helpful in tracking smaller subjects like birds. So I would look out for any camera that has a pet autofocus mode or a review that says it locks onto smaller subjects well—even if they don't mention birds. If it can lock onto a chihuahua, it can usually do so with a bird too.

Birds and wildlife in general tend to get spooked easily and it is often difficult to get close without them running or flying away. So having a longer zoom range can really help you keep your distance and not startle your subject. I would say the minimum focal length for getting good bird shots is around 300mm (on a full frame camera). Some cameras only quantify their zoom by magnification (20x, 30x, 40x, etc.) and don't really say what that is in relation to. So focal length is a better metric to assess how zoomy a lens is. 10-35mm would be wide angle. 50mm is about like our eyes. 100mm is slightly telephoto. And 300mm and above would be very telephoto.

You may need to google the focal range equivalent to a full frame 35mm camera. So you would search "[camera model] 35mm equivalent focal range" to figure that out. And as long as it goes past 300mm, it might be a good candidate for birding.

When you have a camera that zooms in that far, any movement will be exaggerated—especially if you have naturally shaky hands. Not only can that introduce motion blur into your images, but it can make it very difficult to track your subject. Looking through the viewfinder will result in a wiggly mess and you won't know what you are pointing the camera at.

Image stabilization helps negate that exaggerated movement.

There are 3 kinds of stabilization. First is optical, which is built into the lens with a floating glass element. Then there is sensor stabilization (often called IBIS for "in-body image stabilization") which allows the sensor to shift and move to counteract any motion introduced by your hands. And the last form is digital stabilization which is done using the camera's software.

The first two are physical solutions that can adjust on the fly much like a chicken's head.

The digital solution is mostly just fancy image cropping. It zooms in a tiny bit on your image and then aligns a continuous crop to give the appearance of a stable image.

The lens and the sensor are still a jiggling mess, but this constant cropping allows you to see the illusion of a stable image in your viewfinder and in the videos you take. And while this is very helpful for tracking subjects and capturing video footage, it will not help you negate motion blur—which is why the other two methods are preferred for still photography.

Bigger cameras can often forego stabilization because the zoom lenses are bigger and heavier and don't shake as much and they let in a lot more light so you can raise your shutter speed to freeze motion. It's still nice to have, and if you have IBIS and optical stabilization combined on a big camera you can almost take pictures in the dark without camera shake, but all of those conveniences can get costly.

The camera you have now is called a "bridge" camera or a "superzoom". These are (relatively) inexpensive cameras that use a smaller smartphone-style sensor but with a more classic camera body surrounding it and a non-changeable lens. Small sensors have one big advantage where if you put a zoom lens in front of them, they can see from Alaska to Russia.

For instance, your camera has an 840mm equivalent lens. That is near telescopic.

For reference, this is what an 800mm lens looks like for a full frame professional camera.

It weighs 10 pounds and costs about $13,000.

Granted the image quality of that lens is in another universe compared to your superzoom, but if you are mostly interested in documenting the birds you are encountering, a superzoom is a neat tool to have. It's like digital binoculars.

So I guess the question is, do you just want to document your bird adventures or do you want to delve into artistic bird photography?

You can upgrade to a nicer superzoom and get some improved clarity and ease-of-use features, which is totally valid. You could even get a "premium" superzoom that can do artistic bird photography in ideal lighting conditions.

Or if you go with a more professional interchangeable lens camera system (ILC), you can achieve some stunning artistic photos like these...

Freezing a bird midflight while catching a fish is just not really feasible with a basic superzoom.

Let's talk about the advantages and disadvantages of a superzoom bridge camera as compared to a more professional ILC setup.

Superzoom Pros

No learning curve. These cameras are designed for novice photographers and have very good automatic functions. You can pretty much pull them out of the box and start taking pictures without knowing the fundamentals of photography.

Incredible zoominess. You can get amazing zoom power for a fraction of the price.

Budget friendly. The top of the line superzoom camera is still only about $1500 as compared to the top of the line mirrorless ILC (for wildlife) which is $6500 *without* a lens. And the lower to mid range superzooms are even more affordable, especially if you consider used options.

Superzoom Cons

Noisy images in low light. These cameras are mostly suited for bright sunny days. The small sensors and cheaper lenses do not capture very much light. In more challenging lighting situations you will tend to get very noisy images due to using a high ISO to compensate.

Inconsistent image quality. Under the best of circumstances, you can get some really beautiful photographs. But when you push the camera to its extremes, the image quality can start to deteriorate. Low light causes noise. The more you zoom in, the softer your images will get. Low megapixels limit your options to crop in on far away subjects—which is often an issue with wildlife.

Deep depth of field. A lot of bird photographers like using shallow depth of field to blur the background so the bird really stands out in the photo. Small sensors can have a very hard time blurring the background unless the subject is quite far away and you are zoomed all the way in. But when you are all the way zoomed in, the image can get soft and lack detail. So you trade image quality for a blurry background.

Lack of professional features and accessories. There are many advanced features that can make bird photography much easier. Some cameras have advanced motion tracking that can allow you to capture birds in flight. The latest generation can even track a tiny bird's eye. There are also accessories that are only made for ILCs. Like motion activated shutter triggers that will take a picture of a bird automatically if you set up a camera near a feeder. There are flashes that work at very long distances. You can get camouflage skins for your lenses so the birds can't see you. Stuff like that.

ILC Pros

Lower image noise. With a bigger sensor and better lenses you can shoot with a very low ISO in good light and get incredibly clean noise-less images.

Better high ISO performance. If you are in low light, you can increase the ISO and still get a very good image. The noise on an ILC is much less distracting and easier to deal with—especially with advanced noise reduction software.

Background blur is easy. Due to the much larger sensor and telephoto lenses, almost every telephoto image will have beautiful blurry backgrounds no matter how small the aperture is.

Sharper, faster lenses. The lenses are much sharper and let in a lot more light. The quality of the image does not decrease as you zoom in. And the sharp optics allow a lot of leeway for cropping. So even if a bird was super far away, you can crop the image after the fact and it will still be quite detailed.

More megapixels. A lot of bird photography needs to be cropped in due to subject distance. Having more megapixels allows for more cropping. (I know I keep talking about cropping, but it really is a huge aspect of most bird photography.)

Advanced autofocus. This is the big game changer, especially on the new mirrorless cameras. The latest Canon and Sony cameras have eye detect autofocus for animals. You can literally lock onto a bird's eye while it is in flight and get perfect focus. It's bonkers.

ILC Cons

Steep learning curve. A lot of people think they'll get a big ILC and immediately get better pictures than their smartphone. They are often disappointed when that isn't the case. You really need to learn the fundamentals of photography to get good photos out of an ILC (free course here). They do have automatic modes, but without learning about aperture, shutter speed, and ISO (the exposure triangle) and how to balance them and when to prioritize what, you might end up with *worse* photos than a smartphone.

Wildlife photography can get very expensive. Big lenses with a lot of zoom are some of the priciest available. There are some budget options, but you will have to sacrifice quite a bit of zoom and light-gathering capabilities. The quality of the photos is usually worth it, but you may have to learn how to get closer to birds to photograph them.

Heavy as heck. Superzooms are very light and portable. A wildlife ILC configuration is very unwieldy. The camera is heavier. The lens is long and heavy. Carrying all of that gear into the wilderness can be quite a hassle.

Some camera suggestions...

Superzoom Options

If I'm being honest, in the sub $300 range, I don't think you'll be able to drastically improve over what you already have. All of the cameras in this range are quite similar and while a few might have some features that are helpful, the image quality is going to be roughly the same.

You are probably going to need to spend at least $400-700 to get a meaningful upgrade from what you have.

The top-of-the-line superzoom would be the Sony RX10 Mark IV at $1100 used. You can get the previous model, the Mark III, for about $900 used. It's a wonderful camera and the image quality and features rival or even surpass some ILC options. If you don't have the time to learn an ILC system but want the best possible quality, this might be an option. But an ILC will still give you better results if you are willing to put in the time.

For more mid-tier superzooms, you might look into the Panasonic Lumix models. They use slightly larger sensors than most superzooms and are known for their lens optical quality along with their stabilization.

The FZ1000 is getting very old, but it is still a powerful camera at a good price. The only downside is the focusing system isn't as advanced as newer cameras. But it will be better than what you have and you can find one used for around $400.

The newer FZ1000 II or the FZ2500 would be great options that have more modern autofocus and a lot more bells and whistles. They are fairly similar and can both be found for around $650 used. They do great video as well.

These are not the only options, but they are ones I know of and models I have heard positive things about. If you want to see what else is out there I would google "bridge superzoom cameras" and then maybe add your price range as well. Read reviews and watch YouTube videos to get a sense of the cameras you are interested in. As long as the camera has decent autofocus, I don't think you need a specific bird feature—so I wouldn't limit yourself in that regard.

ILC Options

When trying to come up with a good bird photography setup for interchangeable lens cameras, there is basically an easy, medium, and hard mode depending on how much you spend.

As I mentioned, the top-of-the-line mirrorless cameras have autofocus tracking that can lock onto a bird's eye while in flight. They have both IBIS and lenses with optical stabilization. They have burst modes that let you take 30 photos per second. They have 50 megapixel sensors that allow you to crop to your heart's content and still have megapixels left over.

It's quite dreamy if you have the money.

But I'm guessing if you are coming from an Olympus bridge camera that is probably a bit more of an upgrade than you were thinking.

So if easy mode is not viable, let's talk about medium and hard mode.

If you still want the bird detecting autofocus, in body image stabilization, and a pretty zoomy lens, Canon has some newer mirrorless cameras that would take amazing artistic bird shots. It's still spendy, but not $9000 spendy.

The Canon R7 is a great APS-C mirrorless camera with IBIS that can be found used for about $1300. It has 32 megapixels and due to having a slightly smaller sensor, you even get some bonus zoom out of all your lenses at about 1.6x. It's still a much larger sensor than a superzoom, just not quite the size of the Alpha 1.

Alpha 1 is Full Frame. R7 is APS-C. And Superzooms don't get any bigger than the 1" sensor.

Pair the R7 with the RF 100-400mm lens ($600 used) with optical stabilization, and you would have a stellar bird photography setup for about $1900. (It would be a 160-640mm equivalent lens on the R7 due to the 1.6x crop factor.)

Which is probably still way more than you want to spend.

So we have the hard mode option.

No bird eye autofocus. No stabilization. You have to learn the fundamentals and practice in order to get good shots. However, wildlife photographers have been getting AMAZING photos with the gear I'm about to suggest. In fact, all of these photos were captured with the hard mode ILC combo.

The Canon 7D Mark II has been a beloved camera body for wildlife photography for many years. Many pros still use it to great effect to this day. It doesn't have bird autofocus, but it still has one of the best DSLR autofocus systems that was ever developed. It can even track moving subjects, it just doesn't know it is tracking a bird so it is more prone to error on occasion. It can be found used for $500-600.

The Canon 400mm F/5.6 telephoto lens is one of the most affordable lenses Canon ever made for wildlife. It is an old lens, but it is sharp and takes beautiful images. No stabilization, but it is big and heavy so that isn't a huge deal. You can also carry a monopod rest it on. And on the 7D II, it is the equivalent of a 640mm lens. It costs around $650 used, which is very inexpensive compared to other telephoto lenses.

So you are looking at around $1200 for the combo. But the photos you can achieve with these two items will blow pretty much any superzoom out of the water.

To sum up...

ILC photography is always going to have a steep learning curve and expensive barrier for entry, but you can achieve some truly stunning results.

Superzooms are getting better and some of the newer ones can still take excellent pictures of birds under the right circumstances. They are lightweight and hassle free and allow you to get incredible zooms for a low cost.

If you mostly take photos of stationary birds outside on bright sunny days, you will be fairly happy with a superzoom.

If you want to take photos during darker times like sunrise or sunset or in a dense forest... or if you want to take photos of birds mid-flight, you will probably have to get an ILC.

This article gets rewritten about every 3 months by someone who thinks they are writing it for the first time.

Also, no chance I am going into that comment section.

I'll make it very simple. Pretty much all cameras are great now. Most smartphone cameras are great.

So you can get great photos with *any* sensor size.

You just have to assess your needs and decide which system will help you achieve your photographic goals.

Full frame sensors make it much easier to...

Shoot in cramped spaces. Get background blur. Shoot a scene with bright brights and dark darks. (dynamic range) Shoot in low light with less noise.

APS-C sensors...

Slightly harder to get background blur. Not as good in cramped spaces. Slightly less dynamic range. Slightly more noise in low light. Give you near full frame quality at a lower price point.

Micro 4/3 sensors...

Give you lightweight and portable gear while maintaining the advantage of using different lenses. Can be more expensive. Great for beginner videography. Can do decent background blur with a speedbooster and fast lens. Give you a nice bump in quality over smartphones in challenging circumstances.

Smartphone sensors...

Are always in your pocket.

If you have the money and want to make getting good photos in challenging circumstances easier, get a full frame. Used full frame DSLRs are cheaper than they have ever been.

If you are on a tight budget and want everything a full frame does but don't mind it being about 1.5x harder to do so, get APS-C. If you go with Canon or Nikon, you can choose your lenses in a way that allows you to upgrade to full frame later on.

If you want to use a proper camera with interchangeable lenses but you don't feel like carrying a heavy camera bag with you everywhere, get a micro 4/3. Be warned, these cameras are usually more expensive than APS-C. They often have cool retro styling and try to give you a more fun photography experience. Panasonic M4/3 can be a great entry level videography camera. Fuji has some neat retro film emulation. Speedbooster accessories can allow you to retain some reasonable background blur.

But wouldn't you rather...

Carry around a tripod, DSLR, a two pound f/1.4 lens, and wireless camera triggers, set all of that up, frame your shot, hope you put the little focus box where your head will be, adjust your aperture, shutter speed, and ISO, hide the trigger in your pocket, stand in the place you think is in frame, take a picture, then take 39 more pictures for safety because you can't see the little screen in sunlight… all to get RAW files stored on a miniature floppy disk that you have to insert into a dongle that you have to insert into a USB port (NOT THAT WAY, FLIP IT AROUND)… (Wait… no, you had it right the first time, sorry), find the files, import into Lightroom, go through 40 shots to find one where you don't look stupid, then adjust white balance, exposure, and contrast, and then export as a JPEG…

When I woke up yesterday morning I saw out of the corner of my eye the sky looked different. It was just before sunrise and upon closer inspection I saw a glowing orange horizon with pink clouds above. It was 30 degrees but I was itching to take a photo and decided to try and capture this before the moment was lost.

The only problem was the best view of the horizon required trekking through several of my neighbor's backyards. The first photo was from my backyard. I took that just in case I couldn't get to my destination in time—as I am a very slow walker.

The second photo is the neighbor right behind me. I love the shape of that tree.

The third photo is an unmanaged section of a 3 acre property. I was not feeling sturdy walking through that. By this point the cold was already hurting my fingers and I was super out of breath. I wasn't sure if I should turn back or not.

And the 4th photo is where I knew I could see the horizon. But the orange glowy parts of the sky had diminished by the time I got there. I still think it is a cool shot and I'm glad I hiked my slow ass all the way there. I just wish I had arrived 20 minutes sooner.

When I finally got back inside my hands were pretty frozen and it took me a while to catch my breath. I collapsed on the couch and ended up sleeping for 12 hours. Hopefully that will be the worst of the consequences.

Art demands pain.

I hate when people say shit like this. First, it discounts the skills of the photographer. A person made this photograph and used years of experience to get this shot. That is 95% of what made this photo great. But sure, let’s give all the credit to a strip of plastic. I believe if he had a digital camera back then, it still would have been a great photo. 

Second, it discounts the three technical things that helped make this photo great. The lens, the format, and the lighting. The lens I won’t go into much detail. Put good glass on a camera, you are going to get sharp images with good contrast. 

The format and the lighting are the interesting bits. They worked together to allow this shot to even be possible. And, again, the photographer had to know how to leverage those aspects–and back then that was no small feat in a fast paced environment.  

You see, as far as a camera is concerned, an indoor arena is super dark. To this day, people still have trouble taking sports photos indoors. But raising the ISO wasn’t an option back then. You’d have to put in a new roll of film and it would degrade the quality of the photo due to grain. Clean images at high ISOs (or ASAs) weren’t a thing back then. 

So they used medium format cameras which had larger film which allowed more light to be captured for each photograph. More light means a cleaner photo. But that still wasn’t enough. So they placed giant strobe flashes in the rafters. You can see one firing on the top left. These special lights sent out a very brief but very powerful flash of light. It was so powerful that they could use ISO 100 film to get the cleanest image possible. Today, if you are shooting indoors without special lights, you’d be lucky to get your ISO down to 6400. 

If you have good lighting and a good lens and an experienced photographer, you can get amazing images–film or digital. In fact, if I have good lighting, I could probably get professional results on an iPhone these days. Besides knowledge, lighting is so much more important than pretty much anything else. And because good lighting is so vital, I would wager the reason you will no longer see a modern photo that looks similar to the one above is because they no longer allow giant flashing lights in the rafters. 

I get that people are nostalgic for film. And it can have a certain ineffable look in certain photos. But it was so much harder to work with and you could not take as many great photos as consistently. The photo above may have been 1 of 4 photos that photographer got that night that were any good. And he would have an anxiety attack waiting for them to be developed. He didn’t know if he got focus. If the strobe fired. If he got his framing right. Film could give you a panic attack if your livelihood depended on it. 

Film, for the most part, looks worse most of the time. You have to get the stars to align to get a film image to equal or surpass something digital. Especially in a chaotic environment. It’s a bit like music. The best music stands the test of time. We either forget or don’t know about all of the shitty music that happened years ago. Just like the best photos from the era of film are the only ones we still look at today. But if you go through your family’s old photo album, I doubt you’ll find anything shot on film that comes close to having the clarity, colors, and contrast as the photo above. It took great effort, experience, and often great expense to get photos to look that good. 

Sometimes I think some people just want things to be harder. They don’t like that newer cameras are easier to use. Forget that it allows artists to not think as much about the technical aspects and focus on the art of taking a photo. Old school photographers want newbies to suffer like they did. So they rant about how film is better so they can always have a way of feeling superior. 

I still want film around. I want people to still learn and love the format. I just want all of the bullshit hardship olympics to stop. Some people like film for the same reason some like vinyl records. In truth, vinyl often sounds worse by objective measurements. But the worseness has a character to it. A warmth. Certain music sounds better with that lower fidelity. Just as certain photos can have a stronger emotional connection if they have that film look to them. It can make SOME photos better. But not because the objective quality is better. Because it gives you a better feeling. 

There is also fun in the process. Because film takes extra work, you have a stronger sense of pride when you really nail a photo. Photography becomes more about the journey. 

Today indoor sports photographers all use high end digital cameras. They don’t have to strap lights to the rafters because they can control the ISO and still get sharp images. They can also do burst shooting which allows them to get more consistently amazing photos. They can also check immediately to make sure they got the shot and avoid those panic attacks. And because equipment is easier to manage, photographers can carry multiple cameras on their person–giving them more options in focal length. Which made possible this award winning photo with a super wide angle lens. 

Film is different, not better. It can sometimes produce images that digital has a hard time emulating. But digital has surpassed film in almost every objective technical measurement of quality from efficiency, convenience, dynamic range, and resolution. The only film cameras that can still keep up with digital are large format cameras. They can be scanned in at similar resolutions as digital medium format cameras. However, they rarely have optics that match in sharpness, so digital still has more advantages. 

The best pro photographers I know of that are working today all use digital for most of their work. Many of them are old enough to have used film. They have the skills and resources to use film if they wanted to. And they don’t. If they believed film would give them better images, they’d probably use it. 

Joe McNally is about as old school as it gets. He has been photographing amazing things for decades. He took many amazing photos on film. 

But he still manages to get some good looking photos on the horror that is digital. 

The small number of pros that still use film typically don’t care about it being better or worse. They just love the process of using the format. Or they enjoy using vintage gear. They like learning the skills needed to physically develop photos. To dodge and burn without Photoshop. It can make the art more tangible for them. And that is beautiful. But I can’t remember a single one of them saying film was superior. Just that it was the right format for them personally. 

“I like the look and feel of film more than digital.” is an individual’s opinion that I will respect. 

“Digital photography will never look as good as film.” is nonsense.

This is a photo taken during a high school basketball game. 

This photographer didn’t have the resources to buy an expensive medium format film camera. He didn’t have the ability to attach multi-thousand dollar strobe flashes to the ceiling. This shot would have never happened if he used film. 

Shaming digital photography is crapping on how wonderfully accessible this art form has become and belittling the people who can’t do it any other way. 

One addendum to that post. There was a reply to the original tweet that said, “Back when photographers actually had to know what they were doing.” Basically implying that technology has made photography so simple that you just push a button and the camera does all the work. 

Yes, there are cameras that do an excellent job on auto settings. And starting to learn photography is easier and more accessible than ever before. But while technology has added numerous conveniences to the art of taking pictures, it has also added even more complication. There has never been more to learn about photography. For instance, I have been studying Photoshop for 20 years and am still learning new things. But I suspect many think you just push a few magic buttons and that’s all it takes. 

High end professional photographers do not take a new technological convenience and become complacent. They almost always go, “Okay, that is off my plate now, how can I use that brain space to up my game further?” Or they will try to find ways to exploit that convenience to innovate and do something new. 

The invention of autofocus didn’t make the pros lazy. They used it to take more challenging photos that weren’t possible before. Like this osprey catching a fish with tack sharp eyes. 

This is still an immensely difficult shot to get, but thanks to focus tracking the photographer could concentrate on other things. 

Karl Taylor started out as a photojournalist shooting on film before moving to high end commercial photography. After 30 years he has acquired pretty much every technological convenience photography has to offer. And yet his photography keeps getting more complicated. 

He did a shoot for firefighter safety equipment and ended up using 12 lights and tons of modifiers to get the final shots. It was one of the most complex product shoots I think I’ve seen. 

Some might think the final images have loads of photoshop work done to them, but other than removing the supports and fixing minor blemishes, this is very close to what he achieved in camera. 

I hate when people say shit like this. First, it discounts the skills of the photographer. A person made this photograph and used years of experience to get this shot. That is 95% of what made this photo great. But sure, let’s give all the credit to a strip of plastic. I believe if he had a digital camera back then, it still would have been a great photo. 

Second, it discounts the three technical things that helped make this photo great. The lens, the format, and the lighting. The lens I won’t go into much detail. Put good glass on a camera, you are going to get sharp images with good contrast. 

The format and the lighting are the interesting bits. They worked together to allow this shot to even be possible. And, again, the photographer had to know how to leverage those aspects–and back then that was no small feat in a fast paced environment.  

You see, as far as a camera is concerned, an indoor arena is super dark. To this day, people still have trouble taking sports photos indoors. But raising the ISO wasn’t an option back then. You’d have to put in a new roll of film and it would degrade the quality of the photo due to grain. Clean images at high ISOs (or ASAs) weren’t a thing back then. 

So they used medium format cameras which had larger film which allowed more light to be captured for each photograph. More light means a cleaner photo. But that still wasn’t enough. So they placed giant strobe flashes in the rafters. You can see one firing on the top left. These special lights sent out a very brief but very powerful flash of light. It was so powerful that they could use ISO 100 film to get the cleanest image possible. Today, if you are shooting indoors without special lights, you’d be lucky to get your ISO down to 6400. 

If you have good lighting and a good lens and an experienced photographer, you can get amazing images–film or digital. In fact, if I have good lighting, I could probably get professional results on an iPhone these days. Besides knowledge, lighting is so much more important than pretty much anything else. And because good lighting is so vital, I would wager the reason you will no longer see a modern photo that looks similar to the one above is because they no longer allow giant flashing lights in the rafters. 

I get that people are nostalgic for film. And it can have a certain ineffable look in certain photos. But it was so much harder to work with and you could not take as many great photos as consistently. The photo above may have been 1 of 4 photos that photographer got that night that were any good. And he would have an anxiety attack waiting for them to be developed. He didn’t know if he got focus. If the strobe fired. If he got his framing right. Film could give you a panic attack if your livelihood depended on it. 

Film, for the most part, looks worse most of the time. You have to get the stars to align to get a film image to equal or surpass something digital. Especially in a chaotic environment. It’s a bit like music. The best music stands the test of time. We either forget or don’t know about all of the shitty music that happened years ago. Just like the best photos from the era of film are the only ones we still look at today. But if you go through your family’s old photo album, I doubt you’ll find anything shot on film that comes close to having the clarity, colors, and contrast as the photo above. It took great effort, experience, and often great expense to get photos to look that good. 

Sometimes I think some people just want things to be harder. They don’t like that newer cameras are easier to use. Forget that it allows artists to not think as much about the technical aspects and focus on the art of taking a photo. Old school photographers want newbies to suffer like they did. So they rant about how film is better so they can always have a way of feeling superior. 

I still want film around. I want people to still learn and love the format. I just want all of the bullshit hardship olympics to stop. Some people like film for the same reason some like vinyl records. In truth, vinyl often sounds worse by objective measurements. But the worseness has a character to it. A warmth. Certain music sounds better with that lower fidelity. Just as certain photos can have a stronger emotional connection if they have that film look to them. It can make SOME photos better. But not because the objective quality is better. Because it gives you a better feeling. 

There is also fun in the process. Because film takes extra work, you have a stronger sense of pride when you really nail a photo. Photography becomes more about the journey. 

Today indoor sports photographers all use high end digital cameras. They don’t have to strap lights to the rafters because they can control the ISO and still get sharp images. They can also do burst shooting which allows them to get more consistently amazing photos. They can also check immediately to make sure they got the shot and avoid those panic attacks. And because equipment is easier to manage, photographers can carry multiple cameras on their person–giving them more options in focal length. Which made possible this award winning photo with a super wide angle lens. 

Film is different, not better. It can sometimes produce images that digital has a hard time emulating. But digital has surpassed film in almost every objective technical measurement of quality from efficiency, convenience, dynamic range, and resolution. The only film cameras that can still keep up with digital are large format cameras. They can be scanned in at similar resolutions as digital medium format cameras. However, they rarely have optics that match in sharpness, so digital still has more advantages. 

The best pro photographers I know of that are working today all use digital for most of their work. Many of them are old enough to have used film. They have the skills and resources to use film if they wanted to. And they don’t. If they believed film would give them better images, they’d probably use it. 

Joe McNally is about as old school as it gets. He has been photographing amazing things for decades. He took many amazing photos on film. 

But he still manages to get some good looking photos on the horror that is digital. 

The small number of pros that still use film typically don’t care about it being better or worse. They just love the process of using the format. Or they enjoy using vintage gear. They like learning the skills needed to physically develop photos. To dodge and burn without Photoshop. It can make the art more tangible for them. And that is beautiful. But I can’t remember a single one of them saying film was superior. Just that it was the right format for them personally. 

“I like the look and feel of film more than digital.” is an individual’s opinion that I will respect. 

“Digital photography will never look as good as film.” is nonsense.

This is a photo taken during a high school basketball game. 

This photographer didn’t have the resources to buy an expensive medium format film camera. He didn’t have the ability to attach multi-thousand dollar strobe flashes to the ceiling. This shot would have never happened if he used film. 

Shaming digital photography is crapping on how wonderfully accessible this art form has become and belittling the people who can’t do it any other way. 

One addendum to that post. There was a reply to the original tweet that said, “Back when photographers actually had to know what they were doing.” Basically implying that technology has made photography so simple that you just push a button and the camera does all the work. 

Yes, there are cameras that do an excellent job on auto settings. And starting to learn photography is easier and more accessible than ever before. But while technology has added numerous conveniences to the art of taking pictures, it has also added even more complication. There has never been more to learn about photography. For instance, I have been studying Photoshop for 20 years and am still learning new things. But I suspect many think you just push a few magic buttons and that’s all it takes. 

High end professional photographers do not take a new technological convenience and become complacent. They almost always go, “Okay, that is off my plate now, how can I use that brain space to up my game further?” Or they will try to find ways to exploit that convenience to innovate and do something new. 

The invention of autofocus didn’t make the pros lazy. They used it to take more challenging photos that weren’t possible before. Like this osprey catching a fish with tack sharp eyes. 

This is still an immensely difficult shot to get, but thanks to focus tracking the photographer could concentrate on other things. 

Karl Taylor started out as a photojournalist shooting on film before moving to high end commercial photography. After 30 years he has acquired pretty much every technological convenience photography has to offer. And yet his photography keeps getting more complicated. 

He did a shoot for firefighter safety equipment and ended up using 12 lights and tons of modifiers to get the final shots. It was one of the most complex product shoots I think I’ve seen. 

Some might think the final images have loads of photoshop work done to them, but other than removing the supports and fixing minor blemishes, this is very close to what he achieved in camera. 

I really really miss photography. 

Photography feels like an old friend I’ve lost touch with. It pains me greatly that I just don’t have the energy or stamina to do it anymore. It really filled a creative void after I was unable to create my original comedy posts any longer. My illness keeps taking and taking from me and it is a challenge to find ways to adapt and cope.

The saddest part is that I felt like I was just starting to master photography as an art form. I was at that point where I could instinctively do all of the technical things and concentrate purely on the art. Lighting was becoming intuitive to me instead of a complicated puzzle I had to solve each time.

Yes, I took a lot of photos that I am really proud of. (Which I am spreading throughout this post).

But sometimes I mourn the photos I could have taken if my chronic illness hadn’t worsened.

It’s also hard seeing the new cameras and lights that have been released since I had to stop. I *just* missed a technological revolution. New features that would have allowed me to do more with less energy. To push the boundaries of my creativity. To get shots I could only dream of back then.

Full frame mirrorless cameras have opened up so many creative possibilities. The low light performance, the detail, the dynamic range–it has all been improved greatly in just a few years. But there are also many automated usability features that allow the camera to offload work and concentration from the brain. These new digital wonders can even be used as cinematic quality video cameras–something I would have liked to have explored.

I had to take these match photos in a pitch-black room, with a reversed lens, with no control over my aperture, and a manual flash. It took forever to time it properly because I had a whopping 3 frames per second. It would have been a cinch with a mirrorless camera, with super fast burst modes and an electronic viewfinder. You can see exactly what your image will look like before snapping it. But you can also “see in the dark” using a high ISO preview. Before you had to use a live view mode on the back screen. But on older cameras that mode was clunky and slow and… it just sucked.

Enlarge!

MOAR BIGGER!

Weirdly, one of the biggest advances is due to a shortened “flange distance” where the lens connects to the camera body. It seems like a small thing. Literally only a centimeter or so. But because of the lack of mirror, camera designers are able to move the lens closer to the sensor and design more advanced lenses with incredible sharpness. Combined with increased megapixel counts, that would have been amazing for my macro photos.

Electronic viewfinders take the guesswork out of exposure–even in bright sunlight where screens get washed out from glare. And being able to compose portraits with highly accurate eye-tracking autofocus would have been a tremendous advantage. 

No more “focus and recompose.” 

No more “Did I get the eye? Let me zoom to 100% on this tiny screen. Umm… sure, the eye looks sharp.” 

*later on the computer* “Goddammit, I missed the eye.” 

I could have spent more of my concentration getting natural expressions from my subjects and composing my photos without distraction.

And IBIS! 

I missed out on motherhecking IBIS!

This photo of my wonderful friend Erin was taken handheld at sunset. The original RAW version was extremely dark–even though I was using a high ISO. 

I had to do a ton of work in post to get this to not look like noisy garbage. 

But there just wasn’t any other way to capture it… UNTIL NOW.

IBIS (eye-bus/👀-🚌) or “in-body image stabilization,” allows the camera sensor to kind of… float. You can eliminate camera shake caused by the subtle micro-movements when handholding. 

How do I explain it? Ummmm…

It turns the sensor into a chicken head.

So instead of increasing the ISO (which is like a volume knob for light which gets grainier as you crank it), you can lower your shutter speed. That means your sensor can take its time and gather more light instead of cranking up the volume and getting a noisy mess. 

In the past, depending on the lens, 1/60th of a second was about as slow as you could set it. With IBIS, as long as the scene you are capturing is relatively still, you can take photos in very low light without a tripod. This is great because tripods are a pain in the ass and you can’t always have one handy. Plus, you can combine an IBIS camera with a stabilized lens to get a de-blurrification multiplier. It’s like having double chicken heads working together. Then you can get sharp handheld photos that are technically considered long exposure. I’ve heard people say they got sharp photos exposing at several seconds. Literally going from a fraction of a second to 2 goddamn Missisisppi. I can’t even quantify how many fantastic photos are being taken right now that would have been unusable blurry messes a few years ago. We get to enjoy these photos all because they installed a chicken head inside cameras.

AND DARN IT ALL TO HECK I HECKING MISSED IT, GOSH HECKING DANG IT!. 

Sorry… didn’t mean to curse like a sailor that stubbed his toe while stepping on a Lego. 

I think I’ll have a cool refreshing root beer to calm my IBIS envy.

(Those water droplets are a total fraud, by the way. It’s fake blood without the red added.) 

And with the progress in battery and wireless technology, artificial lighting has become lighter and more portable while still being powerful enough to compete with the sun. I could have used strobe lights in my little studio, packed them up into a small case, and gone to the middle of the field to use them there.

Yes, I was able to convert my old studio lights to be “portable-ish” but we had to lug so much equipment to accomplish this photo of Brittany in the red dress. The battery pack alone weighed as much as one modern light. I was stuck in bed for a week afterward from all of the carrying of heavy gear.

Before that, this was my hacked together “outdoor” light. The Flash-O-Tron 3000. It looks cool but it was delicate and hard to get through doorways.

After charging 12 AA batteries overnight, I had to drag this contraption outside at the buttcrack of dawn to get my favorite photo of Otis. 

I had to use a handheld mirror to reflect my popup flash in the direction of the Flash-O-Tron 3000 to trigger it. It worked about 25% of the time. Oh, and I was laying on cold wet grass, manually tracking Otis–who refused to sit still. I had to line up a single autofocus point on his head for every snap. The concentration required felt like my brain was juggling chainsaws.

But guess what they invented last year?

PET. EYE. AUTOFOCUS. 

ARE YOU KIDDING ME? 

A little robot inside the camera is all, “Hey, that’s your dog’s eye!” and just follows it no matter where your pup moves.

I NEEDED THAT SO BAD!

This shot took 10 minutes of me trying to lock onto his eye with a macro lens. The depth of field at that distance was the width of his eye and, again, he does not sit still. 

I want a time machine so I can go back and retake every blurry Otis photo. 

Also, many of the modern strobes have NO WIRES. You just stick a thing on top of your camera and you can set off lights several football fields away. My photo studio has tons of wires routed in the ceiling and coming out of the walls. 

[Hi-Res Version]

And then those wires all go into a weird analog remote with old school sliders that controlled the power of the flashes. But the sliders were difficult to finely adjust.

Now you can load an app on your phone and adjust the flash power digitally and adjust the brightness in 10% increments. You can save lighting ratios and recall them instantly. And you can preview your work with high powered LED modeling lights so you don’t have to take 50 test shots. 

No more nudging a light and taking a picture. Raising the power and taking a picture. Swapping out a modifier and taking a picture. Back and forth, back and forth. 

Essentially, what you see is what you get, so setting up lighting takes a fraction of the time and effort with these new lights and cameras. That would have been so helpful with my disability.

Oh… the lights are less expensive too.

The future of camera tech looks exciting as well. I think the computational photography that is in the latest smartphones will soon be added to more professional cameras. That is going to make high-end photography so much more accessible to anyone who wants to try it as a hobby. The learning curve will flatten further, and as long as you are creative, you will be able to take beautiful, high-quality photos.

Some might say that not having all of the new tech helped me gain important experience, expertise, and problem-solving skills. Some believe the inconveniences are a photographer’s trial by fire. The struggle makes the art more authentic. And since I learned how to do it the hard way, my journey is more valid than some photography influencer on Instagram with an iPhone.

To that I say… BULLLLLSHEEIIIT.

Those inconveniences just made me SUPER DUPER TIRED.

And some of those influencers take really kickass photos. Not all of them are butts either.

I love photography but there is a reason I had to stop. Like anything, doing it well was a lot of work. I always ended up having to quit taking photos much sooner than I wanted. I had to scale back my ambition to fit my energy requirements. I could only do photography on days when my body was cooperating fully. I had to cancel many photoshoots because the preparation was just too much to handle. And after my bigger projects it took me forever to recover.

GIVE ME ALL THE CONVENIENCES PLEASE.

That “you have to struggle” attitude is no-good-gatekeepy-ableist crap. 

Old photographer grumps are upset because they spent years learning how to focus manually on horseback and use the sunny 16 rule and develop film in a converted shed they built by hand and now “those darn kids” can use an iPhone on a skateboard while doing a kickflip with their eyes closed and still pull focus.

However, despite there being a lower barrier for entry, the technological improvements add new complications to the advanced side of things. So you can make photography as difficult as you desire if you are willing to learn new stuff. Which old school photo grumps are notoriously averse to.

This new tech has all kinds of novel things to discover and figure out. There is drone photography. There is advanced macro photography using robotic focusing rails and ever-improving focus stacking software. You can now network more lights together than ever before. Karl Taylor did a photoshoot with 12 lights! (Captain Picard would totally lose his shit.) Long lasting batteries and computerized sliders have created new timelapse possibilities. Stabilization software allows complex hyperlapse videos. Better low light performance and sharper lenses with big apertures combined with stacking or star trail software has improved astrophotography. Advances in material science have allowed darker and darker high quality neutral density filters for extreme long exposure photos. New focus tracking algorithms have allowed for wildlife photography that was never possible before. You can capture fast-moving birds in the sky from farther away and still get amazing detail. Faster burst modes allow people to capture split-second action. Never miss a good header at your kid’s soccer games. (Is that a thing? I have no kids and don’t remember how to soccer.) 

IBIS allows photography without a tripod. So now people can trek to harder to reach areas, AT NIGHT, and take sharp photos with little noise. Increased dynamic range and new HDR displays will allow photographers to take images of lights and capture their actual intensity. What if the lights in photos could glow like they do in real life? Think about a neon sign at night in the rain reflecting in a puddle. That would look so neat. 

Not to mention learning how to process photos in editing software is an entirely separate and challenging skillset you can master. There are thousands of techniques you can learn to elevate your images. Dodging & burning, frequency seperation, and compositing, oh my! Programs like Lightroom and Photoshop are constantly updated with new features that expand possibilities.  

None of that is easy. It will all require diligent study and practice to master. Technical skills will always be an aspect of photography that anyone can pursue. But not everyone will need as much technical skill to start having fun and create art. 

And much to the chagrin of those grumps… phones are perfectly viable to create that art and they will keep getting better.

You might find it odd that this love letter and goodbye to photography has so much talk of technical gadgetry. But, for me, it isn’t out of place in this sentimental essay. Technology was my first love. My parents bought me a 66mhz Packard Bell computer when I was 12 and technology was the first thing I was ever good at. I learned every function of that machine. I would sometimes break it just so I could learn how to fix it. I took it apart and put it back together. It was my first true obsessive hobby. I found my creativity soon after, and I immediately used that technology to help me create art. I wrote comedy. I learned how to digitally paint. I recorded music. And eventually I found photography. It was the perfect marriage of technology and art. I could nerd out as much as I want while still getting my creative fix.

So yeah… I miss it all. 

I miss all of the technical nerdery. I miss trying out new gadgets. I miss editing the photos I’ve taken. I miss taking pictures of my beautiful friends. I miss taking pictures of weird products. I miss asking Delling to call apiaries to find me freshly dead bees so I can take macro shots of their fuzzy little torsos.

I really hope some day I find a treatment that gives me enough energy to take photos again.  

Thankfully my writing helps me feel creative and productive and fulfilled. And it’s something I can do even if I’m not able to get out of bed. And I am grateful I have so many awesome people that actually want to read what I have to say.

So thanks to everyone for that. 

I always find a way to move forward. That’s just the nature of surviving chronic illness. But glancing back at what I lost is a pain I never quite get used to. 

Though, writing this has helped. 

Looking back at all that I accomplished has helped. 

And I do feel lucky I was able to accomplish what I did–even if missing it makes me sad sometimes.  

Stages of a restoration.

Note: Some of the adjustments I talk about may not be super apparent unless seen at 100% magnification on a larger display. See this Imgur page for highest resolution versions. Opening each photo in a browser tab and switching between them is the best way to see variations.

Having the photos open in separate tabs might also be helpful as I reference them throughout this post and it will be easier to switch to them instead of scrolling all the way back to the top.

Let's get started...

Picture 2 is just a basic levels adjustment.

I go to Image>Adjustments>Levels and individually adjust the red, green, and blue channels to where they were originally before the photograph faded and reddened over time. Picture 2 is probably similar to what the photo looked like after it was developed.

I like this technique because you can always be assured you've adjusted the colors properly even if you have a poorly calibrated display. Or if you don't feel comfortable eyeballing photo adjustments, you can do this and know for sure the color and contrast will be improved. Also, most image editing programs have a levels feature similar to Photoshop, so you should be able to translate this technique if you use alternative software.

If you look in the red channel, there is a huge gap on the left. That means there is no pixel data there. You can literally see how much the dark red detail faded over time. This is very common as photographs age.

Just move the left/black slider in the red channel to the point where there is data in the photo starts—that first little mountain thingie in the histogram.

While the shadows faded over time, the red highlights have some data, so you don't need to move the white slider on the right.

Then repeat this with the green and blue channels.

Moving the left/black and right/white slider to the point where there is pixel data starts in each channel will drastically improve the color and contrast of almost any photo.

This creates a *baseline* to work from. As long as you don't move the sliders too far, you can be assured you haven't destroyed any detail.

This also works well with smartphone photos and screen captures from movies.

This does not work in extreme lighting situations or if the photo is well taken/well exposed already.

If you are happy with the levels adjustment, you can the photo as is or move on to finer adjustments from here.

Picture 3 is a white balance, brightness, and contrast adjustment.

With the advent of digital photo manipulation, we can now adjust the colors in the picture to match how they were perceived in real life. The goal with white balance is to remove any strong color casts.

A color cast is kind of like if the photo has a translucent colored gel on top of it. Everything looks like it is infused with blue or orange or green, etc. If you've ever worn those BluBlocker sunglasses, a color cast is a bit like that.

Color casts are sneaky bastards sometimes—especially if they are subtle. For one thing, our eyes sort of have an auto white balance feature built into them, so we might not notice them without a neutral reference or a before/after to look at. Not only that, color casts can hide in shadows, midtones, and highlights independently.

If you compare picture 3 to picture 2, you can see the white of the door had a strong orange/yellow color cast.

I like to use the white balance dropper and sliders in the "Camera Raw Filter" under the filter menu in Photoshop. Even though this isn't a RAW photo, you can still make the same adjustments with decent success. It's similar to loading a JPEG into Lightroom as well.

Just be warned, when working with JPEGs instead of RAW photos, the white balance sliders are a lot more... touchy. But if you are very precise with adjustments you can dial in the white balance and eliminate color casts.

Sometimes you can get lucky and the dropper tool next to the white balance sliders can get you most of the way there. Just find a place that is supposed to be white or neutral gray and click the dropper there. Pick a few different spots to see if you get different results and choose the one that seems most neutral.

If you have a newer version of Photoshop, the Camera Raw Filter now has Color Grading wheels for even finer adjustments.

These take a little practice to get the hang of but these wheels are great for further eliminating color casts. Tweaking the Shadows, Midtones, and Highlights independently gives you the ability to really isolate pesky tones that levels and white balance adjustments struggle with.

The best way I've found to use these wheels is to drag the circle straight up maybe 1/4 of the way from the center. Then drag the circle around in a circle around the center point.

Imagine the circle is a tetherball and the dot in the middle is the pole. You want to move around in circles to find the sweet spot where the whites look purest white, blues look purest blue, reds look purest red... and so on.

Once you feel you have that dialed in, then you can move the circle outward to strengthen the effect or inward to lessen it.

Here is a quick video of using the white balance dropper & sliders and then adjusting the color grading wheels.

The goal right now is *neutrality*.

Eliminate all color casts as best you can. The photo might look a bit clinical or cold or sterile—but that is a good thing at this stage of the edit.

If you want to do something more artistic with the colors, that is totally possible, but starting from a neutral point can actually make artistic colorization much easier at a later, separate step.

(Note: Having a decently calibrated monitor is important when making manual white balance adjustments without a perfect gray reference. Otherwise, you should check the photo on multiple screens to make sure you didn't introduce any new color casts. Newer iPhones usually have fairly accurate colors.)

When I adjusted the exposure (brightness) it caused their faces to develop some hotspots. If you look at her cheeks and forehead, they are almost pure white in color. Typically soft, overcast lighting has bland and even tonality. But film can be extra contrasty at proper exposure levels. Sometimes that is a positive and charming aspect of film, but I'm going for a naturalistic as-it-was-in-real-life edit.

The shadowy parts on the skin had a color cast that wasn't fixed by the grading adjustments so Steve looks a bit extra orange. Film of that day was infamous for not accurately capturing complexions. This is very noticeable on the left side of his nose. Considering that flat overcast lighting, they shouldn't look this contrasty and the shadows on their face should not be orange. I will have to correct that later on.

I also did a sharpening pass. I selectively sharpen details like eyes, hair, lips, zippers, and folds in clothes. It's important not to sharpen every aspect of old photos like this because things will get crunchy looking fast. Being a JPEG photo from a smartphone doesn't help either.

The original camera lens and film used were very soft and if you try to make a soft photo too sharp it starts getting chunky artifacts. So you just pick the spots where sharpening will make the biggest difference. The photo is going to end up looking soft no matter what, so the sharpening is subtle and possibly not noticeable at normal viewing distances. But it is there for people with fighter pilot vision.

The best way to selectively sharpen is to duplicate the layer, use unsharp mask (or your favorite sharpening technique), and then create a layer mask that hides the entire layer. So the layer mask should appear pure black in the layers palette. Then with a soft round white brush, paint in the areas that would benefit from a bit more detail. If you paint a spot that you don't like, just switch back to black and erase it.

This video demonstrates this technique.

Picture 4 is just a cleanup pass.

I fix any physical damage that has occurred to the photograph (see top right) and get rid of any unwanted noise, spots, or just weird artifacts that do not feel like they should be in the picture or are overly distracting. This is done mostly with the content aware fill, clone tool, spot healing tools, and the dust and scratches filter. (For dust and scratches I use the same layer mask technique as with sharpening, otherwise the entire picture will end up blurring.)

Picture 5 is the final beauty pass.

I did some noise removal and I softened any chunky sharpening. I added a slight vignette to darken the corners and draw focus to Steve and Pia, and I de-oranged the shadows on their faces.

For the de-oranging I created a new layer, set the blend mode to "Color" and painted over the orange areas and hot spots with the dominant skin tone color. I tried to find a spot on the face with the color picker dropper that I felt was most representative of their natural skin tone.

Because it is an old soft photo, I added a small amount of film grain to give things some texture at zoomed-out viewing distances. Since this is probably going to be viewed on a lot of small screens and there isn't a lot of texture or detail, adding a bit of artificial film grain can give the illusion of more detail. I like the grain in the "effects" panel of the Camera Raw Filter but there are some cool plugins that give you various film grain options as well.

You may wonder why I removed noise and then added grain. Simply put, digital noise caused by camera sensors is ugly and random. It can alter tonality and obscure detail. You have no control over it, so it can appear in distracting places. Adding your own film grain or noise is more consistent and pleasant. You can control exactly how much you add and you can selectively add or subtract it in different places.

Lastly, I made the lighting look more flat with some negative contrast. The flat lighting also undid some of the sharpening. Working with old photos requires compromises on what aspects will give you the best possible final result. Some might question flattening the lighting, but that's just how the lighting was in that spot on that day.

We tend to prefer strong contrast in images. But I wasn't trying to make the photo look *better* than the original with dramatic tone or lighting changes. I could have dodged and burned to bring out more detail in their faces, but that would be an unnatural edit. My goal was to make the photo look as close as possible to what you would have seen if you were standing where the camera was and just using your eyeballs.

This was a memory, not a photoshoot.

I'd say I probably got the photo 95% there. If this were a more artistic photo with dramatic lighting I might have gone for a less naturalistic edit.

One thing I struggled with was Steve's complexion. I may have made Steve more pale than he actually was back then, but it is hard to make that call without an accurate reference during that period of his life. The orange in the shadowy bits probably held a lot of the color information of his true skin tone, but there was no way to pull out just his skin tone from the orange. I could manually change his skin's tone, but that would be just a guess so I decided against it.

I'd say she is pretty close and he should probably be a bit more olive considering his skin tone in modern digital photos.

That's the story of this edit.

It's not the right or wrong way. Others might do things a bit differently. Others may have made different assessments and choices.

Others may say I did things *WRONG*.

Especially those who love curves...

...adjustments.

I find curves too wily and imprecise. But they are a powerful tool when mastered. But that's the beauty of Photoshop, there are 20 different ways to do basically the same thing. It's all about what workflow you are most comfortable with and makes the most sense to you.

Also, I'm really liking those new color grading wheels. They feel more intuitive and give me better live visual feedback. I think they could be just as powerful as curves if I put in the time and effort to conquer them. Plus I can use those skills for video color grading which is very similar.

A while back on a post about a free photography course, a few people wondered if they could use their smartphone to practice.

And hopefully the above shows that you absolutely can.

Sometimes it takes a little post-processing to get good results, but that is the same with any camera. Though phone photos probably take me more than twice as long to achieve a finished product. Better cameras don't automatically make your photos better, but they do make getting good photos *easier*—especially in difficult lighting.

Many modern smartphones have a "RAW" photo mode with adjustable manual settings. Saving a RAW version of your photos allows you to continually learn and practice and return to those photos later on to re-process them with your improved experience.

A RAW capture has a lot more data than a compressed JPEG and gives you extra latitude in processing your photos. All of the editing done to a RAW file is saved in metadata instead of being baked into the pixels. So you can undo any individual change at any time without undoing changes made after that particular edit. And even if you save the file and close the program, you still have the power of undo when you open the file again.

With RAW you can more easily recover extra detail, lift dark shadows, bring back blown highlights, and restore color to blue skies that photographed pure white. (Often you can do that with a JPEG too, it just depends on the photo.)

The main downsides to JPEG editing are you can't non-destructively change the white balance after the fact, you have less dynamic range to alter shadows and highlights, and you can't make as many drastic edits before the image loses integrity.

A wise man once said, "The best camera is the one you have with you."

Not to be confused with image editing and image manipulation—which are also fun artistic skills you can learn if you want to get even more creative with your photos.

(Disclaimer: These are not standardized terms and different folks may use different terms and definitions to describe the same things. This is my preferred terminology and way of thinking about photo alteration tactics.)

Image processing is basically cropping, correcting exposure, adjusting the white balance, dialing in the contrast, and making sure you have true blacks and whites that span the entire histogram. You are taking the flat, low contrast RAW file (or JPEG/HEIF) and balancing all of the data to look similar to what your eyeballs saw when you took the picture. This can also include fixing minor blemishes, sensor dust, or schmutz/hair on clothing. Processing is typiclly done non-destructively in a RAW editor, so all alterations are changed in the metadata instead of changing the actual pixel information. You can undo any single change at any time without undoing anything else. When processing is complete, this can be your finished photo or a good baseline for editing.

Image editing would be more creative adjustments. Maybe you want the sky darker and the foreground brighter. You want the colors to pop so you boost the saturation beyond reality. You want to add extra drama so you crush the blacks. Or you want to bring focus to the photo subject so you place a dark vignette around them. You are still working with the data you captured, but you are pushing that data more aggressively beyond what was actually seen in the environment the photo was taken.

And image manipulation (often called photoshopping) is the addition or subtraction of data to/from a photo. Adding brand new pixels or erasing existing pixels to fundamentally change what was originally captured. This is called destructive editing because the changes can't be made only in the metadata. You can use layers and smart objects/filters to make it easier to undo individual changes, but it can be more difficult to undo a single change 20 steps back if you don't take proper precautions. Manipulation can include fixing larger mistakes like a light stand in the frame or flyaway hairs that weren't tamped down. Or compositing two photos together. Maybe swapping in a new head with a better expression. Maybe you need to remove a drunk uncle from a wedding portrait.

Or you can add a sleepy cat to a field of sunflowers.

The lines between these three levels of adjustment can get blurry, but all are valid skills to learn and can take your photography to new places. At minimum, every photographer should learn and understand how to do basic processing of their photos.

Now, you might hear some people say they just do "SOOC" because it is more authentic or naturalistic. They might even brag about how their photography skills are so amazing that no extra work is needed once they press that button.

SOOC stands for "straight out of camera" and it is a horseshit concept.

There is no such thing as an unprocessed photo.

Even with film photography, many professionals would choose special film to get certain looks and use special development techniques to push the photos beyond what was captured. One type of film might give more saturated colors. One type might give extra contrast. Choosing a brand of film was similar to choosing a picture style on your camera or a preset in your editing software. You could also "photoshop" film by dodging and burning—exposing different areas of the negative for longer or shorter time intervals.

It was all processing.

And if you take a digital photo... it is processed.

Even if all you do is hit the shutter button.

Unless you want to post a bunch of green photos on Instagram, you are not posting anything that is SOOC.

That top photo is the Bayer filter result before the data is processed with color information and "picture style" algorithms. A Bayer filter has two green pixels for every red and blue pixel, so the unprocessed version looks heavily tinted green.

So you can either let the algorithm inside your camera process the photo (which is fine), or you can do it manually in software such as Lightroom.

Either way, *something* is choosing the sharpness, contrast, saturation, and tone along with some other variables behind the scenes (sometimes referred to as a camera's "color science").

And if you think letting the robot inside your camera process your photo is somehow more "authentic" than a human being doing it... I feel you have things backward.

"Well, I use the neutral picture profile."

That is still an algorithm, friend.

A tiny robot runs around inside your camera guts and is instructed to not pull any lever, twist any knobs, or flip any switches that go beyond the predetermined 0,2,2,0,0,0 boundaries.

SO NATURAL!

There is nothing stopping you from manually processing your photo using those same boundaries. But when you do it yourself, you can account for variables the algorithm cannot. And a human being can almost always get a more authentic, true-to-life result than that robot playing with your pixels.

The truth is, almost every photo can benefit from some manual adjustments after the fact—even if you are going for a naturalistic result.

If you are happy with how your camera processes your photos, I am not judging or criticizing you. You can still get beautiful photos that way. Post-processing can be extra work and for some, takes away from the fun of photography. That is totally valid. I'm just asking people not brag that photos are more natural or pure or untouched.

Another common parlance in the photo education community is "get it right in camera."

I like this phrase a little better, but I still think it can be improved.

This mantra implies if you choose the proper settings before you take a photo, you will have less work to do later when processing your capture.

There is truth to that. And it is a fine goal to strive for.

But sometimes... shit happens.

People make mistakes. Cameras make mistakes. Or you have a smartphone with a plastic lens and a sensor that can fit on your fingertip and a bright sky and dark foreground is just a lot to ask of it to deal with.

One photo with perfect settings may not have captured that perfect expression that a different photo with botched settings did.

Or sometimes it is literally impossible to "get it right in camera." The environment may be too dark or too bright or both at the same time. Sometimes there are no settings that will get you the perfect exposure.

There is also a stigma against "fix it in post."

There is nothing wrong with fixing it in post. Some people are better at Lightroom/Photoshop than they are at taking photos and they are just leaning into the skill set they have more experience with. I have noticed this a lot with traditional artists that take up photography. It can take a while for their skill levels to match up.

Sometimes I will take a photo a certain way precisely because I know how to fix it in post. I will dramatically underexpose it to make sure I don't blow out the sky. Or I will take a photo that is too dark and another photo that is too bright so I can combine them later.

Or if I do not have time to dial in perfect settings, I will just use an auto mode and deal with whatever the camera gives me when I get to my computer. No shame in auto mode if you don't have the time or energy to do trial and error with manual settings.

And if anyone says "real photographers only shoot manual" you tell them to shut their gob.

In fact, anyone who starts any sentence with, "Real photographers..." is a gatekeeper and should be ignored.

If you take photos with artistic intent on a regular basis, you are a "real" photographer.

No other qualifications necessary.

The only time "fix it in post" is a problem is when your motivation is not in service to the best end result. Sometimes post-processing *is* the best solution. But if you are just procrastinating or you want to pass the buck to another person, you should try your best to summon some willpower and get it done properly.

The original intent of the phrase was to shame people who lazily shift the workload to others but somehow it morphed into meaning any post-processing is cheating or low effort. As if complicated editing is a button-press solution. Best practice would be allocating the labor to where it makes the most sense. You have to determine which approach will give you the desired result.

So if you don't feel like learning the fundamentals and just want to fix everything later rather than educating yourself, that would be a poor photography practice.

Or if you have someone else editing your photos or videos and you don't care how much extra work they'll need to do to "fix" them.

All that said... if "SOOC" and "get it right in camera" are poor expressions, what should the mantra be?

"Get the data you need to achieve your photographic goal." -Froggie

Okay, it's not exactly prose.

In my defense, photographic concepts don't always roll off the tongue.

If you are taking photos with artistic intent, you should always have a goal—an image in your head of the finished result. In the end, cameras are just data collection tools. If you know what you can do to that data and how it can be processed, edited, and manipulated, you can imagine realistic goals before taking a photo. Through practice, trial & error, and experience you will eventually learn methods to get the data you need. The methods used are inconsequential. Whatever works for you. Auto mode, manual mode, botched settings, too bright, too dark... eventually you learn if you have what you need even if it doesn't look right "in camera."

You can look at a photo preview and be like...

"I can recover those highlights"

"I have this great expression but I like the pose better in this photo. I can just move his head to the better photo."

"This will need a cat."

Photography is a minefield of gatekeeping, outdated thoughts, inaccurate expressions, poor understanding of technology, and just... bad advice.

But if you can navigate all of that, it really is a beautiful art form.

Whether you want very natural, true-to-life results...

Or a photo needs just a little help to become what it was always meant to be...

Or you want crazily photoshopped images that look nothing close to reality...

it is all valid and all wonderful.

When I got to this photo in Katrina's collection of vintage family imagery, I was pretty stumped as to how to approach it.

There is a major problem when you zoom in to 100%.

The paper it was developed on has little micro bumps. When it was scanned, the light from the scanner caused a highlight on one side of the bump and a shadow on the other. This causes a pattern which is nearly impossible to eliminate using traditional techniques.

The easiest way to fix this is actually quite clever. You scan it once, then turn it upside down and scan it again. The second pass reverses the side the highlight and shadow appear on, so you can combine the images in Photoshop and blend them together, essentially canceling out the bumps. It's weirdly analogous to noise canceling headphones.

But I don't have access to the physical copy of this image.

So... now what?

Enter Fast Fourier Transform or FFT.

This is a filter that uses extra fancy math to recognize patterns in the image and eliminate them. There is a pretty good filter for Photoshop, but it does not work easily with newer Macs with Apple Silicon. I really did not want to figure that out, and I also was too tired to go downstairs to my PC. However, I learned that a Photoshop competitor, Affinity Photo, has this filter built in. So, I downloaded a trial copy and started the process of trying to figure out how to fix this image.

It was amazingly simple. It brings up these star patterns and you just paint black circles over every one but the center. It literally felt like magic. (Full screen with sound recommended)

So once I did this process I ended up with this...

The paper still had a rough texture but it was much easier to work with using traditional techniques. I started with a black and white conversion and meticulously went through the photo zapping scratches and flaws and balancing tones and sharpening facial features. All of my photo restoration tricks were needed.

I eventually landed here...

I then thought maybe I should match the sepia tone of the original print, so I got to here...

I think the black and white looks nicer in this instance, but I always like having options and this is the most faithful representation of how the photo originally looked.

But there is something else I have been playing around with lately. Photoshop has these experimental neural filters that use cloud processing to do various tricky enhancements. Most of them are in beta and they can be very quirky. But they have a colorizer that tries to detect people and things and adds color to them. Not every black and white photo is a good candidate. I have found these professional portrait photos work decently, but the filter is very hit-and-miss. And there are tools within the filter to help you make a miss more of a hit, but often I have to accept the photo isn't going to work.

But I decided to give it a shot with this one and surprisingly, the colorizer got me most of the way there.

I can work with that.

The one thing it does well is skin. Manually painting color onto skin is tricky and requires more skill and knowledge of traditional painting techniques than I have. But if a filter can do that part for me, I can do the rest.

So after my touchups, I got the image to here.

All I have left to do is my standard color enhancements to make them a little less ghostly and a little more human.

And I present to you where I started and the finished product. I encourage you to flip back and forth.

This particular photo was a journey. I was so close to giving up on it. I'm glad I did one last google search to see if there was any way to save it.

Who knew a 19th century mathematician would have a hand in saving old photos?

Not only did I decide to verify this trick, but I scanned in 4 directions to see if I could get maximum pattern elimination. I also compare this technique to the FFT filter and also the scanner's descreen feature which is supposed to remove moire and other patterns.

If you want to see the entire workflow, feel free to watch the whole video.

If you just want to see the results, you can skip to 12:00 where I compare everything.

I hope you've been well! I wanted to reach out and first say that you inspired me many years ago to rescue a corgi! She was a grump, I think she may have taken her name (Elphaba) too literally. She recently crossed the rainbow bridge, but she was such fun and a joy. I hope our pups are playing together, somewhere peaceful.

I have a question unrelated to stumpy Corgis. I'm a veteran birth doula and an aspiring birth photographer! I've been trying to research cameras, lenses, and all sorts of technical stuff. I'm leaving towards purchasing the new Nikon ZF, because of the purported low-light capabilities.

Lenses are throwing me completely.

Do you have any guidance or resources to help a newbie like myself? Not really looking for an in-depth answer (I know how complicated things can get), but maybe a general push in the right direction?

If you don't want or can't answer, no hard feelings! I enjoy just seeing your posts on my dash and I hope the rest of your year is amazing and calm!-Steph

(continued...)

My budget is pretty flexible, since I am an independent contractor the expense would be tallied towards my taxes. But that being said, maybe $1-3k? I know it's important to invest more into lenses!

Usually, I am in a hospital, and lighting is extremely variable. I would be shooting mostly in low-light before baby is born. During delivery and after there is usually a spotlight or fluorescent lighting. The low lighting is exactly why I was looking at the new ZF, but if you have suggestions on that too I'm happy to hear them!

It's very cramped when the baby is born, most medical and support staff are clustered around the laboring person.

Warning! A lot of birth photos will have baby crowning or blood. It's a messy business, so I don't want to trigger you if you're sensitive to those sorts of images.

I will not be able to be directly next to the laboring parent, more than likely I'll be a few feet away, possibly behind the parents or standing on a stool.

After the baby is born, I'll be able to get closer to both parents and baby!

Here's a portfolio that is close to what I would like to provide (once again TW for blood and crowning):

https://www.sarahginderphotography.com/birth-photography-north-new-jersey

I cannot thank you enough for any help or advice, this whole endeavor is like learning a new language!

----------------------------

Note from Future Froggie...

I went way overboard on this response, as usual. I have decided I'm going to break it up into 3 parts.

First, an encyclopedia of lens terminology.

Second, a camera and lens buying guide.

Third, practical advice for shooting in cramped rooms with tricky lighting conditions.

While this will be geared towards the original ask, I think this could be helpful to a lot of people. So, let's learn about lenses!

--------------------------

Lenses throw everybody, just because there are so many options. It can be overwhelming to look at a picture like this and wonder what will suit you best.

It's a lot of pressure too, because lenses are more important than the camera in a lot of ways. Interchangeable lenses are probably the biggest advantage big cameras have over smartphones these days.

But I think I can help get you up to speed.

The following terms are photospeak you might hear in camera and lens reviews and if you aren't familiar with them, it can make it difficult to figure out what camera and lens to purchase.

I tried to put these in an order that makes sense, but some terms relate to other terms and you may have to read the list twice to make sure you understand how everything mushes together.

Froggie's Encyclopedia of Lens Terms

Lens Mount

Every camera has a specific lens mount. Sony calls theirs the E Mount. Nikon has the F Mount (older) and the Z Mount (mirrorless). So you need to make sure the lens you are looking at is compatible with the mount on your camera.

Mirrorless cameras all upgraded to a mount with a "short flange distance." Going without a mirror allows the lenses to be closer to the sensor.

Long story short... Short flange distance = easier lens design = sharper/lighter lenses.

However, if you want to use older DSLR lenses, there are adapters for Nikon and Canon that allow you to do that.

Aperture

"Aperture" is an opening at the front of the lens. It gets bigger to let in more light or smaller to restrict light.

Wider apertures have a shallower depth of field, causing blurry foregrounds and backgrounds outside the plane of focus. Smaller apertures expand the focus area to keep more stuff from being blurry, but they let in much less light and are difficult to use in dark environments.

Aperture can be a creative decision or it can be a technical decision or it can be a mix of both. If you need a blurry background, use a wider aperture. If you need everything in focus, use a smaller aperture. If you need more light in a dark scene, open it up.

F-stop

"F-stop" is a number representing how big the aperture is. A lower number is a bigger hole. Higher number is a smaller hole. It is helpful to memorize f-stops as they are not easily divisible. Cameras generally allow third stops, half stops, and full stops.

These are all a "full stop" apart.

Stop Down/Open Up

When someone says to "stop down" a lens, they are telling you to make the aperture smaller or use a higher f-stop number.

If they say to "open up" they are saying to make the hole bigger or lower the f-stop number.

Depth of Field (DoF)

Depth of field refers to how much of the photo is in focus. Things in front of the plane of focus will get blurrier and blurrier and things behind the plane of focus will get blurrier and blurrier. A shallow depth of field means only a tiny sliver of your image will be in focus. A deep depth of field means almost everything will be in focus.

The wider the aperture, the shallower the depth of field.

The smaller the aperture, the deeper the depth of field.

Focal Plane or Plane of Focus

The focal plane is the sharpest point within the depth of field. You can imagine an imaginary section of 3D space where things within the depth of field are sharp and things outside are blurry. The farther away from the focal plane, the blurrier they will get. But the focal plane is not always dead center of the depth of field.

Typically, at close distances, things will be sharp half in front of where you focused and half behind where you focused. As things get farther away, that changes to more 1/3 in front and 2/3 behind. The ratio changes even more at greater distances, but the 50-50 and 1/3-2/3 ratios are typically what photographers try to remember.

Shallow Depth of Field

The focal plane is something you need to be very aware of at close distances with a wide aperture—as the depth of field can end up as a tiny sliver.

Let's say you are only a few feet away from a baby and you have the aperture set at f/1.2. You focus on the nearest baby eye, and then you notice its ears and nose are out of focus.

The plane of focus and shallow depth of field are causing this issue. This might be a worthy compromise if you are in a dark room and your ISO is very high and you are worried about too much noise.

However, if you can use a flash or some kind of lighting, you can stop down your lens and increase that depth of field around the focal plane.

Bokeh

Bokeh is the quality of the blurriness. Some people are more obsessed with how good the blurry parts of the photo are more so than the in focus parts. Bokeh is typically judged by "bokeh balls" which are just out-of-focus lights in the background. While I like attractive bokeh balls as much as the next photographer, I will admit this is one of the sillier aspects of photography.

Field of View (FoV)/Angle of View

This is how much stuff you can fit in frame at a given distance. Wide angle lenses can fit more stuff in at a shorter distance and telephoto lenses can fill the frame with stuff that is farther away. The focal length of the lens determines the field of view. The focal length is designated by millimeters and the field of view by degrees.

Focal Length

Technically, this is "the distance between the lens's optical center and the camera's sensor."

In simpler terms, this is how you determine the field of view of a given lens.

A short focal length, like 10mm, will have a wider field of view. You have to be very close to your subject to fill the frame with them.

And a longer focal length, like 500mm, will allow you to fill the frame with your subject from farther distances.

Typically all lenses are designated by their focal length. If someone says, "Hand me the 50" they mean a 50mm lens.

35mm Equivalent

Not every camera has the same sized sensor. So when we talk about lenses, we need a reference to help us understand how a given lens will behave. A 50mm f/2.8 lens does not have the same field of view or depth of field when placed on different sensors. So, we need a standard for comparison.

The standard that is used is the "full frame" sensor which is roughly the same size as a 35mm piece of film.

Anything smaller is considered a "cropped sensor."

Those cropped sensor cameras have a "crop factor"—a simple multiplier that helps you understand how lenses compare. And when you use this multiplier it tells you the "35mm equivalent."

Confused yet? Yeah, sorry, it would be easier if camera manufacturers chose metrics that didn't change depending on the sensor, but this allows them to make their cameras and lenses seem more impressive in the marketing.

There are two main cropped sensors for ILCs. (Interchangeable lens cameras.) APS-C and Micro Four Thirds. They have a "crop factor" of 1.5x and 2x respectively. The Micro 4/3 sensor is half the size of Full Frame, therefore it has a 2x crop factor. And when you apply this crop factor to the aperture and focal length you can determine how a lens will behave.

For example, a 50mm f/2.8 lens on a micro 4/3 sensor would behave the same as a 100mm f/5.6 lens on a full frame—as 100mm is 2x 50mm and f/5.6 is 2 stops above f/2.8.

As you can see, the Micro 4/3 lens is not going to do as well in low light. The iPhone boasts an aperture of f/1.8 on its main lens, but when you figure out the 35mm equivalent, it's more like an f/8 lens.

I went to all the effort to explain this because it demonstrates that larger sensors allow you to work in cramped spaces with less light. If you want to use a 50mm in a hospital room, you probably can on a full frame. But on a Micro 4/3 you might need to be out in the hall because your lens is acting like it is 100mm. So the Zf would be a good choice in this regard.

Camera Shake

This is the bad kind of blurry. Humans are not tripods, so when you are handholding a lens, you need to make sure your shutter speed is fast enough to freeze the action of your image. Camera shake is very easy to control on wide angle lenses and very difficult to manage with telephoto lenses.

Reciprocal Rule

The reciprocal rule states that in order to get sharp photos without blurry camera shake, you must set your shutter speed to 1 over twice the focal length of your lens. So if you have a 100mm lens, you need to set your shutter speed at 1/200 to be safe.

This rule breaks down at a shutter speed of 1/50 if there is anything moving in your image. So if a dog is running or a car is driving by, it will have a motion trail, but at least it won't be due to your shaky hands.

Image Stabilization

This is a feature some lenses have that helps reduce camera shake. Image stabilization can counteract shaky hands and let you get sharp photos with a much slower shutter speed. Newer cameras have sensor stabilization which does the same thing. And if you pair up a stabilized sensor with a stabilized lens, it is almost as effective as using a tripod.

Stabilization is measured in stops. You might hear a lens has 4 stops of stabilization. That means you can handhold the lens and not get camera shake with a shutter speed 4 stops below the reciprocal rule. So for that 100mm lens, that 1/200 becomes roughly 1/12. And if your sensor has 4 stops, you could handhold a shot for nearly a second without any shake.

However, at shutter speeds that slow, if anything in the frame is moving, they will probably have motion blur. But for still life scenes, or maybe a sleeping baby, this can be very handy if you don't have a tripod with you.

If being able to handhold at lower shutter speeds seems important, then you might want to seek out a lens with stabilization and pair it to a camera with sensor stabilization for maximum stable-osity.

Lens Compression

Lens compression is kind of a myth, but I think we still call it compression because it is easier to explain to beginners than optical physics. The lens doesn't really compress anything, it's actually a matter of distance and the aforementioned physics. But I'm going to go with the easy explanation for now.

Lens compression is a phenomenon seen with different focal lengths. If you take a photo with a 500mm lens, the background will seem to compress with the foreground. Thus objects in the background will seem much larger in size.

This also happens with faces.

Wider lenses exaggerate distance. At 10mm, the lens would only be a few inches away from someone's face.

From the lens's point of view, the ears are several times farther away from the lens than the tip of the nose. So the lens is like, "Your ears are really far away! And far away things are really small, right?" So the lens gives us a big nose and small ears and makes us look a bit alien.

But at 100mm, the lens will be several yards away.

From this perspective, the lens feels like your ears and your nose are nearly the same distance away. And the lens is now like, "Things that are the same distance away do not get bigger or smaller." The lens seems to compress or flatten the face, causing a more flattering appearance in the image.

Minimum focus distance

This is sometimes called the working distance. This is how close you can get to your subject while maintaining focus. If you get too close, your camera will just hunt and freak out perpetually until you back up and it can lock on again. This isn't always advertised prominently for lenses, so you need to make sure the lens will be able to focus in the space you plan to use it.

Extension Tubes

Sometimes called "macro extension tubes." These are spacers you put between your camera and lens to decrease the minimum focus distance. In some cases you can even turn a normal lens into a macro lens. These tubes are able to stack and the more you put on, the more into the macro realm you can go. They come in smart and dumb versions. The dumb ones require you to manual focus whereas the smart ones can still use the autofocus system. I highly recommend the smart ones, as they are not too much more expensive.

Lens Imperfections

There are a few imperfections that can plague all lenses and their quality is sometimes judged by how well they mitigate those imperfections. Here are some of those attributes.

Lens Distortion

As lenses get wider, they allow a larger field of view by accepting light rays that are coming from the side of your lens. Let's look at this image again.

Your lens then has to correct those rays and send them to a square, flat sensor. If you look at the 180 degree fisheye, that entire arc has to be flattened and made square. And as good as optical engineering has become, the wider the lens, the harder it is to keep the image from distorting.

This is typically called "barrel distortion." Minor distortion can actually be corrected in editing software. Every lens has correction algorithms. Though sometimes it is best to embrace the distortion, like on a fisheye lens. Make the distortion a feature and not a bug.

Chromatic Aberration

This is the fancy name for color fringing. This is a defect in the lens that cause false colors to contaminate certain objects in a photo. Typically this happens around dark skinny things against a bright background, such as tree branches.

Modern lenses have nearly eliminated this, except for the super cheap models, but if you do end up with fringing, this can be easily corrected in Lightroom or Photoshop. And many lenses even have that correction built in and all you have to do is check a box.

Sharpness

You might not think of sharpness as an optical flaw, but no lens is perfectly sharp. And the quest to make a perfectly sharp lens involves engineering those optical flaws to a minimum.

A "sharp lens" is one with incredible fidelity. Even zoomed in beyond 100%, sharp lenses will show great detail. If you can't get close to the subject and need to crop your photo later, having a sharp lens can make up for the loss in resolution—as you can upscale without much loss in quality. If you plan to make large high quality prints, a sharp lens will help more than tons of megapixels.

That said, if you truly want to get the most out of a high megapixel camera, a sharp lens comes in handy here too. A smartphone may boast in the marketing as having 200 megapixels, but it has a tiny plastic lens. So even though it technically has 200 megapixels on the sensor, the lens will give it the equivalent of maybe 8-10 megapixels worth of detail. People forget, the lens has a resolution as well, and if the lens cannot resolve 200 megapixels, you aren't going to get a 200 megapixel image.

A sharp lens will allow for more detail than higher megapixels. In some cases you need to double or triple the number of pixels to see an increase in detail. Whereas you can put a super sharp lens on a 12 megapixel camera and blow any smartphone out of the water.

And if you put a sharp lens on a 50 megapixel camera, you can almost see into skin pores.

So... sharp = more detail. And more detail gives you greater cropping power for when you can't get close to babies.

Now, I am obligated to say that some photo nerds chase sharpness as if it is some holy grail. They need the sharpest lens so all of their pixels are perfect at 100% zoom even though no one ever looks at an image that close. There are amazing photos that have been blurry. There are amazing photos taken with 50 year old vintage glass. Sharpness is just another tool. If you need to crop. If you need to upscale. If you need to print large... it is a great help. But nearly every lens made for a modern mirrorless camera is "sharp" to some degree.

So, if you need extra sharpness for certain situations, do your research and find a lens that is sharp as can be. But sharpness should be like 8th on the list of priorities.

Soft Lens

A "soft" lens is how a non-sharp lens is referred to. Most modern optics for mirrorless cameras have some degree of sharposity.

Sharpitude.

Sharp...ness.

So you don't need to worry too much about getting a detrimentally soft lens unless you go super duper budget. This is why I usually recommend people skip the "kit lens" unless they absolutely can't afford anything better.

Though sometimes people purposely get vintage lenses because they don't like sharpness and prefer the "character" of older lenses. The imperfections can achieve a different artistic goal. Though this can also be achieved through lens filters... or Vaseline.

I'm looking at you, Barbara Walters.

Sharpness at the Corners

When I read that in my head just now I said it the same way I do "Panic! at the Disco."

Engineers will prioritize sharpness at the center of the lens since that is where most of the interesting stuff tends to be. But also, the light rays at the center tend to be the most parallel as they head to the sensor, so they don't need as much correction. The rays coming from the sides have to be bent and manipulated to correct for distortion, so keeping things sharp at the corners can be a challenge.

Now, knowing that, and knowing how the aperture works, you can infer that when you stop down your lens and make the hole smaller, all of the light rays are constricted to a smaller area. This makes them easier for your lens to deal with, so if a lens has problems with corner sharpness, you can usually stop down to improve this. So if a lens is soft at the corners at f/1.8, you might be able to go to f/2 or f/4 to get better results.

Vignetting

Vignetting is a circular area of darkness at the perimeter of your photo. This is another side effect caused by the same things as soft corners. When correcting those non-parallel light rays, it causes them to travel an ever so slightly farther distance getting to your sensor. And the inverse square law tells us that light becomes dimmer as it travels longer distances.

This is very easy to correct. Usually your camera has a setting to correct vignetting if you are outputting JPEG files. And if you are shooting RAW photos, your editing software should have a check box to fix the vignetting—usually the same one that fixes chromatic aberration. This is usually called "lens correction" in most menus.

Also, same as with corner sharpness, stopping down your lens will usually fix this optically rather than with software algorithms.

Contrast

Contrast is probably the most important attribute to determine lens quality. Good contrast can make a soft lens look good. But lens contrast is not always consistent. It can get better or worse depending on the lighting in your scene.

The best way to test the contrast of a lens is to take a picture of something that is backlit. A person with the sun behind them is a great indicator. If they have no light on them, the person should fall into inky darkness. But if a lens has poor contrast, they will seem like a faded gray.

Focus Breathing

Focus breathing is a phenomenon where your focal length changes depending on how far away your subject is. It's usually not a big deal and most people don't even notice it, but if you ever do video, it can cause a few headaches. Some people can get annoyed because they feel they aren't getting the advertised focal length on the lens they bought. Like, if you get a 300mm lens and it only goes to 250mm for things super far away, that can be annoying.

This video explains it in detail.

Lens Types

Prime Lens

A "prime lens" has a fixed focal length and cannot be zoomed. Typically prime lenses are "faster" (wider max aperture) and sharper. Weirdly they can be very inexpensive or the most expensive. They can be extremely lightweight or weigh a ton. And if you want the sharpest lens possible or the fastest lens possible or both, it will be expensive and heavy.

Having at least one fast prime is usually recommended for any professional photographer.

Zoom Lens

A "zoom lens" allows you to zoom. Obviously. But there are few that go below an aperture of f/2.8, so less light gathering and you sacrifice a bit of sharpness. However, if you don't know how much space you will have to work with, the flexibility of a zoom can be invaluable.

Be warned, while a cheap prime lens can still take fairly good photos, cheap zooms are usually pretty terrible. There are plenty of reasonably priced zoom lenses to choose from, but if the price seems too good to be true, I would trust that intinct.

Wide Angle Lens

A "wide angle lens" is any focal length below 35mm. Wider focal lengths allow you to get more stuff in the photo at shorter distances. A theme you might notice with photography is that every benefit has a compromise or consequence to go with it. Wide angle lenses are wonderful if you are in a cramped space. They also make it easy to keep everything in focus. But as you go wider, distances become exaggerated and barrel distortion becomes more pronounced and harder to correct.

Things that are close to the lens seem huge and things farther away seem tiny. One trick to remember is things in the center of the frame will be less affected by distortion. Something to take into account when taking those smartphone selfies.

If you look, the ball looks huge in frame because it was only a few inches from the lens. Otis was literally smaller in frame than the ball despite only being about 2 feet away. However, he doesn't look all stretchy like the ball because he is centered.

Standard Lens

A "standard" or "normal lens" represents about the same field of view as the human eye. Generally around 40mm to 55mm on a full frame camera (there is some debate on this, but close enough). This is right about where you can take pictures of faces without the unflattering side effects of wide angle.

Telephoto Lens

A "telephoto lens" allows you to stand farther away and still fill the frame with your subject. Usually lenses 200mm and above are considered telephoto. These are often heavy and expensive.

Specialty Lenses

Ultrawide

This is just an extremely wide angle lens. At this point, you just except the massive amounts of distortion and embrace it. These lenses are extremely fun.

Medium Telephoto

These are sometimes called "portrait" lenses as well. They are a little more tele than standard and not quite tele enough for long distance photography. Usually in the 70-200mm range. This is the focal range that allows you to still be close to your subject but you are far enough away to get extra flattering lens compression on faces.

Superzoom Lens

A "superzoom" has an extremely large focal range. It can go from very wide to very telephoto. These are usually not wonderful lenses, although they have improved on mirrorless cameras in recent years. There are a few that could even be used professionally now. But most are just a huge mediocre compromise for vacation pix.

The cheap ones aren't fast, they aren't sharp, and every time you zoom people think your camera is having an erection.

If you are traveling and you have no idea what you might be photographing and carrying around a bunch of lenses is impractical, these have utility. But the larger the focal range, the more mediocre they get. Typically if the zoom range exceeds ~150mm you will start noticing that mediocrity. So a 70-200mm can be fantastic. But an 18-300mm will be very mid.

Macro

A macro lens is any lens that has 1x or more magnification. 1x magnification is a designation that relates the sensor size to how much of the subject fills the frame of your image. For 1x, that ratio should be 1:1.

So if you imagine a quarter lying on top of an image sensor, that's how big the quarter should be in your photo. 2x magnification would be like if a quarter doubled in size and you laid it on top of the image sensor. And so on.

Beware of lenses claiming to be macro and really only having a short working distance. 0.5x is not macro, but is sometimes advertised as so.

Tilt Shift Lens

This is a very niche lens. Most people know of it from the photos that make everyone look like they are in a miniature land.

For every other lens, the focal plane is perpendicular. If you move the camera at an angle, the focal plane will match that movement. So what the tilt shift lens allows you to do is angle the focal plane so your depth of field goes in bonkers directions.

Product photographers love this because you can take a photo of an array of products from a 45 degree angle and keep everything in focus.

This image would be impossible to maintain complete focus of all the objects without a tilt shift lens.

In this example, without tilting the lens, the tip of the multitool is out of focus.

And now you can see the camera hasn't moved, but the lens is at a steeper angle. And you'll also notice the entire tool is in focus.

But wait, there's more! Did you forget about the shifting? Architectual photographers can use the shift function of the lens to correct perspective distortion and keep buildings looking straight.

Will this lens help in the photographing of infants?

Probably not.

But I bet you thought it was cool and are glad I included it.

Recommended Essential Lenses

I didn't know what to call this section. These are just the collection of lenses most photographers will try to acquire as they build out their kit.

Nifty Fifty

This is probably the first lens everyone should buy. Almost every brand has their own version. It is an inexpensive 50mm lens with a sub f/2 aperture. Canon's Nifty Fifty or "Plastic Fantastic" is probably the most famous example. It is only $125 and has an f/1.8 aperture.

This lens may not be the sharpest and it might have a lot of plastic-y, cheap feeling parts, but it is a wonderful way to get started with photography. You can use the wide aperture to experiment with bokeh and shallow depth of field. And the 50mm focal length is probably one of the most versatile. Not too wide, so people look normal, and not too tele, so you aren't a mile away from your subjects.

The Holy Trinity

The "Holy Trinity" is meant to describe the 3 lenses that can handle nearly every photographic task while maintaining professional quality results. Typically these lenses are all f/2.8 and are high quality zoom lenses. The 16-35mm, the 24-70mm, and the 70-200mm.

Most photographers can accomplish just about any task with these lenses in their bag.

Froggie's Holy Hexagon

That said, if I had an unlimited budget I would actually have 6 lenses to cover everything. Beyond the Holy Trinity, I would get a fast prime, an ultrawide, and a macro lens.

A fast prime can see in the dark and has more background blur. The nifty fifty would work great for this.

An ultrawide is one of the most fun lenses you will ever use, even if it distorts everything to a crazy degree and isn't useful very often. It is great for breaking you out of photographic ruts and can really get the creative juices flowing.

And a macro lens is not just useful for making tiny things big. It also allows you to focus at any distance. Sometimes you just need to get a tad bit closer than your other lenses will allow. Macro lenses are also pretty great portrait lenses and can serve multiple functions.

And if anyone is interested in sports or wildlife photos, a nice telephoto lens might be a seventh lens to consider.

I think that is the end of part 1.