insights into photography
I was teaching the first session of our Understanding Your DSLR Camera last night and in encouraging the students to explore their subjects and not to just take a picture from their standing position set me thinking about the difference between the human eye and a camera. Why can’t we just point a camera and capture what we see, how hard can it be? I am often told by those new to photography that what their cameras reproduce is not what they see so why is that. Doing a bit of research I found my way back to the ever excellent Cambridge in Colour website. This has to be the most technically correct site on photography, the detail and explanations are precise as a very precise thing, say an atomic clock….Here is a short bit of what is explained, go here for the full detail with pictures and diagrams, it is interesting
Portrait of Dennis Stock by Andreas Feininger
Our eyes are able to look around a scene and dynamically adjust based on subject matter, whereas cameras capture a single still image. This trait accounts for many of our commonly understood advantages over cameras. For example, our eyes can compensate as we focus on regions of varying brightness, can look around to encompass a broader angle of view, or can alternately focus on objects at a variety of distances…….
Our central angle of view — around 40-60° — is what most impacts our perception. Subjectively, this would correspond with the angle over which you could recall objects without moving your eyes. Incidentally, this is close to a 50 mm “normal” focal length lens on a full frame camera (43 mm to be precise), or a 27 mm focal length on a camera with a 1.6X crop factor. Although this doesn’t reproduce the full angle of view at which we see, it does correspond well with what we perceive as having the best trade-off between different types of distortion:…….
Most current digital cameras have 5-20 megapixels, which is often cited as falling far short of our own visual system. This is based on the fact that at 20/20 vision, the human eye is able to resolve the equivalent of a 52 megapixel camera (assuming a 60° angle of view)……
Taking the above into account, a single glance by our eyes is therefore only capable of perceiving detail comparable to a 5-15 megapixel camera….
Overall, most of the advantages of our visual system stem from the fact that our mind is able to intelligently interpret the information from our eyes, whereas with a camera, all we have is the raw image. Even so, current digital cameras fare surprisingly well, and surpass our own eyes for several visual capabilities. The real winner is the photographer who is able to intelligently assemble multiple camera images — thereby surpassing even our own mental image. Go here for the full article on Cambridge in Colour
Would you believe that in the last 20 months we have made 1,000 posts about photography, wow seems like it was only a few weeks ago we dipped our toes into the world of blogging. Urged on by our favourite music blogger The Recommender to get stuck in, to share our knowledge and passion about photography; to spread the word and to bring the best photographs, photographers, tutorials, camera reviews, information about exhibitions and the wonder of the world of photography to those who care, you. Since October 2010 we have had over 120,000 views, our highest day was 957, I guess we must be doing something right some of the time.
©Steve McCurry – this is probably The Great Steve’s most famous picture but you should go and see his other work start here
We have had a look at our stats and rather encouragingly find that there is as much interest from you in the fantastic photographers we have brought to your attention as there is in cameras and tutorials. A good healthy mix we think.
Here is a list of the top 12 posts the highest has got over 6,000 views
https://oxfordschoolofphotography.wordpress.com/2011/03/10/top-10-compact-cameras-2011/
https://oxfordschoolofphotography.wordpress.com/2010/12/14/light-painting/
https://oxfordschoolofphotography.wordpress.com/2011/07/27/duane-michals-sequences/
https://oxfordschoolofphotography.wordpress.com/2011/12/06/best-superzoom-bridge-cameras-2011/
https://oxfordschoolofphotography.wordpress.com/2012/02/10/nikon-d800-review/
https://oxfordschoolofphotography.wordpress.com/2011/01/18/cecil-beaton-photographer/
https://oxfordschoolofphotography.wordpress.com/2011/11/04/20-free-photography-ebooks/
The top aggregated photographer, that is the most views across all the posts we have made is Steve McCurry this link should get you to all the articles where we have mentioned Steve
The interesting thing we have found is how many of you are interested in the less obvious photographers, Duane Michals comes top for visits to a single post, Cecil Beaton, Nan Goldin and Dorothea Lange all feature heavily, I am sure you never thought you would see those 4 names in the same sentence.
Top camera before and after it’s release was the Nikon D800
The most viewed tutorial was on Light Painting
Our most favourite sources for finding the best photography on the web, and in no particular order are:
Lightstalking, fantastic for tutorials, tips, ideas, features
Digital-Photo-School similar to Lightstalking and also from Australia
Cambridge In Colour for the most sophisticated and intelligent tutorials
The Denver Post for some of the best photojournalism around
The Atlantic, same as The Denver Post, fantastic images from around the world
The British Journal of Photography, just the most complete magazine for photographers
The Pixelated Image blog, David DuChemin is just the man, what a photographer an eye with soul
Photo Tuts for Photoshop and Lightroom tutorials
DP Review, where you find out about cameras, the best review site
Steve’s Digicams, as DP Review a great place to find out about cameras
Tripwire Magazine, we like this for general articles on photography
Magnum, the world’s most famous photo agency, we love this bit Magnum In Motion
Photography Served, a place for finding new photographers with great work
Photography Now, such a beautiful site showcasing the works of the masters of photography
There are undoubtedly lots more we could include here but if you are a regular to our site you will know who we love as inspiration and as a source of great articles.
We have had such great response to the articles we post, the sharing is the thing, finding what is wonderful and putting it out there. We greatly appreciate hearing from you and would welcome more ‘finds’ from you, would consider articles or portfolios you may wish to share with the thousands of like minded people we reach. Here is to the next 1000 posts
Let me direct you back to Cambridge In Colour, a really great website with excellent tutorials. It looks as if they have made their web site even easier to navigate and have arranged their tutorials by type, here is a list of their camera based tutorials
This excellent tutorial on the use of filters with digital cameras from the always helpful Sean McHugh at Cambridge in Colour is another in the series of must read tutorials from CIC
“Camera lens filters still have many uses in digital photography, and should be an important part of any photographer’s camera bag. These can include polarizing filters to reduce glare and improve saturation, or simple UV/haze filters to provide extra protection for the front of your lens. This tutorial aims to familiarize one with these and other filter options that cannot be reproduced using digital editing techniques. Common problems/disadvantages and filter sizes are discussed towards the end.”
One of the things I teach in our Understanding Your DSLR Camera course is the use of graduated neutral density filters. There are very few filters that we need for dslrs probably a gnd and a polariser are about it. This excellent tutorial from Sean McHugh at Cambridge in Colour explains how and why you should be using a gnd. more here…….. If you would like to read Sean’s tutorial on using a polariser go here
Oxford School of Photography 