CSotD: Analog Adams

Comments ⁵

1. Mat

   I think the biggest difference I see between using my cell phone and using my SLR camera for taking pictures is just the wide range of freedom I have with my large camera and the very limited range of freedom I have with my Cell phone.
   With my SLR, I can swap out lenses, whether I’m using a Fisheye or a long telephoto, I can capture a multitude of different focal lengths. I also have the option of getting super-fast primes for night-time photographing. Plus, I can attach all of the useful accessories to my camera, such as a tripod, filters of any shape and variety and off-camera flashes. I also have the freedom to have the camera function exactly how I want it to.
   The cell phone, on the other hand, is typically limited to a single focal length and aperture and frequently you’re locked out of controlling all of the settings within the camera (e.g. shutter speed, ISO rating, etc).
   What the cell phone has that the SLR doesn’t have is portability and a necessity to carry it around all the time, thus always having it available when I want to take pictures. Ultimately, that’s what I use it for. When I want to photograph an interesting item at the store or just take a quick picture of my bike to send to a friend, I use my cell phone. When I want to take a nice portrait of a client for use on a web site, I use the SLR (plus tripod, flash, etc).

2. Sherwood Harrington

   I would think that for journalistic purposes a major advantage of the cell phone camera over a DSLR is that it can be used in an unobtrusive — or even surreptitious — fashion.
   Mat covered the significant advantages of a DSLR over a cell phone camera, and I’ll add a couple of more minor ones.
   First for me is the phone’s lack of a viewfinder: in bright environments, the LCD simply isn’t bright enough to work well for me, and framing (let alone zooming) winds up being mostly guesswork. I note that newer point-n-shoot pocket cameras don’t come with a viewfinder now, either, so that may be the inexorable wave of the future.*
   Second is the steadiness issue. Maybe ironically, I find it a LOT easier to hold my bulky DSLR steady than to do so with the ultralight cell phone or my wife’s pocket camera.
   Both of those may be age-related issues, of course, and younger folks might not have any problem with them.
   *Addenda on the viewfinder issue:
   1) Using the LCD screen to frame all shots (“live view”) eats batteries incredibly quickly, especially if the screen is bright enough to be useful.
   2) I started noticing a few years ago that there’s a sharp generational divide in how people frame photos if they have the choice. Geezers prefer to mash the camera up against their noses and squint with one eye into a little hole at the top of the camera, while younger, hipper folks do it like Deering’s Adams up at the top.

3. Tom Maszerowski

   Ansel Adams spent as much or more time in the darkroom manipulating his negatives and prints as he did in the field taking the original photographs. There’s every reason to believe that had he lived into the digital age he would have embraced Photoshop and post-processing and run with it.
   But you would still recognize an Ansel Adams photograph no matter what he used.

4. Mike Peterson

   I’ve used a $200 point-and-click for years and run the results on the front page of the paper with nobody ever questioning it. I’ve taken some fine pictures — but you can’t cover sports, you can’t shoot at night and it’s hard to get good shots at large gatherings in barn-like venues unless you get right up close.
   And, of course, you wouldn’t with a phone, either, but you would with the $10K SLR, which is why we hire those guys.
   What I have learned about the viewfinder issue, though, is that there is an advantage to taking that broader, farther-back stance, because you see the action around you. This is similar to what you are supposed to do with telescopes (on land, at least) and even rifle sites, which is to keep both eyes open but only one focused, so the second eye tracks motion. Once you learn how to not get close to your camera as you were first taught to, you find that following the action becomes much more fluid and natural.
   Part of that includes being willing to shoot a wider picture than you will actually use. You can set your camera such that there are plenty of pixels left once you crop down to the part of the photo you actually want. I went round and round with my reporters, begging them to quit “cropping through the viewfinder” because it limited what I was able to do on the page. Give me the wide view and I’ll narrow it down to the optimum image.
   Obviously, there were control issues involved. If they only shot what they wanted me to use, I couldn’t do much about it.
   Which reminds me of a story, but let’s break this up and make that the next entry …

5. Mike Peterson

   I knew a photographer who had worked in Louisiana and was assigned to get a shot of a car being pulled out of Lake Pontchatrain several days after it had plunged in. His editor specifically ordered a corpse shot.
   Yeah.
   So he got a long shot of the crane and then, well, gosh, somehow none of the close-ups came out. In the days of film, you could shrug, because you didn’t know what you had until you got back to the darkroom.
   I told that story to a photog after the conversion to digital and he laughed. No problem! he said. Sometimes, if the camera gets jarred, there’s a funny kind of static burst and the memory card gets wiped out.
   Please don’t tell any editors that this accident is occasionally no accident. I’m the only one who knows.