One of the things that stuck with me at the Photo Synthesis exhibit, in July, was when one of the visitors, who was admiring one of my photos, turned to me and said, "You take such wonderful pictures. You must have a great camera."
As well-meaning as the comment was, it stung a little. It was as though the person was giving credit to the equipment, rather than to the photographer. It was as though the person was saying, "Anybody with that camera could have taken that shot."
Does the camera matter? If I had a basic camera, would I have been able to capture as good an image?
Looking at the photos that I had chosen for the exhibition, I had images that I had captured with my old Minolta X-700, my Nikon D80, my Nikon D7200, and my Nikon D750. One camera was an SLR that used 35mm film: the rest were various qualities of digital SLRs. Could anyone tell the difference as to which camera took which shot?
The other week, I went to a photography meetup at a farm that had a field full of sunflowers. I shared some of my photos from that event for a Wordless Wednesday post and for last week's Photo Friday.
For that photo shoot, I brought three cameras: my D750, with a fixed 50mm f/1.8 lens; my D7200, with an 18-105mm f/3.5-5.6 zoom lens; and my smartphone. With all three cameras, I took shots that included the whole field and close-up shots.
If the quality of the camera determines whether the photo is great, you should be able to tell which camera captured what image, right? The D750 body and lens cost about $2750; the D7200, about $1900; and the smartphone, about $960. The D750 has a full-frame sensor; the D7200, a cropped sensor; and the smartphone, a miniscule sensor.
So, of the following three images, what camera took which photo?
Leave your guesses in the Comments section. I'll share the results next week.
My photo meetup group has a page upon which we can share our images from an event, and I only shared one photo so far. I've had a lot of likes and some encouraging comments. Yet, that photo was shot on my smartphone. And, apart from a bit of cropping, there was no post processing.
Having high-end equipment is nice to have but you still need to know how to envision a shot before you capture it: you need to know how to compose it and how to set the camera to optimize your vision for the final image. You can have an expensive camera and still take a lousy photograph, just as you can have a less-expensive camera and take a great shot.
There's that adage that the best camera is the one you've got. If you have several, of differing quality, it's all down to you.
To the person who admired my photo and surmised that I must have a good camera, I wished that I could have responded, "Actually, I took that shot on my smartphone." But I had captured the shot with my D7200, which I had only owned for a month or so and was still getting familiar with the settings.
But you know what? If you're ever at Toronto's Pearson International Airport and find yourself at the Mill Street Brew Pub in the terminal, look for the giant photo of the pub's Ottawa location. It's a large black-and-white image of the old mill, and Mill Street's sign is the only thing in colour.
I took that photo. On an old iPhone 4S. And Mill Street paid me for it.
Oh, and the photo from last week's Photo Friday? The photo was shot with my D750 but after all of the post processing, where the oversaturated background was AI-produced, it could have just as easily been shot with my smartphone.
Happy Friday!
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