I have rewritten this blog so many times just because I am not exactly sure how I should present the blog. I wanted to write a journal about how and why I made the choice and how much I learnt along the way. I wanted to write a guide for all those newbies who like me, needed just some little more info before buying equipment.
At the end I realise I am writing way too much for each and I probably won't be bother to format the whole thing.
So here goes the most important points (?) when you (newbies) go on buy any lens/camera:
1. Your camera: If you are looking to study/learn/take photography as a hobby, I strongly against you buying Full frame. It's more expensive. It's bulky (other than A7 series) Lens are expensive and bulky. It can be harder to learn compared to other cameras.
I would highly suggest you to get a mirrorless interchangeable lens system. I personally got a A6000. Basically any price range around that are all extremely good cameras and the difference is ignorable.
The biggest reason why a mirrorless apsc is the best system imo is because it is easy to learn.
-Straight out from the box, the much better AF than Point and shoot will already make your photos better. -It is light, meaning you are more likely to carry it around and snap more photos. The more you snap, the better you understand the Fstop etcetc all those numbers interactions and eventually you will start taking less photos but more better ones. -Lens and camera are cheaper.
2. Your First Lens if you are keen on studying photography, get a prime lens A prime lens is one that can't zoom in or out. At first you might think this is crazy, but you will learn so much more out of a prime lens than a zoom lens. You will learn how to walk around, framing shots. You will also have better image quality, usually at a lower price and a faster lens (low fstop like F1.8) Faster lens enables you to take night shots easier as well. It is also usually pretty light.
4. Your second Lens After a while, you will feel the limitation of your current lens and also, you would know what kind of photos you would like to shoot. landscape? Street photography? etc
Assuming you listened to my no.3 advice, it is likely not because of the F stop or the sharpness.
For me, it was that Hong Kong is just a very tight space, I can't always get the shot I want.
So I need a lens that is wide angle, short focal length and from that, I bought a legacy lens. (basically vintage lens)
I bought Voigtlander CV15mm specifically.
It is the lens that really push me to learn more because it is difficult to use: - It requires manual focus, manual setting for F stop - It has some issue like the purple-ish colour stain on the corners - The Fstop value is not so good, F4.5
For the first one, I have learnt how to understand the numbers written on the lens (not only are they useful, they look amazing)
For the second one, I learnt how to use corner fix and more editting skill. (and even just leave it in to make the photo more artistic)
For the third one, I learnt how to use this lens in specific situations and cope with the disadvantages and how to use it in different settings (for example, use it for black and white photography)
5. Other equipment dehumidifier container some lens cleaning tools. Camera bag Spare battery Fast SD card
These are must buys
The rest will depend on your photography style. CPL - useful for landscape ND filter - very cool with long exposure shots Tripod - very useful, I would recommend everyone to get one because eventually there will be a time when you will need it. Timer remote controller - very useful for night shots and also time lapse 6. Know when to stop buying Remember this: Know what you need, and only get them and LEARN how to use them to their potential. Buying too much will only end up not using enough of any and not good at any of them.
One good point about legacy lens is that you really can learn how to adapt to the lens because F stop and focus is all on the lens body.
Hope you guys enjoy reading it. If it helped one person, then I am pretty happy :D
Final tips: Shoot RAW - Edit with Lightroom - don't be lazy because the difference is HUGE
I'm by no mean a professional nor a good photographer but I think you miss some key points.
You speak a lot about the F-stop but you don't explain how a low or a high F-stop influences the shot. You speak about how a fast lens has a low F-stop, which is true. But a true beginner will mainly shoot in conditions, where the speed of his camera is not that important. You don't mention the impact of the aperture on the depth of field, which in my opinion is more important. A lower F-stop will have a very short depth. A higher F-stop will allow you to have more sharp elements in your picture. Typically, shooting landscapes with f/1.8 may not give you the expected result. I shoot them between f/8 and f/16 depending on the light.
Faster lens enables you to take night shots easier as well.
You won't shoot true night shots while holding your camera. You will always using a tripod. The exposure time is way to long to be completely still and not to blur the image. A rule of thumb says that you won't be able to shoot a sharp image if your shutter speed is slower than 1 over your zoom. For example, if you shoot with a fully extended 200 mm zoom, you should try to always have a shutter speed of at least 1/200. Of course, this applies only if you hold the camera.
If you shoot in bad light conditions, you should try to get up with your ISO to get an acceptable shutter speed (or use a tripod).
By the way, do you have a place where you upload some pictures online (like 500px, Flickr, etc) ? I always love to look at nice pictures !
Always amazed by the detail , equipment and expertise that is required for photography.
For the longest time I was incredibly ignorant and belittling of the whole field thinking "anyone can just point and shoot a camera" but researching it just blows me away.
Anyway good luck with the hobby and thanks for the interesting read. Also I would like a link if you are uploading pictures anywhere
I find this blog is very misleading and felt compelled to present some counter-arguments.
There is a reason that the following saying is very popular amongst people who teach photography: "The best camera is the one you have with you". It's because it's the truth. When starting out with photography, your main focus should be taking a lot of pictures while learning the basics, not the gear. The camera doesn't make the photograph, the photographer does. Just like the guitar or the voice doesn't make the song, the songwriter does. You can give the best photographer in the world a horrible camera, and he will still take amazing photographs. This does not hold true for the reverse scenario.
When learning photography, the novice photographer should focus on composition, light, colour, texture, and so on. These exercises can be done using the cheapest digital cameras on the market (and many smartphone cameras as well). Next comes the basics of making desirable exposures (shutter speed, aperture, iso, exposure compensation, etc.). Finally, when the fundamentals are in place, the intermediate photographer can start playing around with exotic lenses (macro, tele, prime, etc.) and fancy cameras (full-frame, micro four thirds, whatever). Of course one can learn the fundamentals with the world's most advanced/expensive setup, but more often than not, all the options will be perplexing and obstructive rather than helpful and guiding.
When the pictures start to come out decently (fundamentals, gear, setting, etc. are all coming together) and a minimum of errors are made during the shooting of images (over/under exposure, wrong white balance, wrong focus, wrong gear, etc.) digital photo editing can be used to enhance great photographs. No matter how good you are at Photoshop, you can't magically make a bad photo good.
2. Your First Lens if you are keen on studying photography, get a prime lens A prime lens is one that can't zoom in or out. At first you might think this is crazy, but you will learn so much more out of a prime lens than a zoom lens. You will learn how to walk around, framing shots.
This is bad advice. When studying photography you should be experimenting with a wide array of different focal lengths, rather than tying yourself to a single focal length. Even if you choose to get a very versatile prime (let's say a fast 50mm) you would still be loosing out on tons of great pictures. The "kit" lenses that usually follow with system cameras are what you really want, and thus they are included in many packages. These lenses are very cheap all-round lenses that allow you to take decent images in almost every situation. From there, the intermediate photographers inventory can be expanded as needed for more specialised tasks (or simply superior image quality). There are most definitely lessons to be learned by practicing with prime lenses, but it shouldn't be the first lens you buy.
Of course one can learn the fundamentals with the world's most advanced/expensive setup, but more often than not, all the options will be perplexing and obstructive rather than helpful and guiding.
Personally I played around with a point and shoot digital camera that was lying around for a little bit, but then I just got a used DSLR and I enjoyed it a lot. The options are not too interesting to me. Just put it on manual and play with the aperture and the shutter speed. A $200 point and shoot won't really let you do that (only in a very limited fashion), and even though you can take interesting pictures with it and it can be a lot of fun and very convenient to keep in your pocket, there's a lot to be said for just getting a DSLR and learning how a camera actually works without all the auto-functions. There's really only two things, and the rest you can do in post on the computer I think. I think I agree with your basic feeling and direction here, but I just want to say there's a world of difference between the little rectangles and the DSLRs. I'm definitely on the same page as you with getting a versatile lens and not going crazy about peripherals.
The past few weeks I've been thinking about hobbies/interests that I would potentially find myself really interested in and photography has been one of them. I know there is a lot more to photography than just what I initially thought as KelsierSC mentioned, and I haven't come to the conclusion that it is in fact something I am I going to start doing, but it's in consideration right now.
I've always been impressed by how amazing some photos look and jealous of the skill required to make them look the way they do. I would be really proud of myself if I were able to do some of those things, but I always felt really intimidated by the learning curve as I don't know the first thing about photography, and as such never bothered learning. But everybody starts at step 1, right? Anyways, like I said, I'm still intrigued by it, so it's nice to read stuff like this from others.
The advice to get prime lenses comes, in part, from another era when zooms were crap. They aren't crap now, and there are a lot of kit zooms floating around that are quite nice. Olympus in particular makes a very nice 14-42 + 40-150 set that aren't that expensive for Micro Four Thirds.
The only reason to get a prime -- which is an important reason -- is that they give you access to wide apertures. This does two things for you: it lets you shoot in less light, and it lets you have access to narrow depth of field effects in settings other than closeup work. ("Less light" is getting increasingly irrelevant as many modern cameras can take reasonable pictures at stratospheric ISO's.) Learning to manipulate focus is a useful thing to learn, but you're right that you don't have to necessarily learn it at the beginning. Still, there are enough fast manual focus 50mm primes available cheaply at pawn shops and the like that I think everyone should track one down; they are great for portraits on Four Thirds or crop cameras.
In response to most people who question the first lens choice as prime lens: It is partly true that primes were preferred over zoom because zoom lense weren't that great back then.
However I think this is what really makes the lens great (and more challenging) for new comers: 1. Knowing your lens and your body A fix focal length means that if you are out on the street, you are seeing what you know you can frame with. Unlike zoom where you go on thinking how to zoom (and unless you have a fixed aperature zoom lens, you even need to take in consideration of the aperture change as you zoom in and out)
Why is fixed focal length the best for street photography (well, most of the time) is because it is extremely quick from framing, pointing and shooting. All while using hyper focal distance to focus everything, no need to rely on auto focus.
You learn to measure distance, something that zoom lens users aren't usually good at.
(just look at how smooth he is from framing to shooting with a dslr:
2. It is versatile You can do landscape. (yes seriously, look it up) You can do portrait. You can do food shots. Sport at low light. And everything you do, you are doing your framing with your body.
@nunun As for this saying: "The best camera is the one you have with you", I agree with it, which is why I suggest a mirrorless due to their light weight. but I disagree on your point about any digital camera will be fine.
hardly any point and shoot offers enough manual control for you to learn from it, their interface are often extremely difficult to control. A photographer newcomer should learn composition and how to work with the situations they have in front of them. imo, Point and shoot are for two big group of consumers: - Causal shooters - Very experienced photographers
Only the great photographers know how much they are giving up for the benefit of a point and shoot camera. An inter-changable lens system isn't necessarily cheaper / better either.
========================================================================================== you can check my photos here : http://etisme.imgur.com/all/ I am still trying to set up my lightroom category before I upload to flickr because at the moment it's a mess
Some of these shots are my 2nd day of obtaining this camera and lens, (mostly those with the overexposed sky because I didn't have CPL and I didn't learn the sunny 16 guide thing) the B&W are a bit grainy because I am still learning to do the film grain thing on lightroom which I am learning. Some are jpegs that I never bothered to photoshop because they were testshots but turned out pretty nicely
any feedback is welcomed though :D just ignore the noise at the moment since I am still learning lightroom and all
On August 19 2014 11:23 -Kaiser- wrote: "This is a recent hobby of mine. I'm an expert and you should buy all this shit before you start taking pictures."
I didn't claim I am am expert lol
Its normal to buy equipments (the right one for you) before you go deep into the hobby Do you not look for your options before you purchase your phone? You certainly won't buy plastic string badminton racket if you want to learn badminton, right?
Afterall, these are my experience and I have always emphasis what good these gears do for beginners, like me. That's why I am not recommending dslr either and not comparing similar priced mirrorless cameras.
In fact if you take a point and shoot, cheap one, some photography class right out reject your application (happened to my dad sadly) Plus it's not like the entry class is that much more expensive than usual point and shoot anyway
The only thing that is essential, is the camera. But you have options with your lens, taking the body and a separate lens can offer a complete different photo shooting experience at the same cost. Of cause it's worth looking at.
On August 19 2014 13:20 ETisME wrote: Its normal to buy equipments (the right one for you) before you go deep into the hobby Do you not look for your options before you purchase your phone? You certainly won't buy plastic string badminton racket if you want to learn badminton, right?
You sound like one of those guys that buys a $700 amp before he learns any chords.
On August 19 2014 13:20 ETisME wrote: Its normal to buy equipments (the right one for you) before you go deep into the hobby Do you not look for your options before you purchase your phone? You certainly won't buy plastic string badminton racket if you want to learn badminton, right?
You sound like one of those guys that buys a $700 amp before he learns any chords.
funny thing is, I work as a purchaser in a trading company, i do extensive research for high tech products components, negotiating materials costing, evaluating its impact on the final product etc :p I would say I know how much value I am getting from my investment a lot more than you do
I looked at your photos and I think your technique is pretty good. But your compositions are ugly as hell. You need to simplify rather than trying to cram into the frame as many shapes as possible. Every photo should have meaning. You should be able to say "This photo is about ____ ."
On August 19 2014 13:20 ETisME wrote: Its normal to buy equipments (the right one for you) before you go deep into the hobby Do you not look for your options before you purchase your phone? You certainly won't buy plastic string badminton racket if you want to learn badminton, right?
You sound like one of those guys that buys a $700 amp before he learns any chords.
funny thing is, I work as a purchaser in a trading company, i do extensive research for high tech products components, negotiating materials costing, evaluating its impact on the final product etc :p I would say I know how much value I am getting from my investment a lot more than you do
But your photos are terrible. There's no composition in any of them. The point I'm making is you buy all this shit to try and be a photographer before you learned anything about how to actually take good photos. It isn't about equipment. You can take the most high res picture of a piece of dog shit you want, but it's still a picture of dog shit. And yours wouldn't even have composition.
Just like you would buy that $700 amp. Yeah, the sound is nice, just like your image quality is nice. But the songs you play will be as bad as the pictures you take.
EDIT: In going through and finding pictures to improve with a basic crop, your fountain kid picture is your best one.
Your 700dollars amp is a terrible analogy, because I am not buying amps, I am buying a guitar. You won't buy out of tune guitars to learn how to play music for example, the amps only amplify the music quality.
I have said those are test shots, the success rate for street photography is low, let alone adjusting to a new lens and a new camera. Even the kid in fountain was a test shot of the f1.8 and the 11fps shots focusing and distance and learning full manual settings. Same with tripod and time lapse for example (which I am currently testing also)
Hell I wouldn't even be able to take that photo if I didn't have a fast lens and a fast manual control scheme unless I somehow reframe the whole shot into something else.
Maybe you don't know but there is a huge mechanical side to photography and not just the photographer, you can see why people post their exif data out is because thats also showing how clever the photographer was at taking that shot, not just the composition. And you pretty much have to learn the limit of your camera plus lens setup before doing shots, something that's absent in ur music example.
On August 23 2014 15:31 ETisME wrote: Your 700dollars amp is a terrible analogy, because I am not buying amps, I am buying a guitar. You won't buy out of tune guitars to learn how to play music for example, the amps only amplify the music quality.
I have said those are test shots, the success rate for street photography is low, let alone adjusting to a new lens and a new camera. Even the kid in fountain was a test shot of the f1.8 and the 11fps shots focusing distance.
Hell I wouldn't even be able to take that photo if I didn't have a fast lens
You said you were testing out technicals, such as filters, camera settings, and post-processing. But those aren't the problem in your test shots, the problem is your compositions are incredibly boring.
You also said you were experimenting with various fake grain effects which makes me automatically hate you.
You are backtracking on your argument when facing criticism, because your argument really doesn't make sense. The Voigtlander 15 is a fairly specialized lens and it comes at a hefty price -- you could buy many entry level DSLRs at that price. Yet somehow you're saying its not about the price it is about the value of the equipment and the learning experience from shooting with a manual lens.
Well in that case, why are you using a mirrorless APS-C digital? If you want the best value per dollar for something that will last forever, and that forces you to distill photography down to the bare bones, why aren't you suggesting that everyone start with 135 film?
If your goal is to take photos of your kid while she runs around sports games and plays with birthday toys, just take any entry level DSLR with 18-55 kit (and try to grab a bundle with the 55-200 standard tele zoom thrown in!) and be done with it.
If your goal is to approach it as skill, at the minimal cost of learning, you can buy an amazing full frame sensor with fast aperture prime for under $100 -- I picked up a Pentax ME Super with 50 f/1.4 for $55 and an Olympus XA2 with XA11 flash for $22!
Film is free, because there are tons of expired rolls of Kodak or Fuji film from 2000 that you can get pretty much anywhere and your first 24-26 photos are going to suck anyways so no need to waste actual film. It costs anywhere from $5-10 to get a roll developed and scanned (or shoot BW and develop it yourself!). Because you're shooting film that gets scanned to legacy media in tiny JPEGs -you are forced to think about every shot since you can't just dump 40000 snapshits onto a 32 GB card -you aren't lulled into a cognitive bias about how good your photo is because you don't see it for 2-3 weeks depending on how fast you finish the roll and develop times and when you get it back you realize your composition was fucking awful -you learn how to judge exposure, because your camera's meter is garbage and it is inconvenient to pull out your phone every time to use it as a rudimentary lightmeter -you learn about DoF, because you really want to be able to zone focus because otherwise you're stuck fiddling with focus for a billion years while your subject moves out of frame (still applies even if you are a rangefinder elitist) -you learn about composition because you can't just shoot f/1.8 and crank up the saturation and go LOOK COLORS LOOK BOKEH ART -you don't have to deal with any photoshop bullshit (just try to digitally post-process cheap film scans)
Some people are content with being Bronze in SC2 and playing Arcarde and they have money so they buy Razer gear and feel gamer chiq. Who cares about them.
You're telling someone trying to learn BW that the first thing they have to do is get a Filco because Razer is for plebeians and won't help them get their APM up.
On August 23 2014 15:31 ETisME wrote: Your 700dollars amp is a terrible analogy, because I am not buying amps, I am buying a guitar. You won't buy out of tune guitars to learn how to play music for example, the amps only amplify the music quality.
I have said those are test shots, the success rate for street photography is low, let alone adjusting to a new lens and a new camera. Even the kid in fountain was a test shot of the f1.8 and the 11fps shots focusing distance.
Hell I wouldn't even be able to take that photo if I didn't have a fast lens
You said you were testing out technicals, such as filters, camera settings, and post-processing. But those aren't the problem in your test shots, the problem is your compositions are incredibly boring.
You also said you were experimenting with various fake grain effects which makes me automatically hate you.
You are backtracking on your argument when facing criticism, because your argument really doesn't make sense. The Voigtlander 15 is a fairly specialized lens and it comes at a hefty price -- you could buy many entry level DSLRs at that price. Yet somehow you're saying its not about the price it is about the value of the equipment and the learning experience from shooting with a manual lens.
Well in that case, why are you using a mirrorless APS-C digital? If you want the best value per dollar for something that will last forever, and that forces you to distill photography down to the bare bones, why aren't you suggesting that everyone start with 135 film?
If your goal is to take photos of your kid while she runs around sports games and plays with birthday toys, just take any entry level DSLR with 18-55 kit (and try to grab a bundle with the 55-200 standard tele zoom thrown in!) and be done with it.
If your goal is to approach it as skill, at the minimal cost of learning, you can buy an amazing full frame sensor with fast aperture prime for under $100 -- I picked up a Pentax ME Super with 50 f/1.4 for $55 and an Olympus XA2 with XA11 flash for $22!
Film is free, because there are tons of expired rolls of Kodak or Fuji film from 2000 that you can get pretty much anywhere and your first 24-26 photos are going to suck anyways so no need to waste actual film. It costs anywhere from $5-10 to get a roll developed and scanned (or shoot BW and develop it yourself!). Because you're shooting film that gets scanned to legacy media in tiny JPEGs -you are forced to think about every shot since you can't just dump 40000 snapshits onto a 32 GB card -you aren't lulled into a cognitive bias about how good your photo is because you don't see it for 2-3 weeks depending on how fast you finish the roll and develop times and when you get it back you realize your composition was fucking awful -you learn how to judge exposure, because your camera's meter is garbage and it is inconvenient to pull out your phone every time to use it as a rudimentary lightmeter -you learn about DoF, because you really want to be able to zone focus because otherwise you're stuck fiddling with focus for a billion years while your subject moves out of frame (still applies even if you are a rangefinder elitist) -you learn about composition because you can't just shoot f/1.8 and crank up the saturation and go LOOK COLORS LOOK BOKEH ART -you don't have to deal with any photoshop bullshit (just try to digitally post-process cheap film scans)
Some people are content with being Bronze in SC2 and playing Arcarde and they have money so they buy Razer gear and feel gamer chiq. Who cares about them.
You're telling someone trying to learn BW that the first thing they have to do is get a Filco because Razer is for plebeians and won't help them get their APM up.
Xes is right, and explained it very clearly, but my TL;DR summary is that most of your photos are bad due to poor technique, composition especially.
A nascar driver will outrace you in a slower car. A musician will outplay you with cheaper instruments. It doesn't matter how expensive your equipment is when you take poor pictures. It doesn't matter what your shutterspeed was or what lense you use if your composition is boring.
Learn about colour balance, foreground/background balance, and some basic composition rules like thirds. It will improve the quality of your photography leaps and bounds more than buying new equipment.
You talk about "After a while, you will feel the limitation of your current lens " when you haven't yet taken a single very good photo.
You say that there's a mechanical side to photography, not just the photographer. You don't seem to understand that you need the photographer first and foremost before fancy equipment. I can improve your photos with 5 seconds in photoshop just cropping shit out to improve the composition.
Your comment actually shows you have a clear lack of understanding od cameras and their respective target audience. Films are not good cameras to learn because it is incredibly difficult to get.It right the first.time, that's why people go point and shoot then either jump to prosumer grade cameras or entry dslr then some would go into film because films are the hardest the master without live view or post processing. Digital is easier to learn due to this, the interaction of aperture, iso and exposure are right on live view.
A6000 is a camera that's at the performance of the similar priced dslr, much lighter and apsc family has a cheaper lens than their fullframe counter part. I didn't even suggest people to buy the voitaglander lens, collecting vintage lens is part of what I always wanted to do. It's for my own pleasure.
And I don't see people blaming their razor gears not making them play better, buying mechanical keyboard (maybe you don't know) really makes typing experience in all application feel much better. And you are again completely missing the point, keyboard is a supporting tool, you whole analogy is asking someone to play BW on a 1998 PC if they want to get good at sc2. Now that's a waste of time and experience for me
And I really find it amusing you can hate someone so easily. I am sorry to be able to purchase something that I want and I know I would enjoy using.
Not to mention I don't see why not. I am learning photography in class and actually have the camera both are easily affordable for me and it's not like I am going broke lol
EPT
