Category Archives: Ideas

Commentary, Equipment, Ideas

Myth: Diffraction and Motion Blur Worsen With More Megapixels

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They don’t.

Another post that I wrote just before this one (“Why Your 21MP File “Looks Softer” Than Your 12MP File at 100%“) explains why pixel-peeping* photographers might imagine that cameras with greater photosite density (e.g. – “more megapixels”) might produce “softer” photographs, based on what they observe when they compare 100% magnification images on the screen. These cameras do not produce softer images – the results will either be equal to or better than those from lower photosite density cameras in this regard. You can follow the link to read the original post.

A reader wrote and suggested that perhaps the images from the camera with greater photosite density really are softer, but the cause is a greater susceptibility to diffraction blur or motion blur.

No. Neither is the case.

These are two additional misconceptions that can be fed by (yet again!) pondering 100% magnification crops on the screen without thinking through the actual (non-) effect of what you see there when it comes to actual photographs. Continue reading Myth: Diffraction and Motion Blur Worsen With More Megapixels →

Commentary, Ideas, Thinking Aloud

When Inspiration Takes a Vacation

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It happens to (almost) everyone. The pendulum sometimes swings towards enthusiasm, inspiration, and creative work that almost seems to flow all by itself. But pendulums swing both directions, and one of the prices we pay for doing creative work is having to cope with the inevitable dry periods when enthusiasm, inspiration, and creativity are nowhere to be found, periods when you can find yourself questioning your talent and abilities. (I think that one characteristic of “mature” artists is that they understand this cycle and are less likely to be undone by it – both because they are familiar with its existence and because they have learned ways to deal with it.)

I don’t claim to be the definitive expert on this issue, but I have some experience with it in both photography and music. There is much more to be said about this than I have space for here, but I thought I’d share a reply I wrote in a forum where a poster posed the following: Continue reading When Inspiration Takes a Vacation →

Commentary, Equipment, Ideas

Photography and Gear Fetishes (Another Adapted Forum Post)

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Earlier this week I dropped in on a photography forum in which the OP (original poster) suggested that the causal correlation between buying Really Expensive Gear and producing better photographs was weak. Oh, yeah!

Here is a slightly adapted version of my contribution to that discussion:

I’ve thought quite a bit about why so many “photography enthusiasts” seem to be much more interested in acquiring photography gear than in making photographs. Reasons might include:

1. Equipment is necessary in order to make photographs, so acquiring some is not unimportant.
2. Because it is, frankly, easier to write about gear in definitive (or seemingly definitive) ways than to write competently about photographs, there is much more written about gear – and newbies should be forgiven for having a false impression that the gear one has is more important than the photographs one makes.
3. Almost all of us do find the equipment fascinating to some extent. Some grow past this, but for some it ends up being more about possessing expensive and supposedly high-end stuff than anything else. (Photography is not the only area where this occurs.)
4. Because people more often encounter photographers when they are operating cameras than when they are exhibiting photographs, they associate the gear with the activity more than they associate photographs with it.
5. Some want to look like (what they imagine) professional photographers (look like).
6. Some are told, before they have enough experience to question it, that they must have “the best” gear if they are going to make photographs. I’ve actually seen rank beginners struggling with $6000 bodies and sets of L primes or big white telephotos… for their family vacations.
7. Some love to shop.

[The OP’s] notion that the causal correlation between expensive gear and photographic skill or quality is weak is one that I would agree with.

I think that a “cure” for the counter-productive obsession with gear at the expense of photographs may be to do everything in your power to focus on photographs – not photography, not cameras, not lenses, etc. If you are not or do not become passionate about producing photographs, then you might want to consider a different hobby. :-)

G Dan Mitchell Photography | Flickr | Twitter (follow me) | Facebook (“Like” my page) | LinkedIn | Email
Text, photographs, and other media are © Copyright G Dan Mitchell (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Commentary, Ideas

A Forum Post About Photography and ‘Realism’

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From time to time I share here a post I made elsewhere. Recently I posted something in one of those familiar threads lamenting that some photographer did something in an image that “altered reality” in some way. Yes, that topic. Again.

With apologies to all of you who know that the following is pretty darn obvious, here is the post:

The notion that a photograph can portray something equal to the original reality of the subject is a myth. All photographs lie.

This is not news to those who are familiar with the history of photography or with philosophical musings about the medium. The process of determining what to include and what to leave out, deciding when to click the shutter, selecting the time of day or season of year to make the exposure, chosing whether to shoot black and white (which isn’t remotely real!) or color, using filters on the camera, using filters in digital or optical/chemical post, using shift and tilt lenses, controlling DOF with aperture selection, choosing what paper to print on, selecting one frame over another, choosing how to describe and explain explain or simply title the image, dodging and burning, choosing methods of developing film for their effect on the image, shooting Velvia (!), attaching a polarizing filter, adding a hood to control flare, using flare as part of the image, brushing that bug off the leaf, adding a bug to the leaf, waiting for the bug to land/fly away, picking the prettier bird out of the flock rather than the other one with the bent wing, choosing to point your camera in the direction that excludes the power line or the buildings, waiting for the wining smile, waiting for the smile to to away, shooting with very short focal lengths, shooting with very long focal lengths, and on and on and on and on…

It is impossible for a photograph to be an analog of “reality.” At best it can suggest something that the photographer saw or felt in the presence of  that reality or something about how the photographer views it. It can evoke a memory, an association, or an imagination in the viewer. It cannot portray objective components of the “reality” of the subject such as the cool breeze on your face, the smell of pine trees, the moisture in the air, your sore feet from the long walk, the warmth of sun on the back of your neck, the sound of birds and wind – all of which are components of the “reality” we experience in the presence of the actual subject.

And I really don’t care. If the only thing that I thought photography could do was “capture” an objectively accurate rendition of reality I wouldn’t bother to make photographs – which would always fail to equal the experience of that original reality. I’d get rid of may camera and just go experience it. (Which I actually did for a time, but that is not a story for this post.)

But that isn’t what photography does, and it would be far less than photography can do. One of the most interesting and humane things it does is it offers us a view into the mind and world of the person of the photographer. Frankly, in the end I’m far more interested in what the photograph tells me about the person who made the image, and perhaps about myself, than I am in the extent to which the photograph pretends that it can stand in for the real.

Imagining that the purpose of photography is merely to “capture” the real, thus creating a sort of second-best shadow image of the real, is simplistic and naive. It is also nearly completely contrary to the history and development of the craft and art of photography. It is essentially impossible to find photographs that are totally “pure” – whatever that even means.

And when I view a great and powerful photograph, virtually the last thing I ask myself is, “is this a real thing?” I think about the effect it has on me, what it tells me or suggests to me about the world, its pure aesthetic power as an image, its intrinsic beauty, the associations I draw between it and my experience.

G Dan Mitchell Photography | Flickr | Twitter (follow me) | Facebook (“Like” my page) | LinkedIn | Email
Text, photographs, and other media are © Copyright G Dan Mitchell (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.