Decision made

Damo1

Damo1

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Name
Damion
Edit My Images
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Hi all I have been thinking about photography a lot in the past couple of weeks and have reached a decision , Iv never really known what kind of photography was really my passion and as such have been constantly discontented by not understanding what I wanted from it but Iv had a light bulb moment today and narrowed it rite down to landscape , portraiture , and architecture and I also now know that it's large beautiful prints I want hung in my house .
With a view to this I am about to review my gear and build a kit to do what I want .
Starting from just about scratch , so I'm looking for advice , I'm fairly sure full frame will be required with top notch glass and personally I'd prefer lite weight some if any of you would like to help me spend my money I would be dead greatfull .
Things I need to look into are :
Camera system
lens recommendations
Tripod and accessories
Courses / workshops


I currently have a lovely olympus em5 and a couple of lenses , but I'm fairly sure this will be traded in , and when I have the gear and a little idea I'm defiantly not looking at cameras any more :cool:
 
There are two (at least) things I'd want to know before attempting an answer:

1) How big are "large, beautiful prints? I print at A4 for proofing, and A3/A2 otherwise. For me, A3 is the small size of print.

2) How do you "see"? Most people will recommend a wide angle lens for landscape, but I virtually always use a standard one (I use a 110mm on 6x7 and 150/210mm on 5x4 - I use film). Although I have a 50mm lens for my 6x7, I've hardly ever used it.

And I suppose, a half question would have to be what counts as light weight?

If weight matters, a carbon fibre tripod is a lightweight option. If you want to plant the legs in mud, water and sand, a Benbo design where the upper parts of the legs telescope into the lower rather than the reverse will keep dirt from the innards. For a head, go for a geared head as best for landscape and architecture. I use a Manfrotto one on my CF tripod.

If money isn't an object, a tilt and shift lens will be extremely useful for landscape and architecture. If money is an object, get a large format film camera where all lenses are tilt/shift and the ease of producing large prints makes it a doddle to do so.
 
There's more to a successful image than the size of the print. Use what you have and produce some results in the fields stated. Prove your worth. Live for the images before you live for the shopping. Only buy something else if what you have (rather then you) is actually failing. Forgo the fantasy of something new. Spending money isn't a substitute for work. Stay real.
 
Hi Stephen
Print wise I was thinking along the lines of 20"x30 I suppose and I like wide .
The idea of a large format camera does indeed sound lovely but Iv got absolutely zero experience of film of any kind and would be totally lost with starting out , which I'm fairly sure would lead to my inane questions getting me banned from this wonderful forum , unless some kind soul would like to teach me from scratch ( which I would love but they would probably hate ) .
Money is always an issue as I unfortunately live in the real world instead of my day dreams ( in which I don't need money as I have enough and I'm such a great photographer the manufacturers just give me stuff ) but I'm not afraid of spending on the things that give me joy ,
My initial thoughts went along the lines of sony A7/r and build a system around that . Weight is an issue due to the fact that I usually have to carry my Gear for most of the day on family outings ect ( it also has to have the ability to take nice "snaps" of girlfriend , son and dogs )

I'm not saying I wouldn't buy film equipment and I'd love to be able to develop my own film I just haven't got a clue , re my other posts to see what your up against .

Thank you though for your reply .
Damion

Midlands uk Nottingham/Derbyshire
 
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Dare I ask what part of the country (or even which country) you're in?

Edit to add:

If part of the requirement is photos of son and dogs, then large format won't handle that as well as a digital camera. I'd also be very cautious about going the Sony a7r route simply because of the autofocus speed.

What about keeping your Olympus for the dog etc. and using something else for landscapes? I'm mindful of Rog's comments, and I'd normally echo them. In this case though, you've come smack up against my prejudices, which is that small sensors don't cut it for landscape (been there, failed at it) and without a tilt/shift lens you're disadvantaged for architecture. There's a lot to be said for using what you have and discovering exactly what limitations it's imposing on you; and if I'm recommending something different from what you have it's because I'm a landscape/architectural photographer, and I know what I like to use to get the job done the way I want. You may not want to do it the same way :)
 
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As you have an oly Em5 now, you're going to find any full frame kit/pro lenses considerably heavier so I'd factor that in straight away and forget about anything feeling lighter! The current lightest full frame kit is probably the Sony A7/R and associated lenses but I'd take the previous posts' advice seriously and actually use the kit you have now until you really know why (or if) it isn't good enough for you.

I think if you spend time with the kit you've got (and maybe the 9-18 lens if you want ultra wide for architecture etc) you'll find that the results it delivers are more than adequate.

When I first started shooting I had a double page gallery image in Digital Photo magazine with this image taken on a 400D with the original 18-55 kit lens

View attachment 14709

Whilst I wouldn't want to print it at A0, the magazine were happy to fill two pages with it!

The sensor in your EM5 is considerably better on paper than the old canon sensor but if you're shooting landscapes you'll spend more time in the lens/sensor sweet spot of around F11-16 so I think you'd be surprised at how little overall difference you will see between that and FF once you've factored in the cost/weight difference as well.

Buying shiny new kit doesn't make you a better photographer overnight, just a poorer one ;0)

Cheers
Steve
 
strumstrum said:
Large beautiful prints on the wall.. You are begging for a DPm
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Dpm ??

droj said:
There's more to a successful image than the size of the print. Use what you have and produce some results in the fields stated. Prove your worth. Live for the images before you live for the shopping. Only buy something else if what you have (rather then you) is actually failing. Forgo the fantasy of something new. Spending money isn't a substitute for work. Stay real.
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Rog I understand what your saying and your dead rite I'm badly affected by GAS , I'm a sick man , the truth is I didn't ever really know what I wanted my equipment to do .
Also I have been a competitive shooter for a while now and a couple of things that has taught me are 1) poor practice makes poor performance , meaning practice with one set up learn it and understand it .
2) inferior equipment will ruin your chances .
3) chopping and changing isn't the way to perfection .

I can only hope these things are true of photography or I've just made a rite d**k of myself .

All comments appreciated
 
Damo1 said:
Starting from just about scratch , so I'm looking for advice , I'm fairly sure full frame will be required with top notch glass and personally I'd prefer lite weight some if any of you would like to help me spend my money I would be dead greatfull .
Things I need to look into are :
Camera system
lens recommendations
Tripod and accessories
Courses / workshops


I currently have a lovely olympus em5 and a couple of lenses , but I'm fairly sure this will be traded in , and when I have the gear and a little idea I'm defiantly not looking at cameras any more :cool:
Click to expand...

Personally I think that the first thing you should do is decide if you can do these things with your current gear and if not why not.
 
woof woof said:
Personally I think that the first thing you should do is decide if you can do these things with your current gear and if not why not.
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I'm not saying my gear won't take a great landscape pic ect I just don't think it's the optimal tool for the job , I'm still open to being told I'm wrong ,
 
Edward Steichen said that no photographer was as good as the simplest camera.

There's no such thing as a perfect camera - all cameras have limitations. The only things you can do are to live withing the limitations; have more than one camera (system); or accept that what you've got/are producing isn't as good as it could be but is "good enough". Personally, I've never liked "good enough", and regularly use 4 different cameras with different strengths and weaknesses depending on what the results are wanted for.

Weight matters to me; but I managed to stroll up the North Face path of Ben Nevis with a 5x4 camera and a 6x7 (plus tripod, meters etc. etc. in a backpack. Mind, I was younger then - it was probably about 4 years ago. What I personally found was that as camera size went up, the amount of equipment I carried went down in weight.
 
Sorry, I forgot to add that this;

"narrowed it rite down to landscape , portraiture , and architecture"

...isn't narrowed down :0) There is no set way to shoot those 3 wildly different subjects and in the same way there is no set camera gear to shoot it with.

For example, I shot a portrait session a couple of weeks ago of a 15 month old out on location at the local zoo (close to their home, popular location etc) and shot it on a Fuji X100 as well as a Mamiya M645 (Medium Format film). The parents were made up with the results and now have 3 canvasses on their wall, 2 of which were shot on Fuji Provia slide film.

Basically, any modern camera kit can shoot anything across the board. The difference is the 12" behind the camera that actually does the thinking. I have a 24"x18" print of this photo of my daughter on the wall, I shot it a couple of years ago with a GF1, 14-45 kit lens and a remote flashgun

View attachment 14710

Just go out an shoot with the kit you have and enjoy it.

Cheers
Steve
 
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Damo1 said:
I'm not saying my gear won't take a great landscape pic ect I just don't think it's the optimal tool for the job , I'm still open to being told I'm wrong ,
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Dare I say your gear won't take any pictures - that's your job. The best tool for any job depends on the exact nature of the job. If you need something small, light, fast in action etc. then large format is ruled out, no matter how good the image quality, because things other than image quality are higher up your scale of desirables.

For some jobs, a disposable camera would be the best tool. But the finest precision screwdriver ever made wouldn't be a good choice for breaking up a concrete driveway; nor a sledgehammer to make a fine cabinet.
 
Yea I'm sort of getting the general jist that I'm going to end up with a designated "landscape" kit and a do the other thing kit so it's looking like the oly will stay till I prove "my " worth .

Stephen can you give me any advice on how to start looking into medium or large format to see if it's something I feel I could learn in the future , also you said earlier that if money was a issue then large format could be the way forward does thus mean that this equipment / process is cheaper ?
 
Damo1 said:
I'm not saying my gear won't take a great landscape pic ect I just don't think it's the optimal tool for the job , I'm still open to being told I'm wrong ,
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For me 35mm/FF is at the edge of what I think is ok for hand held shooting. I think that MFT and APS-C are nearer the ideal. I suppose if you are willing to use a tripod it's less of an issue, I don't like using tripods.

I have an A7 but to be honest I mostly bought it to use my manual lenses on rather than for ultimate quality and I've always been convinced that lesser gear (non FF) is good for most uses including printing to A3 at base to mid ISO's and that FF really only pulls ahead when pushing the envelope of what is possible when shooting at the very highest ISO's, printing very big or cropping and printing big.

My 2p is to put your current gear through a hard test and assess it honestly before you decide to move it on for something else.
 
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woof woof said:
For me 35mm/FF is at the edge of what I think is ok for hand held shooting. I think that MFT and APS-C are nearer the ideal. I suppose if you are willing to use a tripod it's less of an issue, I don't like using tripods.

I have an A7 but to be honest I mostly bought it to use my manual lenses on rather than for ultimate quality and I've always been convinced that lesser gear (non FF) is good for most uses including printing to A3 at base to mid ISO's and that FF really only pulls ahead when pushing the envelope of what is possible when shooting at the very highest ISO's, printing very big or cropping and printing big.

My 2p is to put your current gear through a hard test and assess it honestly before you decide to move it on for something else.
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Ok , Iv got the day off tomorrow so hopefully by tomorrow night I will have some of my images processed and put up for critique then I will get to know what I need to do , I'm going to send any that I like for printing aswell .
I appreciate your 2p my friend :)
 
Damo1 said:
Ok , Iv got the day off tomorrow so hopefully by tomorrow night I will have some of my images processed and put up for critique then I will get to know what I need to do , I'm going to send any that I like for printing aswell .
I appreciate your 2p my friend :)
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Give it a damn good thrashing. At least then you'll know if you're just satisfying GAS or if the kit is in some way limiting what you want to do :D
 
Everyone above is contributing sense to this. I might add something to Stephen's remark about LF equipment being 'lighter' - simplification is possible whatever the size format. A refreshing tutorial is to throw neurosis to the winds and go out with a single prime. Light, after all, the informing basis of photography, has no regard for what equipment you own.
 
Keep the camera you've got.. spend £2k travelling the world and putting interesting subjects in front of it.

Because the gear itch doesn't stay scratched once you give in to it, and as already mentioned you've not really narrowed down what you want to do at all. Your current camera is small and lightweight, and capable of taking a perfectly good image.
 
Damo1 said:
Stephen can you give me any advice on how to start looking into medium or large format to see if it's something I feel I could learn in the future , also you said earlier that if money was a issue then large format could be the way forward does thus mean that this equipment / process is cheaper ?
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Take a look through the Film and Conventional section - there's a lot of discussion on these topics. "Cheaper" is a relative concept. My take on it is that to get the same quality as I get with (potentially) at sub £400 second hand LF camera would require such a vast captial outlay (lets say over £5,000 at the very bottom end). The advantage of digital is that that's where the costs end (until the camera wears out or something breaks that can't be repaired like a sensor or circuit board); film will have ongoing film and processing costs, together with the equipment needed. And I'm a black and white photographer; large format colour film is rather expensive. But the care you use in setting up the camera and thinking about what you're doing means that you don't (well, I don't) use very much.

It's also only fair to add that I was set up for film processing over 50 years ago, so I've long since ceased worrying about the cost of that equipment.

But bear in mind that LF is a specialised tool that works supremely well for some jobs, and fails for others. Or is less successful or easy to use, anyway.
 
StephenM said:
If money is an object, get a large format film camera where all lenses are tilt/shift and the ease of producing large prints makes it a doddle to do so.
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You're kidding right? Film is £50 a box at least.. for 20 shots. That's £2.50 each time you press the shutter. Then there's processing costs. Also, if you want to make the absolute best of all that quality large format film gives you, there's absolutely no point in buying a cheap flatbed scanner either. The camera itself won't be that cheap, and decent large format lenses are around £200 each used... a LOT more for very wide lenses... which will probably necessitate bag bellows on the camera, which he won't have... then you'll need a new tripod because anything designed for a SLR will be too flimsy.

You also neglect the skill levels required, and the learning curve. Someone brought up on digital will really suffer with film for a while, as they discover how shockingly bad their metering skills are.. plus the fact that he'll also need to buy a meter, as he won't already have one most likely. I reckon you'd roast a few hundred Pound's worth of film just getting your technique up to scratch.


Cheap it will not be.
 
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Steve Smith said:
But fun, it might be.


Steve.
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Without doubt... but advising someone that it's cheaper than buying a tilt-shift lens is so unbelievably wrong it beggars belief :)
 
Taka look online and see what people are doing with an em5. Then decide if it is you or the camera the is the limiting factor!

One other thing. Almost inevitably, if somebody is asking for advice as to what camera they need to upgrade to without demonstrating failings of their current camera, it is clearly GAS.

The em5 has possibly the best 'quality to Weight' ratio of any digital camera out there, can clearly print to the sizes you want and has an amazing selection of lenses - why do you want a new camera?
 
The em5 has possibly the best 'quality to Weight' ratio of any digital camera out there, can clearly print to the sizes you want and has an amazing selection of lenses - why do you want a new camera?

Hmmm your all most defiantly correct I get carried away and clearly have gas quite badly , edit and print today to fix my issue ......... Wish me luck
 
There is of course the (also relevant) excuse to upgrade kit that ive used in the past. The 'I have the money/dont have the money (delete as appropriate), and/but I really want a new shiny toy to play with, and it matters not one little bit if I actually NEED to upgrade' excuse.

Perfectly valid in my opinion.
 
I have a canvas that's 2m long by 0.75m high, taken with a Canon 300D 6mp only that looks great...
 
Nikon_Nick said:
There is of course the (also relevant) excuse to upgrade kit that ive used in the past. The 'I have the money/dont have the money (delete as appropriate), and/but I really want a new shiny toy to play with, and it matters not one little bit if I actually NEED to upgrade' excuse.

Perfectly valid in my opinion.
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Haha that appears to be the excuse that best fits my lifestyle , I am satisfied with my life mostly and have no urgent need to bigger houses or cars ect so I love to buy toys the only limiting factor really is that I don't like to upgrade until Iv become proficient with the equipment I have , of which the kind people replying to this thread have reminded me :)
 
If you want new gear, buy new gear. Will it make you a better photographer, maybe, particularly if you think it will. However if you don't have IT in the first place no amount of gear will get it for you. Having not seen your work I can't comment. Go for it life's too short and you can't take it (money)with you!
 
If you want to indulge yourself a bit, get yourself a full frame camera like a canon 6d, a standard zoom lens like the 24-70 f4, and enjoy taking pictures, the quality will more than be enough for what you want, it'll allow you to grow into it, and also takes into account the size limitation as the 6d is small by dslr standards and 24-70 f4 is a compact lens, it's also sharp right into the corners if reviews are to trust. Then after a while start looking into filters, but take time getting used to the camera first. :)
 
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