Meethil

Peter Phun wrote the orig­i­nal 21 signs that you’ve crossed the thresh­old from pre­tender to con­tender in 2009. I read it yes­ter­day and found it quite out­dated. So i decided to re-write it and update it to what i feel the cur­rent con­di­tion is.



In a day and age when any­one with any sort of cam­era and a social net­work account can call them­selves a pho­tog­ra­pher, it can be a lit­tle dif­fi­cult to fig­ure out when you’ve sep­a­rated your­self from the pack to become a real photographer.

There­fore,  here are the New 21 clues that you’ve crossed the thresh­old from pre­tender to contender:

1. Your friends have begun to ask you which cam­era to buy so that they can take bet­ter pic­tures at social gatherings.

2. You don’t run out of bat­tery power because you have a solar charger.

3. You upgrade your cam­era to shoot bet­ter pic­tures of your kids.

4. The sales­man at your favorite cam­era store asks you whats new in the market.

5. You cor­rect peo­ple when they can­not get the word ‘bokeh’ to describe what they are talk­ing about.

6. A gor­geous woman with a dig­i­tal SLR brushes by you — and you take only a frac­tion of a sec­ond to notice her cam­era and what kind of lens she has. After that your eyes focus on her bum.

7. You con­cen­trate on the light­ing instead of the subjects.

8. You abuse folks in the back row at the con­cert shoot­ing with an iPhone or a point-and-shoot when they ask you to get out of their lens’s field of view..

9. You don’t go to a photo lab anymore.

10. Your in-law who’s a pro asks you for new tips each time you meet.

11. Other pho­tog­ra­phers fol­low you to see where you’re shoot­ing from. Shoot from the same spot, review the pic­ture on the LCD, shake their heads in dis­ap­proval, but do not delete the picture.

12. Other pho­tog­ra­phers treat you as though you are a snob when they see you at cam­era stores.

13. Your pho­tog­ra­phy work­flow is not com­plete unless the pic­ture ends up on some social net­work­ing site.

14. More and more women want to be your friend either because you have a big cam­era or they want to buy a big camera.

15. You stop ask­ing what aper­ture and shut­ter speed was used to take a pic­ture. Instead, you look for lens dis­tor­tions in a picture.

16. You crit­i­cally analyse other peo­ples photo vest – mak­ing a men­tal note of what equip­ment you can put in which pocket.

17. You have stopped tak­ing group por­traits and now focus only on indi­vid­ual side-lit portraits.

18. You are ashamed to carry/use a point-and-shoot even on fam­ily outings.

19. You can dis­tin­guish a 500mm f/4 from a 400mm f/2.8 and a 600mm f/4 from a mile away.

20. Your spouse stops ask­ing you to teach her/him photography.

21. Right now you are think­ing which cam­era or lens to buy next.

Are there any other clues that you might want to add? The list can always be extended to include your inputs. Tell me, use the com­ments sys­tem below.

Gone are the days when peo­ple shifted from their SLR cam­era to a DSLR. Today, peo­ple are upgrad­ing their com­pact dig­i­tal cam­eras with entry level DSLRs. Most of them are upgrad­ing only their cam­era, not them­selves. Upgrad­ing a cam­era is easy – you buy a new one. Upgrad­ing ones self is more daunt­ing a task – it takes time, energy, ded­i­ca­tion and most of all a desire to improve. They sel­dom have a desire to improve, most of them have just a desire to ‘click photographs’.

When they first take a DSLR in their hands they are over­whelmed by the num­ber of but­tons and the choices in the menu. After fid­dling with it and not being able to click pic­tures half as good as what their com­pact cam­era cap­tured, they give up and find refuge in AUTO.

AUTO is a very sim­ple func­tion with a very spe­cific mis­sion. Its func­tion is to get them the best pic­ture pos­si­ble in any sit­u­a­tion. Its mis­sion is to enslave them. Using its sim­plic­ity as a charm it makes them for­get there is a world out­side AUTO that is more adven­tur­ous and fun than that bor­ing four let­ter word. AUTO ensures they get the same kind of bor­ing pic­tures again and again and again. The kind they have grown to like, to love.

They are over­joyed to find the very same AUTO which once sat on the dial of their faith­ful com­pact cam­era that has got them this far. They remem­ber their AUTO, it gave them the best pic­tures. And thats exactly what they want – best pic­ture in every sit­u­a­tion. But who should decides what is best? AUTO or they?  From time eter­nal we have heard, its not the cam­era that makes the pic­ture, its the per­son behind the camera.

By turn­ing to AUTO they are sub­mit­ting them­selves to the cam­era. They are say­ing, ‘The cam­era is a bet­ter judge of pho­tog­ra­phy than I am.’ They are say­ing, ‘The cam­era makes the pic­ture I just tell it to click.’ They are say­ing, ‘The cam­era is the pho­tog­ra­pher, I am not.’ AUTO sat­is­fies them, sat­is­fac­tion kills their desire, and desires death leads to the death of creativity.

If you are using your DSLR on AUTO, kill yourself!

How often have you been handed a cam­era and asked to click pic­tures – at birth­day par­ties, at wed­dings, at pic­nics or on hol­i­days?. How often have you had to use some­one elses camera?

Using a cam­era you are not famil­iar with can be frus­trat­ing. But it is eas­ier and a lot more fun if you under­stand the set­tings on the cam­era and repro­gram them to suit your pho­tog­ra­phy. To set up any cam­era for basic oper­a­tion you don’t need to wade through its 100 page user manual.

The fol­low­ing steps will help you set up any cam­era to shoot any­thing within 10 minutes.

1. Check how much space is avail­able on the mem­ory card

2. Set the Shoot­ing mode to PROGRAM ( P ) or AUTO if PROGRAM is  not available

3. Set the Image qual­ity to the high­est level (or the sec­ond level if you have less free mem­ory on the card)

4. Set the ISO to AUTO if AUTO is unavail­able set it to 200

5. Set the White bal­ance to AUTO or AWB

6. Set the Meter­ing mode to MATRIX, EVALUATIVE or MULTI (Depend­ing on the cam­era model, they all mean the same)

7. Set the Auto Focus to SINGLE AF

8. Set the Drive mode to SINGLE. Set it to CONTINUOUS if you are shoot action

9. Turn on IMAGE STABILIZATION (IS), VIBRATION REDUCTION (VR) or ANTI-SHAKE (Depend­ing on the cam­era model, they all mean the same)

10. Turn on RED-EYE REDUCTION or RED-EYE CORRECTION for the flash­light if you are shoot­ing people

Note: This tuto­r­ial assumes what you own a com­pact dig­i­tal cam­era and are famil­iar with its fea­tures and func­tion­ing. If you are not then you should start by read­ing the cam­era manual.

As usual, if you have any queries feel free to write to me. Your com­ments can come below.

This post is for those who are buy­ing their first or sec­ond com­pact dig­i­tal cam­era. If you already own a DSLR con­sider skip­ping this arti­cle and read­ing some­thing else.

Buying  a  com­pact dig­i­tal cam­era is often con­fus­ing because of the vari­ety of choices avail­able. The var­i­ous per­mu­ta­tions and com­bi­na­tions avail­able are mind­bog­gling for a per­son just start­ing off with pho­tog­ra­phy. By shar­ing with you this sim­ple think-flow, I aim to make it eas­ier for you to choose a cam­era that best suits your needs. Fol­low these steps to their log­i­cal con­clu­sion and if you are still unde­cided or unclear about any­thing, you can always email me your query or write it at the end of the arti­cle in the com­ments box.

Step 1: Fix your budget

Digi­tal cam­eras are avail­able at all price tags. If you don’t check your wal­let and decide how much you want to spend, it will be extremely dif­fi­cult to decide on a model. Your bud­get has to be a fig­ure, not words. Don’t say ‘inex­pen­sive’ or ‘not too expen­sive’ or ‘mid-range’. Con­vert words to num­bers, say ‘less than Rs. 10,000′ or ‘not more than Rs. 15,000′ or ‘max Rs. 12,000′. Don’t set unre­al­is­tic bud­gets like ‘around Rs. 4000′, the idea is to buy a cam­era, not not buy one. Always choose a bud­get that will allow you to buy a qual­ity prod­uct that will last you at least 2 years (I usu­ally aim for 3 years) before it finds its place in the tech grave­yard. Hav­ing arrived at a bud­get, move on to Step 2.

Step 2: Deter­mine the type of use

What do you want to pho­to­graph? It is impor­tant to know the pri­mary use that your cam­era will be put to. Each type of pho­tog­ra­phy has at least one spe­cific fea­ture require­ment. You should buy a cam­era that has the feature(s) your pho­tog­ra­phy requires. Like, if you do a lot of close-ups of small objects like flow­ers etc. then your cam­era should be able to focus real close. (i.e. have a small min­i­mum focus­ing dis­tance). If you do a lot of action pho­tog­ra­phy your cam­era should be able to take many pic­tures in a short dura­tion (i.e. have a high ‘frames per sec­ond’) to ensure you don’t miss any action.

When tak­ing fam­ily pics indoors you will need a cam­era with a good wide-angle lens (ide­ally 24mm or at least 28mm). But when you are on a nature safari your cam­era needs to have a good tele­photo lens (ide­ally 400mm), here its OK to have a wide-angle lens of 28mm or 35mm.

Sim­i­larly, a good flash­light is a boon if you are shoot­ing in low light or indoors, but if you are pri­mar­ily shoot­ing out­doors, in good light, a flash­light is of lit­tle use, but the pos­si­bil­ity of using a lower ISO is a boon.

Don’t stretch the scale too much, if you want a cam­era that takes good indoor shots of your kid’s birth­day party and also of the small bird sit­ting high up on the tree you will do good by buy­ing a top-of-the-line com­pact dig­i­tal cam­era (they are not so com­pact in size though).

You don’t have to restrict your­self to only any one type of pho­tog­ra­phy, you can short-list a few but keep in mind the most fre­quent use your cam­era will be going through. Hav­ing done this, move on to Step 3.

Step 3: Con­sider the fre­quency of  use

It’s time to be hon­est to your­self. How often will you be using your cam­era? Are you going to remem­ber your cam­era once in two months, or will you be click­ing every week­end? Your fre­quency of use will be a fac­tor in decid­ing which model you should consider.

If you are going to shoot only a few pic­tures now and then, (like: an occa­sional get-together, annual vaca­tion and birth­day par­ties) then you need a cam­era which is light, sim­ple to use, and uncom­pli­cated. So that when you see it after a month you don’t have to won­der where the con­trols are.
It is not going to be dif­fi­cult to find a cam­era for such use within your budget.

If you are going to shoot reg­u­larly, like every week­end or more often than that, then you should con­sider choos­ing a cam­era that is built for fre­quent use – is more durable and will with­stand the tangs and bangs of reg­u­lar use. A cam­era of this type usu­ally finds itself at the top end of your bud­get. These cam­eras may have more fea­tures which in turn may give you more con­trol over your pho­tog­ra­phy. The addi­tional fea­tures and options may seem of lit­tle impor­tance in the start, but as your pho­tog­ra­phy improves, which it will if you shoot a lot, you will find use for these fea­tures too. Hav­ing decided how often and how much you will be shoot­ing move on to Step 4.

Step 4: Start doing your homework

Now that you know what you are look­ing for it’s time to find the cam­era you need. No, don’t walk into a store just yet. Go online. Visit web­sites of major cam­era man­u­fac­tur­ers (Canon, Nikon, Sony are most pop­u­lar in India) and browse through their offer­ings. You can visit an online retailer (ebay.in or jjmehta.com) to know the approx­i­mate price of the cam­era mod­els. On a piece of paper (or on your mobile phone) short­list 2–3 mod­els of each man­u­fac­turer that you can con­sider buy­ing – these cam­era mod­els should fit your require­ments almost per­fectly. Rewrite your list arrang­ing the cam­era mod­els accord­ing to your buy­ing pref­er­ence. The one you are most likely to buy should on top and the least likely option should be last.

There will always be minor sac­ri­fices that you will have to make – like buy­ing one with 3x zoom instead of 4x or 12MP instead of 14MP. These sac­ri­fices will be prompted because the cam­era has other fea­tures which you desire more.  Hav­ing pre­pared and finalised your list, move on to Step 5.

Note: Avoid buy­ing a cam­era model that is sell­ing at a huge dis­count in a num­ber of stores. Most prob­a­bly, a new model is about to be launched and the shops are dis­card­ing the cur­rent model before it loses value. This will be obvi­ous when stores adver­tise dis­counts in newspapers.

Step 5: Try and buy

Now you are going to buy your cam­era. Armed with your list walk into a cam­era store (or an elec­tron­ics super­mar­ket: eZone or Croma, in India) on a Sun­day morn­ing (or when it’s least crowded). Don’t get dis­tracted by the loads of cam­eras on dis­play, stick to your list.

Start­ing with the first cam­era you have short­listed, hold every cam­era in your hand to see how it feels. Can you work the con­trols? Are the but­tons of a con­ve­nient size and shape? Is it easy to hold and oper­ate? If you are in one of those large elec­tron­ics super­mar­kets you may not be allowed to actu­ally take pic­tures (the bat­ter­ies are removed), but you can still expe­ri­ence the camera.

When you entered the shop your aim was to buy the first cam­era on your list. Now, after expe­ri­enc­ing it, if you find it’s not con­ve­nient to use, don’t buy it. Buy it only if you can get used to it dur­ing your learn­ing curve. Choose a cam­era that feels good and which you will enjoy using. If you don’t enjoy hold­ing it, you won’t enjoy tak­ing pic­tures. If you don’t enjoy tak­ing pic­tures, there’s no point in hav­ing a camera.

Sum­mary

How to choose a com­pact dig­i­tal camera?

1. Decide how much money you want to spend on a new cam­era.
2. Spell out the kind of pho­tog­ra­phy you will be doing most of the time.
3. Short­list the fea­tures that you need for your kind of pho­tog­ra­phy
4. Admit to your­self how often you will be using the cam­era. If you are not going to use it reg­u­larly, there’s no point buy­ing an expen­sive one.
5. Go to cam­era man­u­fac­tur­ers’ web­sites and short­list mod­els that best suit your require­ments and fit into your bud­get.
6. Visit a store to expe­ri­ence the cam­eras you short­listed. Chose one which you can use con­ve­niently.
7. Buy it.

Enjoy your new camera!

Still con­fused? Or have a query? Get in touch with me through the com­ments below or email me.