The Online Photographer

Hey Mike - What about that new camera? Aren't you going to make getting acquainted your top priority?

"A "hived" group has everything all together in a jumble: all sorts of styles, all sorts of subjects, all sorts of ways of seeing, black and white and color side-by-side. With TLR shots, even different time periods are represented as well, as people upload work they did ten, twenty, thirty, even forty years ago."

There are ecosystems on Flickr that have over the years, cultivated a system for sorting through, and collecting the quality work. Doing random searches can be a bit overwhelming. Like most things, with Flickr you get back what you put in.

"What about that new camera? Aren't you going to make getting acquainted your top priority?"

McD,
I'm already acquainted—I had a loaner GF1 for about 40 days, and used it quite extensively.

I'm reading the IB, though.

Mike

"Visual sensibility" - I like the term.

>>> looking at work like this tends to emphasize the coherence provided by the use of the same camera throughout<<<

I've been thinking about how using different cameras affects one's photography. Until I bought a Ricoh GRD over three years ago I had been using a Leica M6, which was known as the street photography camera par excellence, but I found that the GRD pushed me to a "looser" and more fluid shooting style that I found that I liked much better for street photography.

More recently, from January through September of this year I used exclusively a Leica M8.2, which I never really took to; and the street photography that I shot with it was generally not as good as what I had done with the GRD and GRD2. Switching to a Ricoh GRD3 in October felt like a liberation after the M8, and I felt that what I did with it was a lot more interesting and better photography than most of what I had done with the M8 — the street shots had an immediacy and intimacy that I just hadn't achieved with the M8.

Last week I received the Leica M9. My initial reaction is that I still prefer the GRD3 for street photography, while the M9 is pushing me to a different, more deliberate type of photography, based on pictures showing more detail and texture. Perhaps I'll write a review from this point of view.

—Mitch/Pranburi

Is it possible that some of the same people are shooting cheap cameras for fun and expensive cameras to practice their client-pleasing commercial chops?

I don't know what you mean exactly by "cheap", but for me "cheap" means antique or toy (or both), and there's a bit of natural selection exercised by such cameras. One thing you often don't get when you don't pay for it is control and precision. There's a fair degree of randomness, and attendant curiosity, when I shoot the VistaQuest or the Ikomat. They often take more interesting photographs (sometimes in a good way, sometimes not) than I might have if I'd had more say. One either takes to this experimental way of shooting or one gives up in frustration and gets a "better" tool.

P.S. It isn't my place to say, but I hope that's not your standard editing posture. I think I feel a sympathetic ache in my neck.

I had a lot of fun one holiday just photographing with disposable cameras. Felt more free and loose, playing with a camera with no settings at all, and experimenting. I actually got a couple of pictures I really liked too.

»…the work done with the cheaper cameras seems more interesting, less conventional. I fantasize that that's because the cheaper cameras are being used by younger people who are newer to photography. There's an exuberance there, a sense of real exploration.«

The reason may not lie in the users or their age, but could also have to do with the cameras themselves and their »nature«, for lack of a better word (hey, my computer tells me it's 2:27 a.m. here right now, my brain is tired).

With the big, serious cameras we tend to be wherever we are partly because of the camera, and that does influence the approach to picture taking.

With the smaller cameras it is more likely to be the other way round: they happen to be there because we are there. They are just along for the ride, and the pictures that are taken benefit from just being part of an experience rather than the reason for it.

Old people have better equipment.

Young people have more beautiful subject matter: each other.

Far be it from a 53 year old codger like myself to disagree with David S's take on the relative abilities of old and young photographers, but I've found that a lot of young people's efforts with a camera reflect about as much depth as their self-absorbed, pin-ball semi-consciousness allows. Or would that be a wild, unsustainable generalization?

Personally, I find that my most creative images (but not necessarily my best images) are those captured with my everyday "carry camera," the one I try to always have within arm's reach and which have generally been of the less expensive variety. (Depending upon your perspective, I suppose the same could be said of my present E-P1/20mm combo, but I figure once you cross the $1,000 threshold, any claim to being inexpensive goes out the window, no matter what the object is.)

I speculate this is because most of the images I capture with these cameras are impulse-driven and captured with very little forethought: A scene catches my eye, the camera is powered up, raised to my eye (often single-handedly), the shutter is triggered, the image captured, and then it's lowered and turned off.

By contrast, for my serious photography, I'll generally spend time "working" a scene before I setup my tripod -- and I almost always use a tripod -- and as a result, the images I ultimately capture this way tend to be the product of considerable forethought. I'm not suggesting either approach is better than the other and I suppose the ideal is to somehow combine the best qualities of both. Hmm...

"I've spent a very enjoyable couple of days looking at two-and-a-quarter square pictures.."

And then you can move up to large format and look for images in the likewise well-known ten-and-a-bit by twelve-and-a-half cm-format.

After many years shooting with heavier DSLRs I found that occasionally using the diminutive D-Lux 4 could be rather liberating. It resulted in a number of fresh looking pictures I would never have made with the bulkier equipment.

I like the old guy comment. It's a neat division between youthful experimentation and an older approach that is more about technique. Ideally, one should keep the excitement and add the technique. Sadly many replace the excitement with technique.

I have seen a similar progression in my shooting from when I started: going from no technique, to trying to perfect technique on shots that had nothing to say! Now, I'm trying to find something to say, and use the technique needed to say it....

Mark,
I was hoping someone would notice that. Note also Gordon's "umbrella lady" in the frame.

Mike