The Online Photographer

Speaking of DoF, a little story.

A long time ago—well over a decade ago—I met with a photographer who brought to the meeting not a portfolio of photographs for me to look at, but notebooks filled with figures. He gave me a very valuable gift as well: he changed my thinking.

Perfectly nice guy as far as I could tell: thoughtful, intelligent, friendly enough. We went for coffee. The figures were the calculated DoF ranges for his zoom lenses at every focal length and aperture. Page after page. Whole stack of notebooks, IIRC. He was a little sheepish about it—just a little. It became apparent quickly that it was a pretty big part of his hobby. It was how he enjoyed photography. And while I didn't see the need for it, it wasn't up to me. It was up to him. It was what he had decided to spend his time doing. And what he had chosen to bring to the coffee shop to show me. As though I would be, you know, interested.

I believe that was when I gave up came around and formulated my principle of tolerance and patience toward all and every. I decided that as far as I'm concerned anybody can enjoy photography however the heck they want to. (With one caveat—as long as it isn't hurting anybody. Remember the Two Commandments of the Hopi: "Try to understand things," and "Don't go around hurting people.") Other than that, who am I to tell anyone they can't collect Japanese Leica copies, or learn all the different ways of doing the same thing in Photoshop, or scrounge "found" metal for tintypes, or test lenses at a half mile distance for out-the-airplane-window aerial photography, or take pictures with pinhole cameras they made themselves, or collect old Kodachrome slides from estate sales and thrift shops, or optimize extreme resolution, or take a photo every day, or worship all things Leica, or own 5,500 photography books and move them from apartment to apartment, or devote themselves to LF, or visit all the National Parks, or use only JPEG, or make YouTube videos with a phone, or scan old glass plate negatives, or...

Or...

Or...?*

I don't judge. Their hobby, their rules. "You do you," as they say. We do us.

Sometimes, having people specialize in various arcane little sidelights of the hobby is valuable. I published an article back in the old times by an author who bought and tried nearly every early digital camera that came out; another who researched how Kodak went about researching image quality in the 1930s; and another who had tested every print developer known to Man. One guy, whose name I should remember, retired from a career as a chemist and scientist, and devoted his retirement to testing claims made in various places about photo processing, with an aim, I believe, toward reducing the amount of crud in that field built up from cant and nonsense. He wrote a book about his investigations and conclusions. It's nice to be able to benefit from the expertise of people like that.

Richard Henry. Just remembered.

The guy who showed me those notebooks with all the DoF tables went on to make and market high-end interconnects and speaker cables for stereo systems, if I recall correctly. I believe he was a success.

Mike

*All those examples are actual people I know, or once knew, or encountered online, or read about.

Original contents copyright 2024 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

Featured Comments from:

MikeR: "Re 'Two Commandments of the Hopi': Where is this from? I asked the oracle (Google) but found nothing even close."

Mike replies: From William Least Heat-Moon, the author of the book Blue Highways: A Journey Into America, a minor classic published in 1982 and still in print. As usual, my memory isn't as specific as I would like. By accident I attended a talk he gave at a bookstore on Dupont Circle in DC just after the book was published—I was in the store looking at records when a crowd gathered—and got to talk to him for a while afterwards. I bought the book at the signing, read the book, and I believe it's in the book, but I don't remember it there but rather from the talk.

Moose: "I have an ebook of Blue Highways, so a search was easy:

We watch what the Kachinas say and do. But the Spider Grandmother did give two rules. To all men, not just Hopis. If you look at them, they cover everything. She said, 'Don’t go around hurting each other,' and she said, 'Try to understand things.'

"Excellent book!"

Mike replies: It is! And thank you for that, Moose. Thanks for all your comments.

Thomas Rink: "I remember that when I was still a graduate at university, I used to share the bus ride to the university with another graduate. Since we met every morning, we soon started to have a chat to make time pass on our commute. It turned out that he was a physicist, a very bright and sympathetic guy. One morning he told me that he made up his mind to buy a camera, for 'all the nice features a camera has.' He admittedly didn't have any prior experience with photography. Maybe it was still too early in the morning, and I hadn't had enough coffee yet—I didn't get his point. I thought he wanted to take up photography, and suggested that he would be best served with a simple, mechanical camera with a prime lens—something like a Nikon FM2. Why would anybody purchase a camera in the first place? No, he insisted on his point—it was about the features of the camera. After a while of talking past each other, we changed to another subject.

"This was 30 years ago; the world wide web offered not much more than a live stream of a coffee machine. Nowadays, in a similar conversation, I'd be rather surprised if my conversation partner was actually interested in taking up photography, and not in cameras."