The Online Photographer

One way I've been lucky in photography over the years (there are a number) is that technology has tended to come along just as I needed it.

I remember how smug I was when autofocus first came to my attention. I was sitting in the stands at a fall football game at Dartmouth and a friend and I were talking about photography, and he mentioned to me that "they" even had cameras now that focused themselves automatically. You didn't need to look through the lens and turn the ring yourself. I believed him, but recall thinking, in a superior way, that the tech itself was pointless BS—I'll focus my camera by myself, thanks. Never had a bit of trouble with that. That was when the Konica C35 AF was the only AF camera in production, and I was pretty haughty about point-and-shoots, too. (Point-and-shoot, by the way, started out as a derogatory term. Like "PhD" camera for "press here, dummy.") I'm pretty sure I said something like, "focusing my camera is not something I need help with."

Except that it wasn't all that long before I did. My first AF camera was the Nikon N8008 in the Summer of 1988. I can well remember the freedom of simply waving the camera around and pointing it approximately at something and hitting the shutter button, trusting it to focus itself. (A technique that yielded not one single decent picture for me ever, by the way.) Not long before that I got enamored of Tessars and Tessar-types, and bought the Contax 45mm ƒ/2.8 "pancake" Tessar for my Contax RTSII. And I could barely focus it. In good light it was relatively easy, but in subdued light it was a guessing game. I know I've said this recently, but, again, originally ƒ/1.4 lenses were to make SLR focusing easier—you only actually shot at ƒ/1.4 as a last resort. I don't think that was just me. Now, lens design has progressed to such a degree that many lenses are superb wide open.

Then came image stabilization. My first exposure to that was in some Canon binoculars—my uncle Cam had a 28-foot fishing boat he used as a cabin cruiser, and he bought some stabilized binoculars to watch his grandson and namesake Cam's sailing regattas. Old Cam was no slouch at the tiller of a C scow, but young Cam was remarkable—you'd see the pack of sailboats, and then way, way out front would be Cam, all alone. Quite an amazing first experience, to be able to see a clear image while swaying insecurely on a heaving deck. The first camera I tried with IS was not the very first Canon lens that had the feature, which was a 75–300mm in 1995, but the first normal-range IS zoom from a year or two later. I'm sorry I don't recall the specs. I bought my first camera with IBIS, the remarkable Konica-Minolta 7D, in 2006. It was two years old and I bought mine used. The IBIS on that thing worked far better than numerous cameras with IS that I tried later. Only recently have I experienced cameras with IBIS as good.

The point here is not the technologies, just that they've gotten better more or less in tandem with me getting worse! They seem like gifts, is all. Almost like it's personal.

I just lifted the Fujifilm X-T4 and did four quick test shots at 1/4th of a second. It's overcast and rainy this morning. And note that it looks darker in real life that it looks here. Here's the whole image of the best result:

And here's a detail of that camera in the middle:

Above, from the OoC JPEG; below, from the processed raw file. I'll tell you, after working with the monochrome sensor, everything from a Bayer-array color sensor looks blurry.

Note the screening. Not much motion blur showing there. So not only did the camera focus in murky light, but the IBIS stabilized the image at a very slow shutter speed. I could probably have focused a manual-focus lens in this situation, but I couldn't handhold 1/4th sec. even when I was young, hardy, steady, handsome and smart.

Technology to the rescue. I'm lucky that it's counterbalancing my slowly declining physical skills.

Mike

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Featured Comments from:

Joseph Kashi: "Several technologies came decades late to consumer and professional cameras. Auto-exposure cameras were invented by Albert Einstein, literally. He and his friend Gustav Bucky received the patent in 1936. Practical invention was a hobby for Einstein, and probably a welcome change from his 'day-job' as a mathematically-based theoretical physicist. Early in his career, Einstein worked as a patent examiner in Switzerland, tasked with rejecting patents that would not work as claimed.

"Heavy cannons on US tanks and warships were stabilized in at least some directions by WWII to keep targets centered despite fast movement by ships and tanks."

Mike replies: The Einstein-Bucky patent was never prototyped as far as we know, and it was never produced, and Kodak's first production version worked fundamentally differently, so I'm not sure Einstein and Bucky can be said to have received "the" patent for AE. He was exploring an idea for it is how I'd put it. But it's interesting! 

psu: "Speaking of lucky.... We were leaving a local soccer game in Pittsburgh on Saturday evening, well after the early Spring sunset and I stuck my iPhone out the car window and took this three-second 'Night mode' exposure of the Fort Pitt bridge. I will never get used to the fact you can do this in 2025 with a camera that sits in your pocket all day. Is it as good as stuff I used to get standing in the cold with a tripod and counting off five- or 10- or 30-second exposures? Maybe not. And surely a full-sized digital camera on a tripod will do better with some work (manual HDR merging!). But still. I'm not sure I even held the camera with two hands."

G Dan Mitchell: "I’ve noticed some photographers saying 'I don’t ‘need’ this or that new technology' in reference to things like AF (still!) or IBIS, and so on. 'Heck, I made photographs without it for years!' Why, yes. You did. Because it didn’t exist! But for the most part these technologies make us better photographers, producing better photographs more consistently, and sometimes allowing us to do things that were formerly (at least next to) impossible. (And if you don’t like them, you can still turn them off.) I remember back in high school, as a member of the 'photography club,' shooting the school’s football games, some of which were at night—using a manual focus telephoto and 'high ISO film.' Could I still do that? Maybe. Would I want to? No. Are the results better now? They sure as heck are!"