Confused on the camera issue!

[molly_bourne]

I appreciate your help so much!! I am confused with the idea of

looking for a camera now. Currently, I have a FujiFilm FinePix

digital camera. I am not sure what model, it is about 3 years old,

no zoom or anything fancy, but it does take descent photos. What

sort of features should I look for on a camera to get started, or is

what I have good enough? The camera I have right now doesn't have

any way to attach a tripod to it, which is a concern to me. (I don't

have a lot of money to get started out with)

 

Also, this might be a dumb question, but this is my problem right

now: my boyfriends family has a lot of land out in the country, we

are out there all the time...I see scenes which look gorgeous and I

can sit there forever and stare at them, completly in love with what

I see, but if I try to capture the image, it doesn't at all show what

I am looking at (if that makes sense). Is that something the books

will help learn how to do???

 

Thanks again!

Molly

[bernard_korites]

Hi Molly. I'm a landscape painter. I take photos of landscapes to use as reference material in my studio. I paint with a fairly realistic style so I want my paintings to look reasonably like the real thing.

 

Your first decision to make is whether to use a film or digital camera. I have both but I use my digital in the studio, my film camera outdoors. I find digital cameras difficult to use outdoors in bright sunlight unless they have a good viewfinder. Unfortunately, you have to spend lots of $$ to get one with a good viewfinder. Also, digital cameras have limited memory. I can't tell you the number of times I've hiked out somewhere only to have my memory stick fill up. The obvious solution, of course, is to carry extra memory sticks but that gets expensive. I like to shoot at high resolution in tiff format so I can only put 8 images on a 128mb mem stick. With my film camera I just put 3 or 4 rolls of 36 exposure film in my pocket and don't worry about it.

 

I use a manual camera, a Nikon FM10, which is inexpensive ($218 at B&H). I comes in a kit with a marginal quality zoom lens so I bought a Nikkor 50mm/f1.8 and a Nikkor 40mm/f2.8 to use with it. This package is easy to use in the field, it's reasonably small and light, and it gives top quality images at a reasonable price plus I don't have to worry about memory sticks filling up or batteries running down.

 

Regarding lenses, when you look at a frame landscape painting on a wall you naturally stand away from a large painting and close to a small one. It turns out that the angle subtended from your eyes to the right and left sides of the paintings is about the same as the angle subtended by a 50mm lens.

 

Anything in the range of 40-60mm is about right. If you use a longer focal length you crop off too much of the scene. If you use a shorter focal length distant objects (mountains, etc) appear too small.

 

This geometry applies to film cameras. Digitals use a different geometry.

 

You hear people say it's less expensive to shoot with a digital. That depends on how much shooting you do. I pay $11.50 to process a roll of 36 exposure slides. The film costs about $4 so the total is about $15.

 

A new digital (I assume you would get a digital slr since those are the only ones with decent viefinders) runs about $750 for a Nikon D50, the cheapest I know of. Add in memory sticks, spare battery, lens(s) and you're easily over $1,000. Divide that by $15 a roll and you break even at 66 rolls or 2400 pictures. I shoot about 2 rolls/month so my breakeven is almost 3 years.

 

Actually, it's not quite that simple since digitals aren't free unless all you want to do is stare at them on a computer screen. If you want to print them, there's the cost of the paper and ink which can be substantial, easily as much as having them done at a lab. If you want to save your pics you will have the cost of cd's and some way of copying the files. Then factor in the time you will have to spend at your computer downloading files, copying them to cd's, massaging them in PhotoShop... Digital gets complicated real fast.

 

With my film camera I just drop the roll off at a local processor and pick it up the next day. If you want to shoot prints instead of slides you can have them done at WalMart fot 29 cents each.

 

Film cameras to consider:

 

-Nikon FM10 (manual)

 

-Nikon FM3a (manual with some automation)

 

-Nikon N80

 

-Olympus Epic (point and shoot)

 

-Leica CM (nice point and shoot but cost $999)

 

Digital cameras (stay with 5mp or greater):

 

-Sony Mavica (mini cd storage rather than memory sticks, 2.5inch lcd, optional viewfinder hood that covers the lcd)

 

-Nikon D50 (a start up the digital slr ladder)

[phyrpowr]

"...doesn't at all show what I'm looking at."

 

well, that's one limitation of photography, neither film nor digital can see all the gradations of light that your eye sees, and it only partially recalls how you felt, the smell, the breeze, etc. The good news is you can make dynamite photos of the same scene, takes learning and practice, but what doesn't. Lessons help.

 

For an inexpensive beginner "good" kit, I recommend going to a camera store and buying a used camera (film) with manual focus/exposure capability, auto also since they're now so cheap, a better tripod than you would have (fully adjustable down to ground level, not a $40 WalMart) medium ball head, cable release for the camera. Try to get one with mirror lock up and depth of field preview, don't worry, the nice camera shop people will know what you mean

 

For lenses, 24mm, 50mm, something in the 100mm range. If you go Nikon, these lenses will fit most of the Nikon digitals, Canon doesn't work that way, Pentax and Minolta I'm not sure

 

This whole package can be had for about $400-$600. Too much? Used manual focus with 50 and 24 or 28mm, cheap WalMart tripod, total about $200

[dave_yuhas]

>>What sort of features should I look for on a camera to get started, or is what I have good enough?<<

 

What do you want to do...collect cameras or improve your skills? If the latter, your camera is fine. Get yourself to the library or bookstore and buy as many photography books as you can afford. Study them. Take some pictures. Study the books some more. Repeat until you've wrung everything possible out of your present camera.

[dave_yuhas]

>>I see scenes which look gorgeous and I can sit there forever and stare at them, completly in love with what I see, but if I try to capture the image, it doesn't at all show what I am looking at (if that makes sense). Is that something the books will help learn how to do???<<

 

Landscape photography is, among other things, the art of subtraction. No camera can record a scene the way our mind sees it. When you look at a landscape you see different parts of it. Your brain puts together an idealized composite image from those parts. No camera can do that. Think of cutting out a two dimensional 8 x 10 piece of the scene. If it's the right piece, you'll have a good picture.

 

You can learn the art of composition from books. But there is no substitute for field work. To put it another way, if it's light outside while you're reading this, why aren't you outside with your camera?

[jbq]

You need to read from a good book. Skip any book that seems to specialize for digital cameras, landscapes haven't suddenly changed in the last 5 years.

 

You need to practice. If you want to show 5 good pictures and you only shoot 10, you need to show half of your pictures. If you shoot 500 you only need to show the top 1% of your pictures.

 

You need to learn to ignore the experience, the sounds, the smells, the temperature, the wind, and force your mind to see a flat rectangular "slice" of landscape that doesn't move - you need to ask yourself "will that make a nice picture?"

 

One of the keys to photography is light. One of the keys to landscape photoraphy is that you can't control the light, so you have to wait for the light to be right. Light is often better early in the morning or late in the afternoon, and as a basic rule it's often a safe bet to shoot with the sun more or less in your back.

[gloria_hopkins]

My roommate Sam had this issue when he tried 35mm photography. He blamed the camera until I told him that it is usually only a simple matter of isolation, as far as composing the image is concerned, anyway.

 

When we look out over a scene, or vista, we often marvel at its beauty and feel compelled to capture the scene. Well, we do exactly that, we pick up the camera and shoot. Often it is a grand scene, and in a small image like a photograph, that impact lost and its hard to remember what we found so enchanting about the scene. Our capture mediums, though very smart, cannot convey the sense of awe and wonder we feel inside so you must do it through your images with framing and isolation.

 

Learn to isolate that which is striking to you. Give your image a main focus, or subject, and then compose based on that/those element(s). Simplify. This often involves moving your position to reveal better lighting, angles and/or compositions.

 

Good luck and have fun!

Gloria

[gloria_hopkins]

I forgot to say - regardless of the camera you decide on, consider adding a quality zoom lens to your photo kit. A zoom can give you tremendous flexibility when trying to isolate and compose.

[ShunCheung]

Molly, it is best if you could post a couple of your images here and maybe explain what is missing in them from what you saw in those scenes. That may help us understand what the possible problems are.

 

Please keep in mind to pose small images to photo.net. It is best to limit the size to within 511 pixels horizontally and within 100K bytes in size. Those small images will be displayed "in line" as long as you provide a caption.

[hugh_jaramillo]

Molly,

 

The camera will only record what is in front of it, and depending on what settings the camera have at time that you press the shutter.

 

If you want to get the same look on your pictures that you see in real time, set the camera to MANUAL settings and adjust the F stop accordingly, the trick is not to use any camera on P (program)

 

Regards

 

Hugh

[bernard_korites]

Many beginning photographers are captivated by the vast sweeping scene before them. For example, imagine you are sitting on a hillside and looking across a valley at a mountain range off in the distance. You're captivated by the vastness of the view and you want to capture that feeling on film.

 

What you don't realize, however, is your eyes are sweeping across the view from side to side, taking it all in. A camera can't do that. The only way to replicate what the scanning eye sees is to use a wide angle lens. But then distant objects appear too small. The only way to correct this is to enlarge the photo and crop it vertically.

 

Or you could avoid sweeping vistas all together and shoot the perspective seen by the human eye when looking straight ahead. That is what you get with a 50mm lens. The problem with longer focal lengths is, while they may give you an interesting shot, they tend to flatten the perspective so you lose the sense of depth and distance that attracted you in the first place. Or you could forget about photography and take up oil painting!

[greg s]

One thing I found helpful is having read through some books on landscape painting, specifically with watercolors (need special planning). A typical ladnscape painting is comprised of 2 or 3 planes (foreground, mid-ground, background), these being organized in a pleasing composition. If you happen to be in a book store (shopping for your photohraphy book :) wander by the watercolor section as well. It helps in the field to think in terms of a composition that has foreground to background elements. This reduces the number of 'all background' photos. Have fun! -Greg-

[Palouse]

". . ..I see scenes which look gorgeous and I can sit there forever and stare at them, completly in love with what I see, but if I try to capture the image, it doesn't at all show what I am looking at. . ."

 

My two cents would be for you to ask yourself--what is it about the scene that grabs you; or what is it that gives it meaning to you. What is it that you want to preserve and/or interpret. As others have said--isolate. This is a lesson that I too am learning and being "frustrated" with. Both of my kids (20 and 17) are "into" photograhy and seem to have far fewer hang-ups than I about isolating landscape elements. I think it may be that I tend to get so much more introspective (an age thing?) and attached to the whole scene. I find it easier to shoot landscapes that are new to me, rather than of the Palouse where I have lived for 25+ years.

 

This is a great question and one that has generated some incredible responses. Keep up the good work and may you never loose your ability to ask for help!

[Palouse]

Gloria is too modest to say it, but check out her website (http://www.gloriahopkins.com) for some truly useful information on composition.

 

Cheers.

[gloria_hopkins]

:) Thank you Nick. It was very kind of you to say that.