Fast Camera

[hughes]

Could someone please explain what it means when a a camera is not fast

enough, a previous poster said he needed a new camera as he just got a job on

an alternative weekly newspaper but he didn't think a D200 or D300 would be

fast enough. Now I don't want to star a riot but I would have thought my old

Nikkormat would be fast enough for an alternative weekly, please someone

explain to me what speed really means in the digital world. I have a D200 an

cannot for the life of me see how it could ever not be fast enough for

anything but the most specialised work. I am not trying to be obtuse or

contentious this is an honest question.

 

Steve

[tom_luongo1]

What post are you talking about? Maybe he was referring to lens speed.

[leslie_cheung]

He's referring the the d2h? post by Nic Coury.

[justinblake]

Think he was talking about the frames per second speed.

[hughes]

Let me make something clear this is not about Nic's post, and no disrepect was intentended with my comment. His post just just bought it to mind, my question is, what are we talking about when we refer to a camera's speed? Someone please clarify .

 

Steve

[lex_jenkins]

Speed could refer to autofocusing. When I was younger and more nimble with better eyesight I could manually focus very quickly. I can still manually focus fairly quickly but not as well as the D2H can, especially when following erratically moving action or moving the camera around quickly.

 

It could also refer to ISO capability. In the old days with Tri-X I had one of two choices: shoot the entire roll at a single ISO; or, if I needed to switch ISOs and push the roll after having exposed part of it at 400, resign myself to overdeveloped and probably unusable frames from the "properly" exposed part of the roll. (Excessively contrasty negs don't work well with newspaper reproduction.)

 

While rapid fire framerates are not a substitute for good composition, there are times when being able to shoot at 5-8 fps can pull out one good frame, or a sequence of frames, that would be impossible with manual film advance.

 

I got plenty of good PJ photos decades ago with my Ricoh and Canon FD gear, no AF, no autowinders. Heck, some of the best boxing photos I've seen were taken with 4x5 press cameras. But I wouldn't want to go back to just that equipment if good automation was available.

[leslie_cheung]

>>>please someone explain to me what speed really means in the digital world. <<<

 

I can think of these:

 

FPS

 

AF speed

 

Shutter lag

 

LCD refreshing rate

 

Mirror block out time

 

Buffer rate

 

Burst rate

 

Anymore? As for what's fast? it's all relative...check out Casio 60 FPS camera:)

[kevinteo]

<p><i>Anymore?</i></p>

<p>Start-up time (don't some digital cameras take ½ sec or more before the first shot

can be taken?)</p>

[mjt]

*if* y'all are referring to the Nic Coury post, they are referring to ISO speed. focusing would be a close second, since it will be used as a PJ camera.

[niccoury]

wow, a whole post referring to mine. heh.

 

yeah what they all said.

 

I use fast referring to what I need out of a camera for the work I do on a daily basis: focusing speed, shutter lag, write speed and I'm also referring to "fast glass."

 

Mostly after yesterday, shooting a Hillary Clinton rally with a D50 and 70-300 AF-S VR (see below picture - mind you a little noise and sharpening was done in post-pro, but it's still a technically decent photo). It's a slow system, but I have other fast lenses and know how to shoot correctly to maximize the best shots out of the camera.

 

A 70-200 Vr would have been nice...

 

~ n<div></div>

[tom_luongo1]

Nic, if you are making do with a D50 now, the D300 will blow you away.

[diane_madura]

Steve, I agree with you that I think in most cases, the D200 will be fast enough. But I think for people who shoot sports and want to catch those sports in mid-action, faster is always better.

[joshodonnell]

I agree with Tom... I 'made due' with the D50 for about a year and half until the D300 came out... Don't get me wrong, I loved my D50 and made many great photos with it, but I also MISSED many great photo opps because of its shortcomings. IMO the D50 and D300 shouldn't even be mentioned in the same sentence.

[hughes]

The reason I started this thread is that I had the opportunity to buy a D2Hs for cheap and I considered it, but I fail to see where it is superior to a D200, surely the AF is a function of the lens would not a D70 with a 300mm 2.8 be as good or better than a D2h with a 300mm F4. I shoot a lot of sport and rarely use my camera on anything but single shot.

Joshua I would be interested to know what kind of photo opps you missed because of your camera shortcomings.

Steve

[tom_luongo1]

My D1 AF (3 cross sensors) performance blows away the D70.

 

AF is very much a function of the camera. The camera has the drive motor that turns non-AFS lenses. It also has the computer that controls AFS lenses, as well as the AF sensors themselves. And the D1 has a very strong drive motor. It can rip the lens out of my fingers. I assume the D2 series would be at least as good.

 

Also, the D70 and D200 have only a single cross sensor in the center while the D1 has three across the horizontal center line. (I know we're comparing to the D2, but I don't have it's specs handy.)

 

As Shun as pointed out before, the D300 AF module is the same module as in the D3.

 

Because it's the same module in two different formats (FX and DX), I think the D3 might even have its sensors too tight around the center of the frame. But I haven't used one of those babies and doing so could easily change my mind. I do use the D300 though and the 5x3 array of cross sensors plus a whole bunch of non-cross sensors works very well for me.

[tri-x1]

I agree with you that a Nikkormat would be fast enough.

 

Starting back when auto focus and motor drives became the rage,in the 1980s, a belief developed in the journalism that rather than waiting for the right moment to shoot a photo, it was better to just point the camera, fire off twenty frames using the motor drive and you would be bound to get at least one usable picture.

 

Memorable photos aren't about frames per second. They are about the eye of the person operating the camera. A Pulitzer prize was once won by a 10-year-old girl using a box camera.

 

Even when shooting sports you can get great pictures with a manual wind camera if you become familiar enough with the sport you are covering to anticipate when action will reach its peak.

 

A good photographer gets the shot not because their equipment shoots or focuses faster but because they know the proper time to trip the shutter.

 

In the case of newspapers it won't matter because most of them won't be around much longer anyway. And that comes from someone who spent 30 years of their life writing and shooting pictures for daily and weekly newspapers.

[niccoury]

"In the case of newspapers it won't matter because most of them won't be around much

longer anyway."

 

Wayne,

 

I'm still young in the profession, but I do think newspapers will be around for a while.

Most of this country doesn't have access to the digital world and access that a good

amount of the upper middle class has. This is a topic large enough for an entire book, but

yeah. I think hard copy newsprint will be around for a long while.

[hughes]

Wayne

 

I liked your rant until the last comment if it wasn't mean spirited it was a least depressing, especially to a young man {that's an assumption} who just got a new job and maybe a new career. Nic my apologies for the Nikkormat comment It was not aimed at you I wish you all the best, Monterey is one of my favorite places on earth. Last thought I think your comment about write speed was the most relevant, but I think most of the other talk about speed is baloney. What Wayne say's is actually true knowing when to pull the trigger is worth all the burst rate in the world.

 

 

Steve<div></div>

[niccoury]

Lens do make a bigger difference than the camera itself.

 

Thanks Steve. I still can't believe that I'm actually a professional photog for a living. It's so

rad.

 

Nice shot!