Whatever Happened To The Exciting APS-C Cameras?

Great APS-C (cropped sensor) cameras! What on earth happened to them?

We are going to talk about a certain trend in the industry (mostly the titans of the industry) concerning the latest APS-C cameras. First of all, I am really unhappy about how things are working out lately and let me tell you which APS-C cameras I find exciting in a few examples:

• Nikon D70
• Canon 40D (30D, 20D)
• Nikon D200 (D300, D300s)

What makes these exciting? They're old and produce lots more noise at higher ISO values... but those were the days...
All of these (and you may add more models to the list) had a secondary display on top to help you set the camera faster. All of these had a reasonable size and were built solid taking significant damage over the years going 'meh' after occasional bumps. All of these had 1/8000 max shutter speeds and the D70 had a flash sync speed of 1/500! So, we were getting solid, sturdy cameras with APS-C sensors that performed rather well (for their time) and were literally the quality of a full-frame camera. All the controls were there, all the settings. Nothing short of awesomeness.
I used to be a cruise ship photographer and took quite a few photos with a weathered D200 camera. This camera was built to last and probably another person is using it right now on the ship sailing in the Mediterranean. If only this camera could speak... I noticed it had everything, all the settings, all the controls, all the modes and it was just easy to get used to learn it all. It just worked. No software upgrades and updates. It was all there and a photographer would feel safe taking it out in harsh conditions.
When the Canon 60D first came out I was thrilled but then I took it in my hand and realized the disappointment. It was just plastic. All of it was plastic and it felt cheap. I've taken shots with 30D. I knew what a real dSLR was supposed to feel like and this wasn't quite the experience I was used to. Then I went to Nikon and got their D5000 for a spin. OMG, it was just another toy - light, plastic, no secondary display. What on earth happened to the line of cameras that were supposed to replace the ones I loved? Yes, the sensors were better but the experience of shooting went downhill for these cameras. Then I tried 1000D, 600D, 650D from Canon - no way Canon had produced those. Nikon went D3000, D3200, D5100 but I just couldn't believe how they had stopped making the line of cameras that felt like cameras and had replaced them with plastic toys. No secondary displays on any of the APS-C models, no full controls on the body... It all felt like enthusiast-class-look-at-me-I-own-a-girly-camera-plastic-toy thing.
I felt betrayed. I'll miss those cameras. They are slowly turning into the Beirette, Vilia and Smena of the old age. I hope Nikon and Canon will come up with a new generation of beloved APS-C ready-for-combat cameras soon so I won't miss them too much.

All the best,

Kamen Kunchev

ISO - Friend Оr Foe?

Grains, noise, bad quality, ruined images... Can we blame it all on the ISO values of our camera? Not necessarily! We need to know some things that will help us better understand the ISO values so we can take nicer photos without feeling prejudiced.

I want to make a very clear point here that low ISO values can damage our photos just as bad as really high ISO. How is this possible? Well, sometimes trying to avoid the grains that the higher values produce we have to reduce the shutter speed to compensate thus getting motion blur which is really worse than a few grains we can later fix in Photoshop. Also, have in mind that exposing longer with a lower ISO value will produce more noise than shorter exposures of the same value. The longer the exposure the more noise piles up.

Being able to change this value is a major breakthrough in photography. Back in the day people would just buy a film with a certain speed (that's ISO or ASA) and try to figure out the rest according to the light conditions. Nowadays, we can change the sensor sensitivity of our cameras with one button making it possible to emulate different film speed for every shot. Why should we be afraid of using higher values then? We really shouldn't! Instead we should master this setting and use our cameras to their full extent.

Here's what we need to remember when using this setting:

1. Smaller sensors produce more noise than bigger ones.
2. More megapixels means more noise (comparing the same size and year of manufacturing sensors) at higher ISO values.
3. Grains (or noise) will appear in the shadows or darker areas. Light areas of the photo will appear clear.
4. Wider aperture lenses will give the effect of less noise because they let more light through for the sensor to capture.
5. Raw files will always look noisier than the jpeg because the first ones are an exact extract of all the information the sensor delivers, whereas the latter are missing lots of the information (noise included).

For more information on APS-C (crop sensors) versus full frame sensors click here.

Let's check out a few examples where high ISO value is more than a friend.

• Concert photos. You need to go ahead and boost your ISO so you can avoid motion blur. (click here for all the advice you need about stage shots)
• At the church. It's dark and using flash will just make your photos look bad.
• The long restaurant shoots with plenty of guests. Even though shooting with a flash is a must you still need a higher ISO to save your flash and batteries and to get some background. Also it looks better when you use flash + higher ISO so you don't overflash and get a better and more natural overall lighting. For more tips on wedding shots click here.
• Every time your speed drops below 1/60 of a second and you feel you're getting shaky images. Don't worry if you're shooting using automatic or some of the semi-automatic modes - the camera will boost the ISO for you.
• When you want to overexpose the background.
• When you want to expose the object and the background properly (e.g. night portraits with flash, freeze a certain frame in low light conditions)

I am sure that I am barely scratching the surface but I am pretty sure you are getting my point and by following the links you will find out more about how things can be properly done.

Anyway, we also need to try and keep the ISO to lower settings in the following cases:

• When you have more than enough light to shoot with high shutter speeds.
• When you are going for long exposures and do not care about motion blur. Then you need lower ISO because the longer you expose the more noise you get. Noise just piles up when you expose longer.
• When you are shooting at the studio using a darker backdrop. More info on backdrops - click here.
• When you are after a higher contrast shot. You want to emphasize more the difference between shadow and light. Of course you'd need more light for such shots.

You really should experiment in poor light conditions with you equipment (lens and camera body), following the proposed advice, in order to find out for yourself what the optimum ISO range for your camera is. Do not be afraid to use higher values of this setting. Set your camera to M for manual and play around with just the ISO so you can start getting a real feel of what it can do for you. After all if you only shoot at ISO 100 you might as well get a film camera.

Newer cameras have wider ISO ranges that have crazy values. I rarely go over 1600 and almost never below 200. I am very pleased with the results even though I am currently using a 2009 model. So, if you've got a brand new dSLR or SLT, you might as well go ahead and test that ISO boost.

One final thing, images always look worse when you zoom in on a computer screen than on paper. Don't be too critical! Go ahead and do some printouts. I am sure you'll be more pleased with your results on paper.

All the best,

Kamen Kunchev

Concert Photographs

We want to take some great concert photos but what do we really need to know? 

First of all, forget about auto settings on your camera. You need to determine fast what the light conditions are. There's plenty of lights on stage and the performers are constantly changing position so make sure you set your camera fast for the available light.

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Second, forget about using flash. This will just destroy your photos and make them look like they were taken in your garage with a dull small camera on auto. You need to capture the available light and atmosphere of the event so stick to what the stage has to offer. Some performers will get easily annoyed if you use flash so... this is a big no-no.

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Mount a wide aperture lens that will capture lots of light for the sensor. If you haven't got the money to get your hands on a 2.8 vario lens then use a prime which will limit you in a way but will get you great results in terms of sharpness, focus and light.

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Use higher ISO settings. ISO100 just won't do you any good. All your shots will look dull and dark. Bring up the ISO to at least 600 and go higher if you have to. Remember that this is NOT shooting outdoors during the day and you need to make use of that high sensitivity of your sensor.

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If you were thinking about using a slower shutter to compensate for using ISO100 (or something like that) you were guessing wrong! The performers on stage will be moving constantly while interacting with the audience. They will not stop to strike a pose for the photographer. Set your shutter speed to 1/200 (you wanna go slower, don't go under 1/125) or higher if you want to capture the moment instead of turning up with blurry bigfoot-like creatures in your photos.

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Change your position (if you can) so you capture different angles and all the musicians on stage. This is very important when you really want to show what a great deal the show was.

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Take some photos of the audience. Lighters in the air, or shoot the stage through raised arms but don't overdo it and keep the camera pointed and the stage and performers 99% of the time.

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Sometimes the spotlight will hit the main performer so hard that their face might get overexposed so check quickly if this is so and change your settings to maintain proper exposure.

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Lights on stage have different colors to make the visual part of the show stronger and more interesting to the eye. So, how do we set our white balance? Sometimes we have blue lights hitting the front man and sometimes it's a red light on his face. Well, this is not to worry about because white balance is not a problem. If the face is blue-ish, or red-ish, then this is what the light was at the moment the shot was taken. That's just it and this is how it was. It's not your problem and it's not a problem at all. However, if you want to make the image stronger and not think about color, just change the photo to black and white and increase the contrast to a level that you personally think could be OK. I use automatic white balance and it turns out that the results are pretty good.

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Aperture. I would shoot stage performances with a wide open (F2-2.8 sometimes I'd go with 4 but that's not very often) for 2 reasons. First of all, I want to emphasize on the person on stage that I'm pointing the camera at and secondly I want to have more light so I can bring up the shutter speed to be able to really freeze the frame and make it look as if the performer was posing especially for me.

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Shoot raw files so you have more processing options.

Now go ahead and find yourself a concert to shoot!

All the best,

Kamen Kunchev