On Wednesday, 23 September 2015 15:58:38 UTC+1, NY wrote:
"whisky-dave" wrote in message
...
the fact that all your photos are free means that you can
experiment,

of course, but experimenting can only make you better if you know what
you're doing.

and you can see instantly which is the right exposure in a
situation where an automatic meter would be fooled.

and how would you know this. Most mobile phone users wouldn't even
consider teh term right exposure there's no such thing as a wrong
exposure.

Agreed. But that has been true of film cameras (eg Instamatic point and
shoot and Box Brownies) since photography became cheap enough for the
amateur rather than just the professional or knowledgeable enthusiast to
afford.

The more skillfull or knowledgeable have usually gotten a better image than those that haven't a clue, of course luck can play a part for everyone.


Does having to pay for each picture necessarily make a person who "just
wants to take a picture" and doesn't want to be bothered with things he
doesn't understand like exposure, composition. focus etc, take better
photos?

I think the anwser is yes. More care is taken over a shot.

Not necessarily: he just finds that "some of them didn't come out
right" without necessarily knowing why.

So wht we the person do about it ?


Digital doesn't make that situation
worse, it just means they can take more pictures, some of which may be good
(by chance!) and lots which will be dross. At least with "free" photos there
is the opportunity to take enough photos to be able to experiment and to
have instant feedback as to what worked - *for those people who are
able/willing to experiment*.

In theory but not in practice.




Fantastic ypu lied in your photo, people have been able to do that before
stonehenge was built.
Constable did that in the 17th centrury with his hay wain.
it wasn't real he imagined it.

Yes, artists/painters could do it. Film photographers couldn't (except to a
limited extent and with crude results such as the Cottingley Fairies).

fooled a lot of people for a 100+ years.

Modern digital photographers can do what painters could - modify what's
there.

So could film photographers, a friend of from my camera club worked at nirvina van dyke retouching pictures of film stars and royalty, even painting colour onto black and white prints.




did that Short of digitising a film negative/slide,
making digital corrections and then re-photographing the result to film,
that's simply not possible with film. Tweaking colour temperature (or
white-balancing for whatever the colour of the daylight or artificial
light
happens to be) is so much easier with digital.

all irreliveant unless you think being a good photographer means
you are better at covering up your mistakes.

Being a good photographer means taking good photos, whether that requires
doing all the adjustments in camera at the time of taking the picture or
adjusting things after the event, either in the darkroom for film or the
computer software for digital. I wonder how many stunning eye-catching
photos are precisely as they were taken and how many have had some form of
cropping, sharpening/blurring, colour correction, retouching etc applied in
a real or digital darkroom afterwards.

I would say most to some extent, well those that are taking photographes rather than snaps, there's a differnce.


As long as you avoid the dreaded over-exposure and burnt-out highlights
(I
find it better to under- than over-expose if I'm unsure and tend to set
my
camera permanently on -0.3 stops)

so you don't know your own camera.

I know that its meter generally seems to over-expose slightly.

and how many mobile phone users do yuo think even think of such a thing.
They will just click away until they get a picture of what they want. Whereas a photographer doesn't need 100 pics and then choose which he likes.

if left to its
own devices and that the meter doesn't give the correct exposure in every
situation,

only a photographer uses the term correct exposure. In the snapshot world
it's kept or binned.


and that the limitation of the photographic medium (in this case
the digital sensor, but it could be film) tends to respond better, if in
doubt, to exposure errors in one direction than in the other. Most negative
film, for example, tends to produce better prints with an overexposure of
(say) one stop than with an underexposure of one stop. Most slide film is
the opposite, as is a digital sensor.

if a photographer knows he'll make the correct adjustments and snap shooter will just take more pictures.


That's knowing (by copious practice and learning from your mistakes)

which you get more with film, there's isn;t an auto exposure for film.
In some cases you have to choose which film BEFORE taking the photo rather than after.


your
equipment and your medium. And the "free" nature of digital and the
immediate feedback out in the field makes that learning process so much
easier -

Yes just like driving an automatic car makes driving easier but does it make you a better driver.

Why is it that pro racers DO NOT choose automatice cars ?

for those that are willing to learn, and not everyone is
sufficiently interested in photography to do so.

for those wanting to learn photgraphy film is the better choice, if you want to know how to take snap shots then digital is better.
This is whatthe good colleges are doing, of course there are loads of online ones where all you have to doi is submit a few iphone pics and you recive a cert that says you're a phootgrapher.



thre's other thiungs it allows focus staking and all sorts of things

Yes I read about focus stacking the other day. I already knew about HDR
(taking several photographs from identical viewpoint with different
exposures and combining them to add more shadow and highlight detail, but I
didn't about taking "identical" photos with different focus settings to
increase effective depth of field. I shall have to experiment with that if I
can afford software that can perform the merging.


buy a pinhole camera far cheaper if yuo want excessive DoF.

With film if you wanted something in focus you had to get it in focus when you were there taking the photo.




correcting for known barrel/pincushion distortion in a lens (something
that
is present to some extent even in expensive lenses, especially in a zoom
lens at some focal lengths): I have a utility that "knows" about the
distortions that are inherent in many lenses and can correct for them to
avoid rectangles looking curved inwards or outwards.

That proves that digital is better for taking photos
doesn't say much about the photographer.

I don't think anyone is suggesting the digital makes a better photographer,

which is the problem if yuo want good photos you need to understand what you're doing just having a digital camera is not enough.

but it does make it easier/quicker/cheaper to acquire the knowledge to
become one and removes the cost disincentive to experimentation. It improves
the *potential* to be a better photographer.

Well if it takes you 100 shots to get a keeper good luck.


What all is said and done, the best camera (sorry, cliche time!) is the one
that you have with you at the time -

what even if it's a film camera.


better to take a worse-quality picture
of an unrepeatable event with a compact camera because you've got it with
you and can operate it quickly, than to miss taking the photo with a camera
capable of taking better photos (low noise sensor, lens with fewer
aberations etc) because you've not got it with you or can't get it ready
quick enough to take the photo.

That's where the photographer part kicks in. A photographer is liklely to get a better picture than a snap shooter even if the snap shooter doesn't realise it.


In other words, having a better camera, being able to use it correctly etc
is only one part of it.

Yes and most peole with digital have no idea, even more true of those that think there phone is better than a proper difital camera because it has more zoom or more megapixels.

Having the patience to wait for the right moment or
to get the best angle also play a major part

why would a digital users have to wait, he can turn the ISO up to 20,000+
when I had film I had to wait until the sun came out to get the sort of exposure times and aperature I want.

- as does a certain amount of
luck sometimes :-)

Most of which comes from experience or being taught about photography,
and of course knowing your own equipment.