Lessons from Rozov: what your camera can do?

A modern digital camera

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a true treasure trove of knowledge. Whoever has mastered it is the photographer. Well, or almost a photographer –

the only thing left is to use the luggage you’ve learned in the right way, and to spy on life things that are not very visible to those around you. So, today let’s talk about the baggage of knowledge that amateur photographers have in their hands along with the camera.

Photo 1. The hunger is real.

Olympus OM-D E-M5 camera

M lens. ZUIKO DIGITAL ED 75-300mm 1:4.8-6.7

The sensitivity is 200 ISO

Shutter speed 1/800 s

Aperture f/5.6

The exposure compensation is -0.3 EV

Focal length of 150mm film standard.

To catch the most interesting phase of motion, I turned on burst mode. The sparrows were so aggressive and unpredictable that I had to squeeze the shutter release long before the bird decided to attack its prey. So it was a very long burst. But that’s why I very quickly – literally on the third try – managed to capture exactly what I wanted.

Memory buffer and shooting speed

The buffer is the fast memory built into the camera, which works automatically and does not require any intervention from the photographer. The device is hidden inside the camera, there is not a single button on the body that gives away its presence. We wouldn’t even know it exists if it were a hundred times bigger and a few times faster.

But at the moment the buffer reminds of the notorious granaries of the Motherland where the collective farmers used to take the harvest from the fields. For some reason these storages were never enough to preserve the fruits of the Soviet land. It’s about the same with the buffer. When shooting a sequence and you really have to shoot a lot and fast, the camera suddenly goes on strike and starts to blink the LEDs with worry.

The shutter release is useless, the buffer is full. The camera processor works hard, dragging and dropping images from temporary shelves to a permanent memory card. Until there’s room for a new crop, the shutter button is locked.

Different cameras have different processors in terms of capacity and speed. Professional cameras can do the job quickly. The Nikon D3S lets you shoot in bursts of almost forty frames. Only after that the buffer overflowed, but strangely enough! – sometimes even that memory reserve is not enough. I never had a chance to overfill the buffer of the Nikon D4.

Simpler cameras are slower to think. I’ve let go of shooting RAW-format photography because the camera would freeze for five or ten seconds after two or three shots had been taken: an inappropriate pause for a wedding receptionist, for example. The newlyweds exchange wedding rings, and the photographer waits for the “frozen” camera to die and let him keep shooting.

Buffer capacity and RAW file recording rate are seldom mentioned in advertisements and technical descriptions, but they to a large extent influence the shooting speed, one of the most important camera properties.

Shotgun bursts and sharpness

Motors have been around since the days of film. They were used mostly by sports photo reporters and “parkettes” photographers allowed to take pictures of high-ranking political figures . In both cases, it was important to get a good shot of the decisive moment: the victorious tear of a newly crowned champion or the scratching of the tip of the president’s nose.

Fashion photographers, paparazzi and entertainment reporters in the West had film motors. This feature was not used by amateur photographers – mostly out of economy. There are only 36 frames in the film. The motor of a professional camera could turn them all around in eight seconds, and then I had to rewind and replace them with new ones. This operation ate up at least half a minute of time and a few subjects that were not shot. Besides, film was expensive.

Photo 2. “Daisies.”.

Nikon D3S

AF-S Nikkor 14-24/2.8 ED lens

The sensitivity of 800 ISO

Shutter speed 1/6400 sec

The aperture is f/5

Exposure compensation of +0.67 EV

Focal length 15 mm

The flying girls who were my grandson’s classmates. They asked me to shoot them in flight. I had to turn on the “motor” to the highest possible speed for my camera: seven frames per second. It was the only way to catch the right phase. I made it harder for myself by shooting accurately against the sun and trying to catch a moment when it was closing on one of the figures hovering in the air.

With the advent of modern digital reporter cameras, the uses of the motor, now called continuous shooting mode or burst mode , have changed. The old ones are not gone, but new ones have appeared. Now there are no financial brakes to hold back the spread of this feature.

Shutter depreciation should not be taken into account: nowadays a camera becomes obsolete long before the shutter mechanism wears out. Plus, the shooting speed of full-size professional DSLRs has increased to nine frames per second. The probability of catching the right phase of fast running processes has increased fourfold compared to film time motors photo 2 .

The capacity of a single flash drive is now the equivalent of the number of frames in about 40 films. Frame rate no longer has the same impact on cost per frame as it did before. That’s why the relationship between photographers and continuous shooting changed radically.

Before, a motor was only used for catching the decisive moment, but now continuous shooting is also a way to avoid shaky movement. Shooting with long lenses, even in good light, is quite a challenge. The high angular velocity of moving objects in the frame window when your hands are shaking, for example, leads to defective out-of-frame pictures. The camera shakes most often because of jerking movements of the index finger when the shutter release button is pressed. You can, of course, hold the camera body with your thumb and hold your breath to avoid the camera shaking. But using high-speed continuous shooting, no matter how you look at it, is a more reliable way of getting sharp images.

Take a short series of two or three shots each, the first shot is usually blurred precisely because of pressing the shutter release button, but the second and third shots should turn out sharp precisely because the shutter release button is already fully pressed and the camera is not moving. Moving your finger up when you stop taking pictures can’t do any harm Photos 3 and 4 .

Photo 3. Christ Pantocrator.

12th century mosaic.

Palatine Chapel in Palermo.

Nikon D3S camera

The lens

AF VR Nikkor 80-400/4,5-5,6 ED

Sensitivity 2500 ISO

The shutter speed was 1/15th of a second

Aperture f/5.3

Exposure compensation -0.67 EV

Focal length 210mm

The mosaics are positioned high. Lighting is intentionally sparse so that the chapel walls burn brighter from the gilding. I had to use a very fast telephoto lens with a very modest focal length. Shutter speed 1/15th of a second is four stops slower than the minimum shutter speed of 1/250th of a second. I should have gotten a completely smeared picture if I hadn’t used the continuous shooting and mechanical stabilization features VR – Vibration Reduction . The first file in the series was a model flaw because of shakiness, but the second was absolutely sharp. What’s easy to see.

Photo 4. Dacha Securité.

The Olympus OM-D E-M5

M Lens. ZUIKO DIGITAL ED 75-300mm 1:4.8-6.7

Sensitivity 250 ISO

Shutter speed 1/500 sec

Aperture f/5.9

AE correction -0.3 EV

Focal length 342mm film standard.

Another example of using continuous shooting just to reliably get a sharp photo.

Self-timer vs. sharpening

Everybody knows how to use the self timer to take pictures of themselves and their friends. The camera should be mounted on a tripod, your friends should be lined up into a fence not forgetting to leave room for your dear self, turn on the self-timer and after pressing the button you have to run to the place reserved for you. A little birdie flies out after the scheduled seconds. You should shoot at least twice, just in case someone blinks, turns away, or shows horns the first time. That’s most often how the self-timer is used.

Although every instruction manual for a camera from a cheap point and shoot up to a professional SLR suggests using the self-timer to avoid sharpening, in practice you may need this strange, at a first glance, method of fighting for sharpness if you need to take a picture with a slow shutter and you do not have the release rope with you. If you don’t have a tripod you’ll have to find a firm support for your camera, for example, the embankment parapet. It’s a good idea to put a plastic bag full of sand on the parapet under the camera as well. Only after that, and once the scene is complete, you can take a test shot, check the histogram, make exposure compensation, set the self-timer and press the shutter gently to avoid dislodging anything. After the time you set the shutter goes off photo 5 .

If you are shooting with a point-and-shoot or probe with a central shutter, it’s likely that the camera won’t budge. If you have a DSLR, there is a possibility of light grease. The mirror impact is so strong in some cameras that you can feel it with your hands while shooting, and lubrication at shutter speeds close to 1/30th of a second is not at all uncommon.

Sharpness is not the key to quality photography. There are cases when you have to fight with this dignity. And yet blurred pictures are mostly perceived as a defect. That’s why the construction of the camera provides another means to fight shake – raising the mirror beforehand.

Photo 5. Evening in Antalya.

Nikon D3 camera

AF-S Nikkor 24-70/2.8 ED lens

Sensitivity 200 ISO

Shutter speed 1/15s

Aperture f/8

AE correction -1.33 EV

Focal length of the camera is 35 mm

A bench back and self-timer were used instead of a tripod and cable. By the way, shutter speeds of 1/15 seconds especially often lead to the appearance of grease.

Pre-raising the mirror, or

Death blow to sharpening

I turn on the mirror pre-lift in the following cases:

• If you are not sure about the stability of the camera mount
• when I shoot with a very long lens
• when you want perfect sharpness and other methods don’t guarantee it.

Very long zoom macro specialists use this mode all the time, because the angular velocity of the subject in the frame window is even greater than with the TVs.

Radio trigger or a cable switch should be connected to the camera. These accessories let you control the camera remotely, without touching it. You can now push the shutter release button on the cable. Camera obediently raises mirror and freezes in expectation. Press the shutter release again after a few seconds, when the tripod swinging caused by the mirror impact has subsided. The shutter goes off, the picture is taken and only then does the mirror return to its place.

Usually professional models of reflex cameras have this function. It goes without saying that the mirrorless ones are out of the list of favorites, because they have nothing to lift: there is no mirror. Amateur DSLRs are not happy with this function because of the economy, the manufacturer wants to make such models as light, small and cheap as possible photo 6 .

Photo 6. Movement at different altitudes.

The monorail at Ostankino.

Mamiya 645 AFD III camera

Sensor Leaf Aptus-II 6

Mamiya Sekor 35/3.5 lens

Sensitivity 50 ISO

Shutter speed 1/60 sec

Aperture f/4

It was about to sunset. It was getting really dark to shoot with a medium format handheld camera. I have to say, the Mamiya’s DSLR shot is pretty solid, and there’s a good chance of getting a “shoosh”. I put the camera on a tripod, but it’s a light tripod, not suited for heavy cameras. The only way to avoid mistakes was to use the mirror lift function. As you can see, it worked.

Photo 7. Pierrot, the owner of the beach.

Nikon D3S

Nikkor 35/1.4 lens

Sensitivity 200 ISO

The shutter speed is 1/6400 sec

Aperture f/2

AE correction -0.67 EV

The rugged exterior of a Sicilian descendant of the Norman conquerors hid an abyss of gentleness and hospitality beneath. Pierrot sang “Bella Ciao” and “Ochi Chernye”, offered coffee and praised American literature, especially Bulgakov whom he knew from the “Master and Margarita” episode we just watched. I emailed him a few shots and got a polite invitation to visit the beach again for coffee and a sing-along.

I’ve broken some of the laws of portrait photography. The textbooks don’t recommend shooting portraits with wide-angle lenses, but I do it quite often, in this case not with the usual lens. The old Nikkor 35/1,4 has been recently updated and made autofocus, but even in the old version it still draws remarkably well. Pay attention to the areas of maximum sharpness: there rings every hair of Pierrot’s glamorous bristles. And the tip of the nose, which is only three centimeters closer to the camera, noticeably floated. The beach umbrella behind the hero’s head has lost its objectification and does not distract from the brutal singer at all. I could get an even shallower depth of field if I open the diaphragm all the way down, and keep the sharp details perfectly sharp. And on the contrary, I could have shutter the camera down to 8 and got an almost sharp image of an umbrella.

Aperture-repeat button

The basic, most attractive feature of SLR cameras is the ability to look at the subject being shot through the lens and see every second exactly what the camera will capture. And you can see not only the frame borders even the simplest frame viewfinders can provide that anyway , but also perspective distortions inherent in different lenses and the degree of sharpness of different objects in the frame.

Aperture repeater button appeared on the first time on a DSLR along with automatic diaphragm jumpers. It’s usually on the right or left side of the lens on SLRs, so that you can easily touch it with one of your fingers when you’re pointing it out. There aren’t that many ergonomically convenient places for buttons on the camera body. You wouldn’t put just anything here. Such demonstrative respect for a reason.

Some forty years ago the Japanese used to make lenses with a special ring for opening and closing the diaphragm manually. I remember them. I used to have one of those portrait lenses. It helped a lot with the viewfinder blindness problem. For if you press the lens aperture down just halfway, the viewfinder window will get very dark and it will be very difficult to focus manually. That is why photographers had to first open the iris, focus with the lightest picture possible and then close the iris to the desired value with a special ring.

The jumping apertures, or automatic apertures, revolutionized the time it took to get ready to shoot. The iris is now always open and many camera owners don’t even know it exists because it closes imperceptibly to the photographer before the shutter curtains open and then opens equally imperceptibly and quickly to make it possible to frame and focus without straining the eye. Speed of shooting and accurate aiming are assured.

But having got the opportunity to shoot fast we could unnoticeably lose the main advantage of DSLRs over other cameras. Aperture is not only a variable aperture for adjusting the light output, it also controls the depth of field remember: small aperture – large depth of field and vice versa . And if a photographer always sees an image in the viewfinder with the diaphragm fully open, he has no way of knowing what is actually sharp and what is blurred and to what degree.

Overcoming viewfinder blindness came at too high a price and camera designers had to immediately figure out a way to return the lost advantages to the photographer. That’s how the iris spotter appeared – it’s a little button next to the lens. Once I press it, the iris slams shut. The viewfinder image will get darker but the photographer will be able to see how and to what degree it is sharp in the image.

This is a very important function, e.g. when shooting portraits with fast lenses and soft focus, when the image seems to breathe. The sharp and the blurred are so close together, and the degree of blur of the unsharp changes so profoundly that changing the aperture value by only one focal point can drastically affect the graphic structure of the image and the tonal structure as well photo 7 .

I must say that when I was thinking about this chapter, I began to analyze my own relationship with the iris repeater. I used it all the time at the beginning of my career, but slowly, as I became more experienced, I used it less and less. Not because I don’t have any need to make a preliminary evaluation of the DOF, it’s just that I know the properties of the lenses well enough and without visual evaluation I can predict what will be sharp and by how much photo 8 .

Photo 8. Cherry blossom frosting.

Nikon D2X camera

33/2.8 Monocle

Sensitivity 100 ISO

Shutter speed: 1/400 sec

Aperture f/4

Dubna was shot with a homemade wide-angle monocle. I broke a taboo: you don’t shoot color with monocles. Actually, a lot of people do, but then they have to fight chromatic aberration for a long time. In this case, the trees at the border of the upper part of the frame were almost blue. It didn’t get along with the general greenish atmosphere of the image. I had to bleach the trees.

Monocular photography is difficult because you can’t focus easily, there’s no autofocus. The electronic rangefinder is very helpful, it shows if I’ve got the aperture correctly aligned. Unfortunately that function is not available on all DSLRs, but only on pro models. Owners of amateur cameras have to rely on experience and good eyesight. I must say, not accurately pinpointing the sharpness of an already soft image makes it painful to look at. Reducing the monocular aperture noticeably affects the depth of field. If you set the aperture to half of the maximum aperture spread, you can get a pretty sharp picture. True, with a full bouquet of all possible aberrations described in textbooks. They lose the softness of the image, which is the main reason for using a monocle.