What kind of camera to buy?

There is no such thing as a “one size fits all” camera. For any special photographic work there is the most suitable camera. Just like any decent cabinetmaker has more than a dozen chisels. Knowing this should make the buyer to understand the features of the product before going to the store. The main difference between one digital camera and another is the size of the sensor. This is where the important consequences for the consumer come from.

Four rules for a sensor: Size does matter

• The bigger the sensor, the more expensive the camera see image sensor, page 31 . Photos 1 and 2

• The bigger the sensor, the higher sensitivity values the constructors can squeeze out of the camera. In other words, the bigger the sensor, the more opportunities the owner has to shoot in the dark and get high-quality pictures see image reduction factor 6.44 . photo 1

• The bigger sensor, the better picture. And all components: detail is higher, noise is lower, the ability to cope with large brightness variations in the frame is better, and color reproduction is more natural see. photo 1 and 2 .

• The smaller the sensor, the greater the depth of field in any camera. And vice versa: a bigger sensor means a smaller depth of field.

Fig. 1. The dimensions of sensors in common digital cameras:

1. Full Frame, FX – full-size sensor of film standard, frame size 24×36 mm. This is the sensor of choice for professional broadcast and studio SLR cameras.

2. APS-C – cropped, that is, cropped sensors from amateur DSLR cameras with a frame size of 23.7 × 15.6 mm or 22.7 × 15.1 mm. Reduction factor 1.53 to 1.59.

3. 4/3” sensors are sensors of amateur cameras with frame size of 18×13,5 mm. Reduction coefficient 1.92.

4. 2/3” sensors on amateur digital cameras point-and-shoot cameras with a frame size of 8.8 x 6.6 mm. Reduction ratio of 3.94.

5. 1,8” sensors of amateur digital cameras point-and-shoot with a frame size of 7,2×5,3 mm. Shrink ratio 4.85.

6. 2.5” sensors from amateur digital cameras soap boxes with a frame size of 5.8 x 4.3 mm. Reduction ratio 6.03.

7. 2.7” – sensors of amateur digital cameras point-and-shoot cameras with a frame size of 5.4×4 mm. Reduction coefficient 6,44.

8. 3,2” sensors from amateur digital cameras soap-boxes with frames of 4,5×3,4 mm. Reduction factor 7.62.

You have to drown in details to choose

This seemingly perfectly technical relation between the size of the sensor and the depth of field hides one of the most important characteristics of a photographic image: its picturesqueness. Without realizing it, it’s hard to make the right choice of camera.

Depth of field, or simply depth of field for short, is a property of all lenses. The optics cannot equally sharpen objects both in the foreground and in the middle, and in the infinity zone somewhere far away on the horizon. Always at some distance from the camera the subjects suddenly become quite sharp, and then somewhere farther away they blur again. This is the area of the DOF.

A human eye pupil, a primitive single-lens lens, can’t draw all around sharply either, but by the commands of the brain it constantly refocuses on the objects of interest to its owner at the moment. That’s why we think everything in the world around us is sharp. Photography as a form of visual art has developed its own, inherently conventional language.

Blur is one of the basic hieroglyphs of that language. It is used to separate the plans and emphasize the depth of space, to highlight the main object in the frame, to create atmospheric and airy landscape, to hide skin defects in close-up portraits, to get the effect of picturesqueness of the photo as a whole.

In short, blur has many meanings in photography, and without it the photo would lose half of its charm. Good, that perfectly sharp photos with full depth of field are only a special case. The norm is a picture with the obligatory presence of one or two out-of-focus zones, the bokeh see image quality . photo 2 .

If you sharpen the foreground, bokeh appears in the background of the frame, and the background is blurred. If you sharpen the subject in the middle of the distance scale of the lens you can get both the front bokeh before a sharp subject and the back bokeh after a sharp subject, in the depths of the frame, where the background can be dissolved.

Taking a quick look at the Fig. For example, when you see the size of a full-frame DSLR sensor compared to a sensor of a cheap point-and-shoot camera, you can understand how drastically literally many times its size differs from a sensor of a cheap soapbox. The depth of field in the picture taken with digital camera differs in approximately the same way from the one taken with full size SLR camera see. photos 3 and 4 .

There are cameras with even larger sensors – Medium Format Cameras – on the shelves of specialized stores. Today they use sensors of two sizes, similar to the old medium-format film frame standards: 6×6 cm and 6×4.5 cm squared. It is, on average, one and a half times bigger than a full frame DSLR sensor. But the difference in the depth of field and the painterly appearance of the image is not one and a half times. These cameras have an entirely different relationship to space, precisely because of the depth of field see “Depth of field” on p59 . Photo 5 a, 5 b and 6 .

Another important characteristic of a camera depends on the size of its sensor: the noisiness of its images. All sensors are noisy, but small sensors are noisier. I mentioned it in the beginning of the article, but in my opinion, to make it clearer how important it is to get clean images, I am going to show you a fragment of one frame of originally very noisy image, and the same image after noise reduction see image Noise reduction . Picture 7 a and 7 b .

Now that we know what to expect from the matrices, we need to get to the bottom of what a “whale” t. e. complete optics. Producers offer to buy a camera “body” and a universal lens for all occasions. Recent years have seen an almost revolutionary improvement in the performance of optics through the use of focal lenses, nano lenses and other technological advances. All “kit” lenses became sharper, they got rid of the bouquet of distortions which were always inherent in cheap lenses, but even this did not change the main thing: they still had the same depth of field.

All lenses that are sold as a bonus, as if at a discount, are not fast, and therefore cannot blur the blur zone as beautifully as “pedigree” fast lenses do. The backgrounds of photos made with “whale” optics are doomed to be always sharp, and this distracts the viewer’s attention from the main object in the frame and deprives the photo of spatial depth. “Whale” pictures are always flat.

At the same time, some buyers who are not at all concerned about “artistry” of images shouldn’t care how sharp the Eiffel Tower in front of which he is filmed is. But it is very important how many kilograms are pressing on your neck and squeezing carotid artery. When camping in the mountains, it is difficult for hikers to carry three one-kg fast lenses on their shoulders instead of one half a kilogram lens

Every photographer has his or her own priorities and options. Some people are more interested in detail and sharpness, and will spare nothing to achieve their goals. Others want to be completely invisible on the street, among people, to take genre photos which are absolutely truthful. They buy newly available mirror less cameras – small, unattractive cameras with interchangeable optics and the size of a sensor of a cropped DSLR.

Some people don’t have enough money to buy a top-of-the-line DSLR, so they have to look for something suitable amongst the lower end of the line. But most people are happy with what the simplest digital camera point-and-shoot can do. They can do everything that the most expensive cameras can do, only slower, not so sharply, and the picture they produce can not be enlarged and hung on the wall. This toy can be put in a purse, not sorry to forget in a restaurant or drown in the surf, because it is cheap.

Choosing a camera is always a compromise between one’s desires and one’s capabilities. Personally, if I had to make a choice and buy a camera today and a pro always has several cameras I would buy the Nikon D4 – currently the best DSLR and the Sony NEX 7 – the newest mirrorless camera with interchangeable optics. That’s because I’m not starting from scratch, I have other devices and a lot of excellent optics. But shouldn’t you be sad that you don’t have a certain lens available today?? In my opinion, this is not a reason to be upset.

It’s not the camera that takes the picture, it’s the photographer.

Nothing can stop a talented, creative person, even with the simplest camera, from taking such interesting shots that no one will care what exactly would make such wonderful pictures!

P. S. The size of the allotted magazine space forced me to exclude a lot of details that are important for understanding the problem. In the publishing house “Astril” published the first book of my new series of books “Library of the Photographer”. The book is called “What Camera to Buy” and can answer all the questions you might have after reading this article.

1. The nose of a white cat. To save space on the strip, I cropped the shot so that I could enlarge it as much as possible, otherwise it would be hard to see the important details. Note: the nose and hair around are perfectly sharp. The eyes are already a little blurry, and everything behind the sharp mustache dissolves into bokeh, becoming a generalized background. the only camera currently available with such level of detail is the Nikon D800 with a full-frame sensor. And I shot with one of their best lenses.

Nikon D800. 24×36 mm sensor, 36 Mpix. AF-S Nikkor 24-70/2.8 G ED IF zoom. Sensitivity 400 ISO. Shutter speed: 1/400 sec. Aperture f/6.3. 70 mm focal length.

2. “The Yellow Umbrella from “Parade Rehearsal”. The rain in the city at night magically turns the gray sidewalk into a kind of mirror. Everything around is blurred, rich, and in color. High camera sensitivity is an absolute must for taking such dynamic action shots at night, and even without a tripod, from handheld point of view.

Nikon D3 camera. AF-S Nikkor 14-24/2,8 G ED N zoom. Sensitivity 8000 IS. Shutter speed 1/250 sec. Aperture f/3.5. Focal length of 24 mm.

3. “Birds in the City” from the “Birds in the City” series. A compact camera with a small sensor has a very large depth of field. In this case I used it to make all the pigeons in the frame and the background as sharp as possible. With a large sensor camera I would have had a hard time achieving this result. I must admit that when I first opened the shots of this shoot on my computer screen, I made a shocking discovery. Pigeons really did evolve from dinosaurs! Their predatory faces don’t bode well.

Sony Cyber-shot DSC F828. 2/3″ sensor 8.8 x 6.6 mm . Built-in eightx zoom. Sensitivity 64 ISO. Shutter speed 1/200 sec. Aperture f/4.5. Exposure compensation +0.7 EV. Focal length 28 mm film standard EFR .

4. A wedding portrait from the “Wedding is a Small Life” series. Sharpness and malleability are the hallmarks of this wonderful lens. You can see the longitudinal stripes on the grass in the foreground and powder on the bride’s hair when zoomed in at 200%! Even the backlight and deep aperture didn’t prevent you from beautifully blurring the grass in the back of the frame and beautifully separating the foreground and background. No double outlines in the bokeh area. You can’t get this effect with a camera with a cropped sensor.

Nikon D3 camera. Sensor FX, 24×36 mm . Nikkor AF-S 24-70/2.8 ED zoom. Sensitivity 200 ISO. Shutter speed 1/400 sec. Aperture f/8. Exposure compensation -0.33 EV. 34mm focal length. Photo 5 a and 5 b. “Tulip”.

5a and 5b. “Tulip”. A shallow depth of field. These words don’t explain anything unless you see with your own eyes what it looks like in the picture. In this case, the familiar object changed its face. The actual sharpness is only on part of the flower tip, just two millimeters deep. Everything else is blurry, but it’s the special kind of blur that lets you recognize, appreciate and even admire your subject. I have no idea what’s wrong with this picture, I have the feeling it couldn’t be any other way. Mamiya 645 AFD III camera. Leaf Aptus-II 6 matrix, 6×4.5 cm. Mamiya Sekor AF 80/2.8 lens. Sensitivity 50 ISO. Shutter speed 1/55 sec. Aperture f/8. Macro with extension ring. The distance from the front lens lens to the pistil is 10 cm. Tripod shot.

6. Portrait of a girl. Medium format cameras are heavy, some shutters hit hard. So you basically have to shoot with a tripod, which slows down the shooting a lot. But in the studio, in combination with pulsed light, medium-format becomes a very convenient tool. No more shake problems. The ability to control sharpness and detail in the studio is easier to achieve. The areas of sharpness flow smoothly into the areas of blur. The right eye of the girl is absolutely sharply drawn, and the left one is a bit floaty, but so that it is still perceived as a fairly clear image. The skin is sometimes clear to the point of naturalism and sometimes generalized. All together gives a sense of almost three-dimensional volume. The portrait is painterly, truthful, and almost tangible. For the fill light, I used a flash with a small softbox and a light disk.

Mamiya 645 AFD III camera. Leaf Aptus-II 6 cm x 4.5 cm sensor. Mamiya Sekor 150/3.5 lens. Sensitivity 50 ISO. Shutter speed 1/100 sec. Aperture f/3.6. Exposure compensation -0.33 EV. Focal length 70 mm.

7a and 7b. “Red Umbrellas” from the series “Flood in Venice”. Fragment.

The night. Venice. Winter. The cold, sullen, relentless downpour with a gusty wind is a photographer’s worst enemy. Sensitivity 2000 ISO for my then Nikon D3 – on the border of good and evil. It would be silly to increase the sensitivity, because the frame contains a lot of dark zones where grain and colored noise usually occur. There are two types of noise: color noise and luminance noise. The first appears as bright blue or red dots on a flat background, the second as bright colorless dots. This fragment of the raw file clearly shows both color and brightness noise. The noise in the post-processed version was almost completely removed when converted using Lightroom, but some details were lost.

Nikon D3 camera. AF-S Nikkor 24-70/2.8 G ED IF zoom. Sensitivity 2000 ISO. Shutter speed 1/25 sec. Aperture f/3.5. AE correction +0.33 EV.