Penitent Disciple

In light of my warnings about technology in yesterday’s post, I feel like I should reiterate that it’s not technology itself that tends to be the problem. The problem arises when we allow technology to become our master – whether in our use of it, or our desire for it. Viewed and used appropriately, modern technology can be a great blessing.

Since my last couple of photography posts, I’ve tried to be more intentional about using the photographic tools in my arsenal. In addition to grabbing a camera more often when I head out the door, I’ve been doing more research on the features at my disposal.

One of the possibilities I never paid attention to is the option of directly photographing in black & white. What makes this cool is that when shooting in this mode, you actually see the preview (both on the screen and in the viewfinder) in black & white. You can even select a colored “lens” filter – for example, red to give more contrast in the sky – and see its effect in the preview as well. So for those times when your final intention for the photographs is black & white, you can actually see it that way when framing the shot, giving you a better sense of how you might want to frame it for black & white tones vs. color content. Shooting RAW+JPG, you can always convert the RAW file to black & white later if you decide you can do a better job than the in-camera JPG of that photo. (In the snapshot of the camera screen below, there are some colored moiré artifacts from taking a picture of the LCD, but those artifacts aren’t there in real life).

I’ve also been learning about “exposing to the right” (ETTR), which involves using “+” exposure compensation, while monitoring the on-screen histogram, to overrule the camera’s automatic exposure settings. The idea is to “overexpose” the RAW file just shy of blowing the detail out of the brightest parts of the photo, then adjusting it back down in post-processing. Doing so allows more dynamic range, as well as additional shadow detail, in the final image.

Next, I got the low-down on “focus peaking”. Most old-school film SLRs, and some DSLRs, have a pentaprism in the optical viewfinder, which slightly splits the vertical elements in the center of the frame, lining them up perfectly when whatever object you’re trying to photograph is in focus. It’s a great manual focusing aid, especially since most of the lenses back in the day were not autofocus lenses. Nowadays, pretty much all the newer lenses available for modern camera systems are autofocus lenses, and manual focus isn’t nearly as necessary as it once was. However, an increasing number of folks are getting adapters to use old prime lenses from the days of film on their modern cameras, because some of those lenses are exceptionally bright (letting in lots of light) and sharp. There’s even a crop of new makers of inexpensive manual focus lenses to serve that market as well.

Newer mirrorless cameras have a feature called “focus peaking”, which temporarily magnifies the preview and displays bright (or dark) lines around the edges of objects as you manually focus in and out, clearly showing which objects are in focus. Unfortunately, the original Olympus E-M5 does not have focus peaking as a feature. But some clever user discovered that it’s possible to use one of Olympus’ built-in art filters, along with a magnification feature in the camera, to effectively do the same thing. Those settings can be saved as a preset, then that preset can be assigned to a button on the camera, allowing you to pull up “focus peaking” on demand when that button is pressed (so you can manually focus easily), and going back to your regular shooting mode when you take your finger off of the button. Brilliant! I can see myself picking up some inexpensive, fast, manual-focus prime lenses off eBay or Amazon at some point in the future.

Speaking of the Olympus built-in art filters, I’ve been experimenting with one called “dramatic tone” in the past week or two. The results aren’t always that great, but sometimes it creates a pretty interesting, and occasionally even compelling, image. These kinds of art filters and effects can easily become clichéd and cheesy, but seeing a scene depicted in a way you wouldn’t necessarily have chosen can also serve to fire up some neurons in the creative part of your brain. And we shouldn’t forget that going back to the days of film, stylized photography using lens filters and darkroom procedures has been a staple in the art (ever heard of Ansel Adams?). For me, it’s just another one of those things that can help maintain an interest in grabbing the camera. I’ll try to post some examples in the coming days.

A post last week about trends in camera sales got me thinking about the realm of photography, and my participation in it. Looking back over the years, my involvement in the hobby has been a mix of curiosity, genuine interest in the creative elements of photography, and – if I’m honest – shallow consumeristic tendencies.

I got my first serious camera late in my junior year of high school. My neighbor across the street, Larry, was two years older than me and was a photographer for the high school paper and yearbook, and that had sparked my interest. So my parents – unbeknownst to me – went to Wolf Camera in Overland Park and bought (at the salesman’s suggestion) a Pentax K1000 SE for me. Needless to say, I was pretty stoked. Like most SLRs at that time, it was completely manual. The only “electronics” included was a built-in light meter, a little oscillating lever visible at the right edge of the viewfinder.

I ended up taking a couple of extension classes from Fort Scott Community College, offered in my town, and taught by my former high school biology teacher. They helped in terms of some general camera info and darkroom processes, but I still didn’t fully grasp what I was doing when it came down to the basics (aperture, shutter speed, etc.). Despite that, during my senior year I shot for the school paper and yearbook. And, shooting many, many rolls of Kodak Tri-X and Plus-X B&W film (thanks to an effectively unlimited supply from the school), I managed to get a lucky shot on occasion.

After high school, I mostly abandoned the hobby. Even though my dorm at K-State had a darkroom in the basement, I never availed myself of it. After college, I had a couple of different inexpensive point-and-shoot 120mm film cameras.

In the late 1990s, having access to tech publications such as PC Magazine at my job, I began to develop an interest in the newly emerging market of digital cameras. The problem was, these early devices were really expensive, and not very high quality compared to film. (I remember borrowing a Sony Mavica camera that captured photos at a 640×480 resolution and wrote the files – very slowly – to a 3.5 inch floppy disc inserted in the camera. I think it retailed for around $650).

Finally in the summer of 2000, after researching current camera reviews, I pulled the trigger on an Olympus C-3000 Zoom. I think I paid around $400 via the web from some outfit I’d never heard of in New York City. The C-3000 was a 3-megapixel (2048×1536) camera with a better-than-average CCD sensor and a fairly bright F/2.8 to F/11 built-in zoom lens.

I used the heck out that camera, but almost exclusively for snapshots of youth group activities and events. I never really did much with that camera to explore the creative side of photography.

It wasn’t until early 2005 that I started getting the itch to return to a more creative approach. For whatever reason, that itch happened to mostly coincide with the recent purchase of a price-reduced, overstock Olympus C-4000 (a 4-megapixel camera in the same physical shape of the C-3000, and originally released in 2002). My first serious digital photo outing was with my friend (and former youth groupie) BJ in Lincoln’s Haymarket district, and I still have a couple of 8×10 photos from that outing on my entry-way wall.

After that outing, I was hooked. That also kicked off a rather silly (and somewhat embarrassing) quest for better and more current camera gear. A few months later I bought, and briefly used, a 2nd-hand Olympus C-5050 (5-megapixel) camera via eBay. Then almost immediately after, I got an Olympus C-8080 (8-megapixel) camera. It was with the C-8080 that I started shooting in RAW rather than JPG format (allowing much more latitude for the photos to be “developed” on the computer). Beginning around this time I also started keeping a smaller pocket camera around as well for more informal snapshots, and have gone through a few different models of those over the years.

At the end of 2005, I saw an Olympus E-500 digital SLR kit with 2 lenses at the Lincoln Sam’s Club, for around $500, and couldn’t resist the plunge into the world of interchangeable lens digital cameras. The E-500 was an 8-megapixel camera, and employed Olympus’ unique Supersonic Wave Filter (SSWF) which shakes dust off the image sensor (and saves having to undertake that delicate operation yourself or send the camera in to have it done). So I sold the C-5050 and C-8080 on eBay and dove in to the DSLR world.

Then shortly after getting the E-500, I saw some articles online about the Olympus E-300, which had been released a couple of years earlier. It had a unique appearance because the internal reflex mirror was mounted to the side of the lens opening instead of on top, allowing the camera to have a flat top rather than the conventional “hump”. But what really drew me was the fact that Olympus made a battery grip that attached to the bottom of the E-300 (they didn’t make one for the E-500), with a separate shutter button and control dial that allowed the camera to be easily held and operated in a portrait orientation. It also allowed for the use of 2 batteries for longer shooting sessions. And if I’m honest, what I really liked about that battery grip was the image of looking more “professional”. The E-300 had the same unique Kodak-made CCD sensor as the E-500, which produced almost Kodachrome-like colors. So I sold the E-500 to a friend at church and “back-graded” to a refurbished E-300 from Cameta Camera, along with a battery grip.

Fairly quickly after that I upgraded from the two original kit lenses, picking up 3 of Olympus’ mid-tier lenses (which optically were as good as some other camera makers’ pro lenses). I shot with the E-300 from 2006 through the spring of 2011, and got some really nice photos during that time.

In May of 2011 I picked up a refurbished Olympus E-30 (a 12 megapixel model originally released in 2009), along with a battery grip. In addition to a higher megapixel sensor, the E-30 also had in-body image stabilization (IBIS), which all my subsequent Olympus cameras have had as well. The main factor that drove me in this direction was that around this time I had started to notice some very slight hand tremors, so the IBIS was a blessing in that regard, especially with telephoto lenses. The E-30 was my primary camera for the next 3+ years.

From their first DSLR (the E-1, in 2003), Olympus had used what’s known as a “four-thirds” sensor, which is somewhat smaller than the sensors used by most of their competitors. The goal behind four-thirds was that as technology advanced and electronics inevitably got smaller in size, it would eventually allow for a smaller interchangeable lens camera body, similar to the old Olympus OM, F, and Pen series film cameras. And while they did release a couple of mini-DSLRs (the E-400 and the E-600 series), Olympus finally realized their dream with the release of the “PEN” camera in 2009 – the E-P1. Its design was inspired by the original Olympus Pen film cameras of the 1960s. This new format was called “micro four-thirds”, because along with realizing the smaller camera size made possible by the four-thirds sensor, it also featured a new, smaller lens mount and a line of smaller lenses. The new format also abandoned the use of the internal mirror and went to an exclusively electronic viewfinder.

The micro four-thirds market was pretty successful for Olympus, and they made the decision to leave the traditional four-thirds DSLR market and focus solely on the mirrorless micro four thirds cameras. In 2013 I dipped my toe in the water and picked up a refurbished E-P3 (a 12-megapixel camera), originally released a couple of years earlier. It was kind of fun to play with, but the E-30 was still my serious camera.

Then in mid 2014 I picked up a refurbished OM-D E-M5, which I had lusted after since its initial release in 2012. The OM-D series was modeled after the original Olympus OM film cameras of the 1970s. Aside from an impressive feature set, it just looked so retro and cool. The E-M5 is a 16-megapixel, weather-sealed camera. Still, I bounced back and forth between the E-30 and the E-M5 as my serious camera, because I had better glass for the E-30.

Finally, in early 2015, I yielded to temptation and bought a refurbished E-M1, the latest (at the time) flagship model originally released in 2013. It’s also weather sealed, with some additional pro features. Even though there have been updated versions of both the E-M5 and E-M1 since then, the original E-M1 is the latest camera body I have, and I don’t see that changing for the foreseeable future. Later in 2015 I did also pick up (certified refurbished from Olympus) three of the “Pro” series weather-sealed lenses for micro four thirds – the 7-14mm zoom, the 12-40mm zoom, and 40-150mm zoom (double those values for 35mm equivalents), all with a constant F/2.8 maximum aperture throughout the zoom range. It’s some really, really nice glass. I do have a battery grip for the E-M1, but I’ll admit that I rarely use it. Perhaps if I ever get back into doing Sr. photos I will, just to help reassure clients that I’m using quality gear. 😉

I’m using the pro lenses with the E-M1, and over time I’ll probably pick up some Olympus/Panasonic/Sigma single focal length lenses for use with E-M5, since it’s a bit smaller than the E-M1, and better suited to smaller prime lenses. Having to “zoom with your feet” is an effective way to stretch creativity and composition skills. I keep the E-P3 in the glove compartment of my car for those serendipitous moments that sometimes present themselves while I’m driving. Because of the aggressive depreciation of consumer electronics, it’s not worth a whole lot these days, but it’s still a fine photography tool.

I’ll admit that it’s been nice to be off of the upgrade train. Aside from possibly picking up some prime lenses for the E-M5 – and I’m not in any hurry to do that – I really feel like my current gear is plenty good enough for my style of shooting. I do feel bad for the old-school camera makers, though. As discussed in last week’s post, with more and more people not interested in anything beyond their smartphone camera, the hobby of what I’ll call “deliberate photography”, along with camera sales, are down considerably over the past few years. (It also means there are fewer deals to be found on the used and refurb markets). As a terrific avenue to notice and appreciate God’s creation – and the works of human hands enabled by that same God – I hate to see the hobby dying out.

Some are predicting that “computational photography” – using software to emulate things like depth of field – will eventually enable smartphones to replace high end cameras. That type of high-end emulation may in fact come to pass, and enable folks to get higher quality – and more stylized – snapshots via their phones. But there’s something about heading out with a camera and lenses, practicing the art of “seeing”, holding a camera up to your eye to block out everything but the current frame, making equipment and exposure choices, and working around limitations. Those things just exercise one’s creative muscles more than holding a smartphone out in front of you and tapping an icon once in a while during the course of your regular routine.

I’ve not been as consistent as I’d like in keeping up with the creative habit. Inspiration can be a fleeting thing, but I’m going to try and do better at being open and responding to it, as well as making a habit of grabbing my camera bag when I head out the door. God knows I’ve got plenty of quality tools at my disposal.

The first half of 2019 has brought some stark data about the trend of camera sales worldwide. The overall rate of stand-alone camera sales has been plummeting for several years, driven primarily by the ever-growing use of smartphones. Most of decline has been in the area of fixed-lens cameras (for example, pocket cameras like the Canon Elph and Nikon Coolpix lines), but interchangeable lens cameras are being affected as well. In the graph below, notice the early 2019 data (in orange) compared to 2017 and 2018.

A more long-term breakout of fixed lens vs. interchangeable lens camera sales reveals some interesting historical data. In the graph below, you can see how slow DSLRs were to initially catch on, due primarily to the extraordinarily high cost of the early models, coupled with low pixel counts that couldn’t come close to rivaling the quality of film. It wasn’t until around 2007-2008 that DSLRs with 10MP-12MP sensors, with decent low light performance and faster autofocus, were available at mass market prices  ($500-$800 bundled with 1 or 2 lenses). 2012 represented the peak in interchangeable lens camera sales. It’s also noteworthy that with the introduction of the first iPhone in late 2007, and Android phones starting to hit the market in force around 2009-2010, the overall drop in camera sales quickly followed.

As a partaker in the hobby of photography, the overall decrease in camera sales does make me sad. If there’s any bright side to the data, it’s that interchangeable lens camera sales are still hanging in there somewhat. The graphic below teases out a bit more detail. Of particular interest is that within the category of interchangeable lens cameras, mirrorless cameras are eating away at DSLRs in terms of sales.

It’s my hope that, as time goes on, the ubiquity of smartphone cameras doesn’t dull peoples’ interest in the hobby of creative photography, and the use of dedicated photographic tools. An extended reduction in demand will inevitably lead to fewer development dollars, a reduction in newer models, and possibly the abandonment of the market by some manufacturers. And that would hurt the creative arts in general.