Shoot more and maximise your gear :: PYKtures Point of View

Through the months I started advising friends about cameras and photography in general, I started looking what purchase they make. Seriously, I don’t care anymore about good or bad cameras. Comes a time when you can take great shots with any digital medium just with a minimum of … composition?

Given the evolution in the performance of ISO, megapixels and other functionality, pros will change cameras if their job demands it… I think… For my case, I switched to D90 because I got it as a gift from my parents (yes I’m that lucky…) vs. me paying my D80 kit in full.

But I’m not a pro. I just take pictures with mostly any dSLR camera of this generation. Yet I hear stories of people telling me: “My camera doesn’t take great shots!” Most of the time (not all the time) without offending them, I wish I could tell them: “It’s not the camera that sucks. It’s you!” Come on people, just spend more time taking pictures with your camera, you’ll start feeling what it can do and what it can. Knowing its limits, you can find ways to maximize them. It’s not some review on what ever website or magazine (not even my words) that will tell you what your camera can or can’t do. That’s purely marketing shit. If you think your camera pictures aren’t good enough:

• Take more pictures
• Know your camera...
• no seriously... TAKE MORE PICTURES! if this fails then..
• Use an image retouch program: Picasa, Lightroom, Aperture.
• Use a noise remover: NoiseNinja, Neat Image, DFine.
• Use a image enlarger: Genuine Fractals.
• Print a shot and see if it looks bad: seriously, some are just a bunch of pixel peepers that would look at pictures on the computer and find a pixel that isn’t colored the right way. Printing is a good way of seeing if you need the shitload of megapixels that your camera produces.
• Get a photography course: sometimes you just need that extra once of knowledge.
• Get a better lens: we’ll get to that later on this blog.
• Get an external flash: to add some creative light in your shots
• Get a tripod (a GOOD ONE not that crappy 20$ tripod): to prevent blur when using a slower shutter speed
• Get a better camera: if the lens fails… then again, I wonder if you tried printing your pictures… I can understand people changing because they maximized their camera and want more (more focus points, better grip etc…) but if you are not among those people, keep shooting!
• Go film: film can still produce some effects that digital can't.
• If all else fails, fuck photography, do something else. Like watching grass grow.

My gosh! I can’t believe how much people can’t maximize their camera purchase. It’s like someone that can’t compose with a puny little compact camera moving to a dSLR. There are so many examples I could show you but I won’t. Seriously, if you think your camera sucks, try to find your camera model on flickr and see how many great shots are taken with yours everyday! This should kick your ass!

Chase Jarvis once said: “The best camera in the world is the camera that’s with you.” I think it really makes sense!

Even if you buy the best dSLR in the world, usually those high performance dSLR are built for professional use. They are mostly a reliable means to an end so expect them to be incredibly heavy and not too user-friendly. I’ve seen people buying them and using them just only once or twice per month (because they are usually too heavy or they can't carry them around easily)then, like marketing victims, changing to a “better” camera when a new one comes out. What a waste!

Finally, buy what motivates you to produce a lot of pictures or maximize what you already have, I guess. If you don’t maximize, you fail, many of you.