A challenge

The other day I overheard a kid - I'll call him Jack - who was eagerly awaiting the delivery of a new camera. It was an entry-level DSLR. And he said:

"I hate my friend right now. He says I won't be successful in photography with my D40. It's too small."

Oh dear. Listen kid. It's not your camera that's important. It's your eyes and brain behind the lens. Take a look at this ...

... three photographs taken using a tripod from exactly the same spot. They were taken one after the other, within the space of a few minutes, using three different cameras:

1. A 7-year old, 3 megapixel Point and Shoot: Pentax Optio 330
2. A medium-level 6-megapixel DSLR: Nikon D70s
3. A top-of-the-range, 12-megapixel DSLR: Nikon D3

Can you tell which camera took which photograph? (Warning. The photographs are not necessarily in the same order as the list.)



The answers are in the comments section.

Did you get them right? Even if you did, I think you'll agree that it was pretty difficult. You had to look closely.

In other words, if you want to take photographs for your family album (though statistics show that 77% of photographers never print their images), photos to to e-mail to friends, photos to put on your website or on Flickr, even photographs to hang on your wall or use as wallpaper for your computer, almost any digital camera will give you excellent results. The images above prove that.

But, if that's the case, why does anyone buy an expensive camera (apart from wanting to impress friends)?

Because there is a difference in image quality, though you have to look hard.

If you are taking photographs for your own pleasure, most cameras will do a great job. But if you're intending to sell them they have to be the best possible quality. Whilst image taken with a 3mp point-and-shoot may look fine on your computer screen, it won't look so good if blown up to fit an A3 poster.

Here is a section from each image blown up to 100%. They're arranged in order of quality now, the 3mp point-and-shoot at the top, and the Nikon D3 at the bottom (I'd like to put them side by side, but can't seem to do it on Blogger):

See the difference? It's not huge, but it's significant.

So, Jack, don't worry what your friend says. He's a dweeb. Get out there with your D40 (a great camera, by the way) and take some stunning pictures. You're the key to beautiful images.

A little Tweet

I'm now 'Tweeting' about things photographic (and some that are not) on Twitter, under the name of PhotoZone.

If that means nothing to you, don't worry about it.

But if you want to follow me on Twitter, I'm here.

Or you can read my latest 'Tweet' at the bottom of the page.

Tweet. Tweet.

Beware

Why not enter a photographic competition?

• Entering a competition sets you a challenge
• It can expand your photographic horizons
• The process makes you think about what you want to achieve or to say with a photograph
• You can compare your work to other entries
  
• You could win an amazing prize
• Not to mention the glory
• And something good for your CV.

But, be careful. Read the rules and conditions very carefully. A surprising number of photographic competitions take 'all rights' to all entries.

Here's an example from the rules of the 'PictureYourself' competition, currently being run by the UK's National Trust:

"If you submit any material to us, you agree to grant The National Trust a perpetual, royalty-free, worldwide, non-exclusive licence to use your contribution in all media. This includes the right to copy, edit, publish, grant sub-licences and exercise all other copyright and publicity rights over the material."

(Full terms and conditions here)

What this means is that, by simply entering, you give your photograph, to the National Trust. Effectively they own it.

Now, if you win first prize (which in this case is a camera worth £230) you could could argue that you've been paid for your image. Fair enough ... although that's a very low price for selling the copyright to a high-quality image.

But in this case, as in far too many other competitions, the National Trust take all the rights to all entries.

In other words, if you have a magnificent photograph - and doesn't everyone submit their best? - which doesn't win, the NT gets it for nothing.

Is that fair or reasonable?

Look at the quality of some of the images that head the competition page. They're pretty good photos.

If you think the terms of a photo competition are not fair or reasonable, here's an image you can submit:

The original is available from the Pro Imaging web site here. This web site also has further information on suspect competitions and how to spot them.

And, by the way, no need to submit this to the National Trust Competition. It's already been done. At least twice.

Be careful out there and, if you're tempted to enter a photographic competition by some fabulous prizes, read competition rules carefully before you submit anything.

I'm stuck at home ...

... with a broken leg, darn it.

But I still managed to produce some images for World Pinhole Day.

With its soft, ethereal feel, gigantic depth of field, wide angle of view and massive exposure times, the pinhole technique is well-suited to subjects such as landscapes, deserted places, misty woodlands and the like.

There can be an eerie, dislocated feel to pinhole photographs. If people appear at all they are either ghostly waifs, or they have to stand very still for the length of the exposure. Clouds and moving leaves melt into each other. Water becomes soft and dreamy.

Check some of the marvellous images that are now being posted in the World Pinhole Day 2009 gallery.

Unfortunately, I'm stuck at home with a broken leg. No chance of setting off into the countryside to find a suitable scene. I am somewhat immobile.

Even so, there are still opportunities. Some just a bit odd ...


And others eerie ...

Even though World Pinhole Day is over, you can still experiment with the technique. Here's how I made my pinhole camera at almost no cost at all.

Why not give it a go?

And here's the world's largest ...

... pinhole camera.

An entire aircraft hangar.

It produced a photographic print nearly 33m wide and 26m high.

Makes my efforts look puny.

Who needs a lens?

Or even a camera?

World Pinhole Photography Day is fast approaching, and all over the world photographers are eagerly preparing their equipment in readiness.

Last year I tried using a beer can fixed to my digital camera body. It turned out to be a bit of a disaster as it was a strong telephoto lens but, with so little light coming through the pinhole, I couldn't see what the camera was pointing at. And, when I did take a photograph I had horrendous problems with internal reflections from the silvered inside of the can.

Did someone get inspiration from me?

(Copyright paradefotos)

I hope so.

Or maybe we were just thinking in parallel. Almost anything can be used to make a lens.

And anything can be used to make a camera ...

(Copyright CK)

... or should I say a Spamera?

By comparison, my equipment efforts are tame this year. Here's how made my pinhole camera for next Sunday.

Why don't you take part too?

Fairies at the bottom of ...?

Once upon a time, two young girls - Elsie Wright and her cousin Frances Griffiths - found themselves in big trouble. Despite the fact that they had been told not to play in the Cottingley Beck, a stream near their house, they had come home late, with Frances soaking wet.

Their excuse? They said that they had been playing with the fairies.

Elsie’s mother wasn’t fooled. She packed both girls up to the attic bedroom they shared, and they could well have gone without supper that evening (though this isn’t recorded).

Elsie, in an attempt to cheer up her younger cousin, suggested that they take a picture of the fairies. So, the next day, she persuaded her father to lend them his 'state of the art' camera,. As this was 1917 'state of the art' was a model called the ‘Midg’ that used photographic plates ...
And, thinking that this would put an end to the affair, her dad agreed.

Little did he know. To his astonishment the girls came back with a photograph of the fairies ...

He immediately dismissed the image as a fake, and the matter probably would have ended there except for the fact that, two years later, the photograph fell into the hands of someone from the Theosophical Society.

Theosophy was a fashionable theory in those days. It held that ‘nature spirits’ existed, and the photograph taken by these girls appeared to be concrete proof of this.

The photograph got passed up through the ranks of the Theosophical Society and the original glass plate was examined by a photographic expert called Harold Snelling.

Snelling peered at it closely and concluded that, “This plate is a single exposure. These dancing figures are not made of paper nor any fabric; they are not painted on a photographic background.” But what seems to have convinced him most of all was that the fairy figures were blurred. “What gets me most,” Snelling continued, “is that all these figures have moved during the exposure.”

In other words ... motion blur.

And on that evidence Snelling pronounced the photograph as real.

This added impetus to the story. It grew and grew until, finally, it reached the ears of none other than Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of that famous detective, Sherlock Holmes.

Sir Arthur was a bit more credulous than his astute fictional hero. He believed in fairies.

He took the photo to be proof of their existence and even went so far as to use the image in an article he was writing about fairies for The Strand Magazine (Doyle, Arthur Conan. "Fairies Photographed. An Epoch-Making Event." The Strand Magazine, Dec. 1920)

He also suggested that more photographs be taken. The girls - now young women - obliged and made more bizarre photographs of fairies and gnomes ...

After this, the story refused to die. In fact, it wasn’t until 1982, when both ladies had been tracked down by an investigative journalist, that Elsie finally admitted that the photographs were fakes.

But, even so, a small, mystery remains. The Midg was quite a crude camera by today’s standards, and the closest it could focus was 4 feet (about 1.3 metres). On top of that it had a maximum shutter speed of 1/25th sec.

So, the two girls managed to create their models without being seen, smuggle them out of the house, set them up and photograph them hand-held in the gloom without the benefit of a test run, and get a photograph that fooled an expert of the day.

Were they natural-born photographers? Or did they just get fed up with all the questioning and say they faked it to shut everyone up?

Maybe the fairies were real ...

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More on this bizarre story here.