selmslie Loc: Fernandina Beach, FL, USA

Not quite. Just about everyone is right except for you! You can't get your head around a simple fact that has been pointed out to you repeatedly by many different people.

The only way to change the perspective in photography is by moving the camera.

Changing the focal length only changes the crop. You yourself have proved that cropping an image or using a longer focal length produces exactly the same perspective.

You just don't want to believe what your eyes are telling you. The only conclusion we can draw from that is that you are incredibly stubborn, you are in denial or you are just not too bright.

Now how about keeping your word by going away.

jburlinson Loc: Austin, TX

Your statement kind of puzzles me. Just looking at the array of native e-mount lenses for your A6000, it seems like there's a plethora of "longer" lenses, which I'm assuming means longer than 50mm full-frame equivalent. From superzooms, through telephoto zooms, to primes. What focal length are you wishing for that isn't there?

Bipod

An issue that keeps coming up:
Is the person holding the camera responsible for taking the photo,
or is the camera's job? Is the person just a "subject selector" (or
a "bipod")?

Optics is still relevent to photography. But photography (per se)
may be irrelevant to a "subject selector" or "bipod". He holds the
camera and decides where to point it, but the camera has to figure
out how to get the shot. (For example, it might use face recognition
firmware to decide where to focus and/or where to meter.)

It's not much different than if he'd hired a photographer and told him
"take a picture of that from right here!". Only in this case, the
"photographer" is electronic...and really, really stupid.

The one aspect of photography that a "bipod" can control is
perspective. But most just dial their zooms...because it's easier than
walking or because they don't know any better.

So today, maybe today photography is something that cameras do,
not people. "Calculator" used to be a job title, now it's a machine.

The big problem with this approach is that digital computers make great
calculators but lousy photographers -- visual perception is not their
strong suit. Neither is art, emotion or intuition. But they are darn
good at crunching numbers.

Cameras do not perceive the world anything like how humans do. They don't
have two eyes...they don't even have eyes! They don't know what they are
looking at: for example, they don't know that oranges are orange--they don't even
know what an orange is! To borrow a phrase from William James (describing how
a new born infant sees the world), they see "blooming, buzzing confusion"...
and try to meter it.

Naturally, a camera making decisions makes a lot of mistakes. Hence the popularirty
of "shoot lots and cull" and "fix it in PhotoSlop". Occasionally, the results of this
stochastic process look pretty good. :-)

That's your brave new electronic "photographer": an algorithm connected
to a light sensor, having far less intelligence than a mouse. And it's weilded
by a peson who just selects subjects and then post-processes--hoping against
hope for a lucky shot.

If you hand your Nikon to a monkey and teach him to push the shutter button,
is the monkey now a photographer? It is "taking pictures".

Personally, I prefer photos taken by human beings who have full control over
the process and know what they are doing (optics, etc.). That's what I mean
by "photographer" -- not a monkey, not a machine.

Bipod

I have a solar-powered "trail camera" set up to photograph wildlife.
It takes a picture of whatever comes witin range of it's IR motion
detector: deer, birds, cows or branches moving in the wind.

Sometimes it gets a pretty good shot. But is that photography or is
it just image capture? Who is the "photographer"?

If one plans on doing photography, then it's good to know what
photography is, right? Sure, it's a "philosophical" question---so is
whether or not it's OK to put ethnic minorities into concentration camps.
That doesn't mean it's an unimportant question.

Shouldn't we distinguish between photography and mere image capture?
Image capture is what surveillance cameras, weather satillites and my
trail camera does.

Photography is what photographers do -- just as piloting is what airplane
pilots do. But handing somebody a camera doesn't make them a
photographer any more than sticking some kid in the left seat of an
airplane cockpit makes him a pilot. A few more steps are necessary...

I going to go out on a limb and say that the "auto and go!", "shoot lots
and cull" and "fix it in PhotoSlop" approach never made anyone into
a photographer.

To learn anything, you have to make a mistake and learn that you made
a mistake--like Eve in the Garden of Eden. Auto-and-go! is an abdication
of responsiblity. Culling photos is training to be a photo editor, not a
photographer. Fix-it-in-PhotoSlop is training to be an image restorer,
image forger or special effects coordinator, not a photographer.

I'm not saying that method isn't an efficient way to capture images: it is.
It's just isn't photography as that term has been understood for most of
the last 179.

If people want to let robots or monkeys capture images, fine, but please
call it "image capture" not "photography".

selmslie Loc: Fernandina Beach, FL, USA

It's not easy to draw the line between what is a photograph and what is just an image or even whether a photograph can be considered art.

However, a photograph does not happen without a photographer. Even a surveillance shot triggered by a motion detector needs a photographer to set up the equipment and evaluate the results. It's not just what happens at the moment of the exposure. The photographer gets the first crack at deciding whether the resulting image is any good or not.

On the other hand, the images captured by your dental hygienist or during a colonoscopy are probably just that - images. Nobody is going to hang them in a museum.

no nameJoe

First you are assuming that every body shoots on auto. A prison with average intelligence that applies himself can learn to take technically correct pictures,however, if that person does not have the eye to compose the image you can have pictures of people with telephone poles sticking out of their heads or worse have no heads the most lmportant part of the of the camera is 12 inches behind the camera,now I am finished with my rant

Bob Locher Loc: Southwest Oregon

I am the originator of this topic. I would like to offer thanks for the insightful comments. I do realize my original premise is simplistic but I personally remain convinced there is something to it.

In answer to several questions, I am using a Sony A6000 for a camera, which uses an APS-C sensor. The lenses I would really like would be small and very sharp. I have already a Sony 85 mm f1.8 - great optics, but heavy. About half of my best pictures were taken with lens of 85 mm or longer. I'd love to see two more prime lenses; for me ideally 135 mm f 3.5 and also maybe a 200 mm f4.5. I'd love for them to be autofocus and stabilized as well since I am asking for what will likely never happen. But especially I would want them to be super sharp - as sharp as say my Sony 85 mm f 1.4, and weather sealed. I'd say a fair price would be around US $300 - 350 each.

I have legacy glass of those focal lengths, and they are decent lenses - but when I blow up a picture of a distant farm taken with my 85 mm Sony lens and compare it to a shot of the same scene with a 135 mm legacy lens, and the find the buildings have more detail in the shot from the 85 mm lens, I realize - again - just how good modern glass is. Which is why I want and certainly would buy such lenses if they met modern quality standards.


I confess - I am a pixel peeper. I've been in and out of the photo hardware industry for over 50 years, and a part of that time I had a lot to do with lenses. I'm a firm believer that you can never have too much resolution (and contrast) in the lens or in the sensor. A Lensbaby is certainly not on my Christmas Stocking list


Whatever lens I am shooting with, I always try to shoot 2 stops higher than maximum aperture. If that yields a shutter speed that is too slow I goose up the ISO.

A lot of people here will disagree with my approach and that's fine. Photography has become a hobby for me again, as it is for a lot of the people here. If a hobby is not fun, you either need to change what you are doing until it is satisfying, or get another hobby.

Cheers

Bob Locher

selmslie Loc: Fernandina Beach, FL, USA

Your expectations are not achievable with a crop sensor camera. They (16x24mm) currently max out at 24MP and the best lenses for small format are made for 24x36mm which are approaching 43-50 MP. The highest available resolutions can be found in full format prime lenses around 55 to 135mm and they are heavy, expensive and are often manual focus.

Ultimate sharpness is limited by the lens and the system resolution of the crop format is limited more than the full format. For more information see Photographic System Resolution.

You can adjust your expectations based on what is currently available and affordable. With careful technique you may find that you don't really need more than 16-24 MP for most photographic subjects. You can achieve very high resolution and sharpness with focus stacking and stitched panoramas.

Bob Locher Loc: Southwest Oregon

Partially I agree - and partially disagree. It is true that the highest resolution sensor for APS-C is 24 megapixels. But again, only a few (and significantly more expensive) full frame cameras have significantly greater resolution in total. And still, and importantly, their pixel density is at best identical with the APS-C 24 megapixel model. There are other modest advantages to full frame format cameras, I believe particularly in low light situations, but that is not a concern for me. In terms of overall resolution, pixels are important.

Another aspect - lenses. Almost without exception, lenses have superior resolution on their center axis, and it almost always falls off the further the departure from the axis, until vigneting adds to the problem. (And this is especially true of zoom lenses) So, a lens fully capable of covering a full frame format will still almost always do a better job on a smaller format.

Depth of field is greater, whether wanted or not, for the same shot on APS-C versus the result on a full frame camera, because the focal length is roughly a third shorter for the same photograph. and the shorter the lens focal length, the greater the depth of field, if the aperture is the same.


So - are APS-C cameras as good as full frame cameras? No. But they come amazingly close. And again - are quality cell phone cameras as good? Again - no - but again, surprisingly close.

And there are signficant trade offs. APS-C cameras are smaller and lighter. Lenses for the same shot are shorter in focal length. Depth of field is greater.

Sony has announced a 50 megapixel sensor for cell phones, which is expected to be available in production quantities early next year. How far away can a 50 megapixel sesnor be for APS-C? (And a 100 megapixel sensor for full frame?)


In the mean time, the Sony A6000 remains probably the best bang for the buck of anything on the market for still photography, and when used with quality lenses is fully the equal to all but the very top ecehelon of full frame digital cameras.

Plus, I love the rangefinder shape of the body with viewing wndow on the left corner, instead of being a nose-masher.

Cheers

Bob Locher

selmslie Loc: Fernandina Beach, FL, USA

While this seems logical at first, keep in mind that an image from a 1.5 crop sensor needs to be magnified 1.5x as much to make the same size print or final image.

For example, to get an 8x12 inch print from full frame requires a magnification of 8/(24/25.5)=8.47x magnification. The same image from a crop sensor needs 8/(16/25.4)=12.7x magnification.

The extra 50% magnification required by the crop sensor also magnifies the defects of the lens and the sharpness drops by 2/3, even near the center of the lens. You will end up with a sharper image from the full frame sensor (in the center) with 24MP in both cameras but you still have the option of higher MP sensors with full frame. The link I gave you should clear this up.

There are lots other ways to calculate this but the bottom line is that size matters when it come to sharpness, noise and just about everything else.

In the final analysis, pixel peeping will make you want to achieve much more resolution and sharpness than you reasonably need. If you really want to see lots of detail, you will come to the ultimate conclusion that the only affordable way to achieve this without going broke is to switch to medium format film.

BebuLamar

As you pointed out the FF camera not necessarily have more pixels and exactly because of that your old lenses designed for the full frame format don't have the resolution needed to provide 24MP with an APS-C sensor. The lenses designed for a 24MP APC-C sensor must have 1.5 times the resolution of the lenses designed for FF.

Bob Locher Loc: Southwest Oregon

The points are entirely valid And of course, I could go back to 4X5" film for superior quality, or its digital equivalent. So where does one draw the line?

Personally I have pretty much decided to stay with the APS-C format for the reasons explained earlier and my intention is to optimize that format as much as I can.

Cheers

Bob Locher

AndyH Loc: Massachusetts and New Hampshire

We made a conscious decision exactly like yours. We don't have an unlimited budget and funds spent on gear are funds not spent on destinations, printing, film stuff, etc. I've found the quality perfectly acceptable on 16x20 prints we've made with e 24MP APS Nikon body.

Andy

selmslie Loc: Fernandina Beach, FL, USA

Exactly! And they never will because of physical limitations and because there is little financial incentive to push the envelope for crop sensor lenses. There is more money available for R&D for full frame lenses.

As I said in Photographic System Resolution, resolution can be stated two ways:

- Linear – line pairs per millimeter (lp/mm), line widths per picture height (LW/PH), pixels per mm or pixels per inch (ppi)
- Area – megapixels (MP) or pixels per square millimeter (px/mm2) or pixels per square inch (px/in2)

Before digital, linear was the only way we looked at resolution. It was a measure of how closely together lines could be projected onto the film without looking blurred. Film was enlarged for printing until the blur became apparent or the grain was too annoying. Those are vague and subjective judgements.

With digital we often think of resolution as how many total pixels can we capture. The limit for enlargement is how much can we do it before we start to see pixelation, usually at around 300 pixels per inch. That's a fixed number.

But in either case, the real measure should be how well can we depict hard edges like leaves, hairs, fibers or points of light. We seek sharpness because we can, not because we need to.

The importance of achieving such sharpness can be exaggerated to the detriment of the overall quality of the image.

AndyH Loc: Massachusetts and New Hampshire

Just read your article - very enlightening in a way that I hadn't thought of in terms of how we look at digital vs. film resolution. Thanks for sharing it, Scotty...

Andy