Quarry, Lancashire (Jon) There are deep shadows behind this brightly lit white tree and the dynamic range is very high. However, the shot simply would not work if detail was lost in the tree bark
Raindrop (Jon) Sometimes the camera can freeze movement the eye can’t follow (shutter speed 1/250 sec)
Aperture, as we’ve already indicated, plays a key role in determining depth of field. The combination of these two controls determines the total amount of light that gets through to the digital sensor.
Aperture dictates how wide the lens opening will be: shutter speed determines how long it stays open.
Shutter speed is principally important in determining how movement is captured in the photo. And movement, naturally, is another major way in which what you see can be very different from what you get. This is inevitable in a still picture! The eye sees movement, but the picture is a still.
Sometimes the camera can freeze movement that the eye can’t follow; sometimes movement appears as a blur. Extremely slow movements, like those of the stars, can also be recorded although they appear static to the eye. All of these results depend on shutter speed.
Sensitivity
Well, of course photographers should be sensitive: sensitive to light, to mood, to the fact that your partner’s getting cramp balanced on that pinnacle waiting for a shaft of light… But that’s not what we’re talking about here. We’re talking about what used to be called film speed and is now called ISO sensitivity.
This is a measure of how readily the sensor reacts to light. A low ISO sensitivity rating means relatively bright light is needed to get a decent image. With a higher ISO rating, you can shoot with much less light
In the (good?) old days, we couldn’t change this at will. When you loaded a roll of film you had to keep shooting at the same ISO setting till the film was finished. You might load a slow film which was great for shooting landscapes in bright sunlight, then next day you’d run into all sorts of problems trying to shoot mountain bike action in a shady forest.
Digital cameras have a much wider range of ISO sensitivity settings and you can change the setting shot by shot. This is immensely liberating. In fact it’s one of the best things about digital, and it doesn’t get half the credit it deserves.
Jack Bauer, Tour of Britain 2010 (Jon) High ISO allows action shots even in low light – notice the car headlights (ISO rating 800 and shutter speed 1/1600 sec)
With film, you really only had two controls to play with – aperture and shutter speed. If you wanted to set a small aperture to give good depth of field, you probably had to set a slow shutter speed to maintain the overall exposure level. Now you have the option to increase the ISO level as well, which may allow you to keep the shutter speed the same. This doesn’t just add to the possibilities, it multiplies them.
Most cameras now can vary the ISO automatically to suit the shooting situation. However, if you’re into taking control of the camera (and we repeat, it’s a good idea!), then just remember there are three fundamental controls, not just two.
Final Thoughts
At this point you could certainly be forgiven for feeling discouraged. On the other hand, perhaps you’re beginning to understand why some of your shots don’t turn out the way you expected. And understanding a problem is always a major part of correcting it.
The concept of ‘point and shoot’ is almost irresistible in its attraction, but the reality is always likely to be disappointing, at least until the day that the camera can actually read your mind. Even then, some people will still get better pictures than others, because you will still need to have a clear idea of what it is you want your picture to say and to show.
‘Point and shoot’ also suggests that photography is merely incidental to your outdoor activity, rather than being an integral part of it. Investing just a little more thought and time in your photography will bring much better results, not so much because the shots are better in any narrow technical sense but because you were more involved and had a clearer sense of what each shot was about.
There’s yet another argument. By paying attention to what you’re doing, you’ll get more good shots in the first place. Not only this, if a shot doesn’t quite work, you’ll probably have a much better idea what you need to do differently next time. And when you get a really great shot you’ll have much more idea what you did right. If you never go beyond ‘just’ point and shoot, you’ll never learn anything very much. And since cameras don’t learn either, your photos will never get much better.
Leaving everything up to the camera may give you a shot that ‘comes out’, at least most of the time. It’s less certain, however, that it will give you a shot that matches what you actually saw, let alone what you wanted to say. The key to this is understanding how cameras and lenses see the world, and relating that to how you see it.
Kayaker on Ullswater, Lake District (Jon) Although a lucky shot in the sense that the kayaker just happened to pass by, it did help that I was already shooting the landscape and had the exposure settings already dialled
2 HARDWARE FOR THE OUTDOOR PHOTOGRAPHER
Mohammed Hammad, Jebel Khazali, Wadi Rum, Jordan (Jon) A wide-angle lens (27mm equivalent) makes the most of light and texture in the foreground
First Thoughts
There is no such thing as the perfect camera. There may not even be such a thing as the perfect camera for any one individual. What seems ideal when you’re shooting exquisite landscapes during a leisurely walk may be far less so on a spindrift-haunted winter climb or a wild mountain bike ride. Only if you specialise exclusively in one type of photography are you likely to get close to finding one camera that suits you perfectly all the time.
If you had limitless money you might think that owning lots of different cameras would be the answer, but actually it probably isn’t (we can’t say for sure as neither of us are in that position!). The more cameras you have, the more you might struggle to choose the right one for any given outing – the more, too, you might be tempted to take two or three to cover every eventuality and end up hating it because you’re so overloaded. And the harder it would be to feel really familiar and at ease with every camera.
Hang on, what about film? If you’re still using film and you’re happy with the results, stick with it. And if you really want to master photography in all its aspects, there’s definitely a place in the learning process for shooting, developing and printing your own black and white pictures. But apart from that, you’d need a very good reason to buy a new film camera today, and if you’re in that situation you probably know it already.
Emperor penguins, Antarctica (Chiz) The heart-shaped moulting pattern on this penguin chick is entirely normal, if unexpected
For most of us it’s a moot point anyway. Money isn’t limitless and we don’t have time to master lots of different cameras. In the real world, camera choice is always going to be a compromise. There’s no perfect camera but there are lots of good ones. It shouldn’t be that hard either to find the best camera for your needs or to get the best out of the camera you do have. But one thing is key, and that’s being as clear as possible about what you want. What sort of situations do you want to shoot in, and what sort of results do you want to achieve? Maybe these are questions you can’t answer fully until you’ve read the rest of this book. That’s OK. We had to put this chapter somewhere!
There’s