A famous photographer (and I cannot for the life of me remember his name at the moment :-S) once said after being asked how he got such great pix answered, “f8 and be there”. I’ve been thinking about that recently… There are 2 absolute essentials to photography: The first is that you need a camera and the other is that you actually need to be on location. I remember a boss of mine saying once (and remember I was employed as a wildlife photographer at one stage), “Roger, you need to spend some time in the office — we never see you around the place!?”. Now, you’re not going to do much wildlife photography in the office and all I was trying to do was my job.
Lately I’ve taken to carrying a small compact camera around with me. Depending what I’m doing, it’s either the Nikon P6000 or the Olympus E-P1.
The Sun Coast Casino. Durban. KwaZulu Natal. South Africa.
Both are capable of producing the MOST spectacular results and both are capable of shooting raw images, and essential part or creating beautiful images.
Pat shot this first Image on the right using the Nikon P6000 while be were working on a small book on Durban and Surrounds. It was made in the early evening and hand held (Vibration Reduction is an awesome invention). Pat has very steady hands (I HAVE to use a tripod) but even so hand holding a camera at 1/11 sec at f3.7 at ISO 200 is no mean feat! One doesn’t want to upload huge files but if you were to have a look at the image at 100% on the screen, the detail and low noise levels are way beyond anything one could realistically expect from such a tiny camera.
Then there is the Olympus E-P1. I’ve taken to carrying this around with me on our motorbike rides (we have a BMW 1150 GSA Anventure Bike) in a tiny camera bag over my sholder. The great thing is that you do all your viewing on the LCD screen on the back – no need to hold it up to you eye so you can shoot with your helmet on. It is a DSLR but looks like one
Michaelhouse. KwaZulu Natal. South Africa
of the old rangefinder cameras of yesteryear and takes interchangeable lenses. I use it with the standard 14 to 24 mm. I got this image of Michaelhouse one Sunday afternoon on one of our rides around the KwaZulu Natal Midlands. Hand held, I took 2 adjoining exposures and after adjusting settings in Adobe Lightroom I stitched it together in Photoshop CS4. What could be simpler?! And the image quality is astounding!
We’ve had the most appauling weather here in Howick over the past weeks. Rain, mist and temperatures in the low teens, and this in the middle of summer. We did get a small patch on Sunday when it looked as though we may escape the rain (we were mistaken by the way)
Karkloof Falls, My 1150 GSA and Tony Keytel's 1200 GSA. KwaZulu Natal. South Africa
and headed off to the Karkloof Falls. These are pumping at the moment and grabbed this image of the falls, the bikes and friend Tony Keytel. I used a longish focal length to bring the falls closer to the “action”.
The wonderful thing though is that in all these cases, I had a camera with me and so was able to get some very useful (and saleable) images. To lug a full size DSLR around in these situations is not practical and in reality I probably wouldn’t!
And then there is one last thing about these tiny cameras: There are times when the last thing that you want is to look like a pro photographer and when you haul out a Nikon D3x that’s exactly what you look like! The answer is one of these little “pro” compacts.
Remember: f8 and be there!
