Along with normal how-to articles and essays, I’ve always liked reading and writing very technical, nitty-gritty articles about photography — sometimes, articles on topics that rarely come up while actually taking pictures. In fact, I usually don’t even use my own sharpest aperture charts in the field, as useful as they are, since I don’t like carrying around charts. So, then, does all that technical stuff matter? Is it even worth talking about in the first place? These questions are very important to ask, since most people don’t want waste their time on topics that are unnecessary for their photography — do these articles actually help? There are no easy answers, but a recent trip I took to Death Valley makes a compelling argument for why some of this highly-technical information really does matter.
1) Driving a Car/Using a Camera
If you’ve just passed your driver’s test, and you’ve barely been behind the wheel for a few hours, the scariest thing in the world would be to see someone swerving in front of your car on the highway.
At that point, you have enough driving experience to nail down the basics: using turn signals, staying in your own lane, watching your speed, and so on. From the outside, you certainly look like a competent driver — and, in many ways, you are, since you just passed your test.
Yet, when you just start to drive, it naturally takes a lot of conscious thought to do everything correctly. You’re always glancing at your speedometer, for example, or you’re constantly thinking about staying within your lane. Nothing is habitual or automatic; your brain is hard at work the entire time.
So, when another car does something unexpected, you may not know how to solve the problem instantly. Your automatic reaction system isn’t developed yet, and your brain is still focused on the basics. It’s not that you’re a bad driver — in fact, even when you’re starting out, you probably knew enough to drive flawlessly under typical conditions — but you haven’t internalized everything yet.
That’s how I see the technical side of photography.
Many of us have a solid understanding of camera technique: aperture, shutter speed, focusing, and other technical skills that are part of your basic, creative toolkit. It’s not that you simply know them at a surface level, either; you actually understand them. You could even teach other photographers how many of these concepts work, and you’ve taken plenty of good photos that put your knowledge into practice.
But that isn’t always enough. Sometimes, you’ll be taking pictures under rapidly-changing conditions, and you don’t have time to think about exposure or depth of field — you don’t have time to think about anything. Every step of the process needs to be perfectly ingrained in your head, or you’ll miss the shot.
Simply learning a lot of technical information is not the same as knowing everything backwards and forwards in your sleep. When conditions are changing rapidly, a few seconds can be crucial. How do you maximize your time and truly understand the basics, so that you spend as little time as possible perfecting the basic technical stuff — aperture, exposure, focusing, and so on?
One way is practice. When you start out in photography, the best method to master the basics is to keep taking pictures and reading about the topics you’re trying to master. That’s how most people do it, and it obviously works well. However, the problem with practice is that some concepts pop up so rarely that it may take months or years before they’re fully ingrained in your head. In other cases — say, setting an aperture that balances diffraction with depth of field — you may have plenty of time to do trial-and-error in the field (assuming typical conditions) without really understanding the topic. It’s only when you’re rushed that you realize your reactions aren’t as quick as they could be.
That brings us to the other method: Learning the really technical stuff.
When you read about high-level, complex photographic topics, or you start to work with them in the field, you’ll force yourself to learn the basics solidly. If you can understand highly-technical information — even at a surface level — it means that you have a rock-solid foundation. For example, by reading about a topic like Airy disks, even if you don’t think about it while you’re out in the field, you’re forcing your brain to understand basic concepts like aperture and diffraction with far more thoroughness.
And that’s the goal.
When we write about crazy topics at Photography Life, the benefit isn’t just to teach something new. Often, it’s to reinforce the old, basic skills in such a way that they become automatic parts of your thought process. Say the words “large aperture” to a professional photographer, and they’ll instantly think of countless things — bokeh, focus mode, depth of field, the necessary shutter speed and ISO values, and countless more — while a beginner is still working to remember that a large aperture is a small number.
It’s one thing to understand how a basic, important topic works if you have a few moments to sit back and think about it, but it’s totally different to recall it automatically while you’re being pelted by sand and 35mph winds, trying to take a photo before the light changes.
2) A Case Study
That brings us back to what I mentioned at the start of this article: Death Valley.
This was only my second trip to the area, so I’m not yet at the point of knowing exactly what to photograph in Death Valley, but I was familiar with the Mesquite Sand Dunes. I also knew that, on a day with 35mph gusts of wind, the sand dunes would be a vicious place to take pictures.
But you know the saying — “Bad weather makes good photos!” — and I know it, too. So, with sunglasses and a scarf to block the sand, I treaded into the desert for sunset photography.
Everything was fine for an hour or so, and the light was starting to get good. The clouds were dark and dramatic, and the sand in the air was creating amazing lighting conditions. After hiking an hour into the dunes, not long before sunset, I noticed a low-hanging cloud in the distance.
As I took more and more photos, it became clear that this cloud was quickly approaching the dunes — and it wasn’t a normal cloud. Out in the middle of the desert, while I took pictures of a spectacular sunset, a massive cloud of sand was rolling in my direction.
As you can imagine, I was rushing to capture the best possible photos before the sand cloud arrived, and I didn’t have much time. To be as efficient as possible, I ended up taking just a couple photos per tripod position, then walking a bit farther and finding something else to capture. This isn’t my normal method, but these were unusual circumstances.
Side note: I strongly caution people against going into the desert, or any other landscape like this, unprepared. Mother Nature is harsh. It’s best if you can bring someone else along, as I did, but that’s not enough. I also had a walkie talkie, a GPS, a separate GPS on my phone, a full battery pack to charge my phone, and even some spotty cell coverage. I also had a bright flashlight and plenty of water, and it wasn’t a hot night in the first place. Even then — knowing that I was well-prepared, and knowing exactly where my car was — parts of that sandstorm were otherworldly. I very likely could have maneuvered back to my car or the road without a GPS… but I certainly wouldn’t have wanted to try.
That said, if you stay safe, crazy weather almost always pays off. I came back with a handful of photos that I really liked, including the one below:
I only took a single photo from this tripod position. In fact, it was the last shot I captured before the cloud of sand was overhead, and visibility dropped to about ten meters in each direction. (If you look at the left-hand side of the photo, you can actually see the very front edge of the dust cloud approaching.)
To make this single photo a success, several things needed to go right. First, since my focal length was 35mm, and the foreground was quite close to the lens, a small aperture was crucial (and I chose f/16). My focusing distance had to be roughly at the hyperfocal distance, or I risked a blurry background or foreground. Also, dealing with a high-contrast sky, I needed to watch the exposure and make sure not to lose any highlight detail. An error in any one of these steps — or a few extra seconds spent, since the dust cloud was approaching rapidly — would harm the photo significantly, and perhaps beyond repair.
In a situation like this, 100% of your mental energy should be focused on finding the best possible subject and composition. All the technical settings should fly through the back of your mind without wasting time, yet they also need to be as accurate as possible.
In this case, it went well. I credit part of that success to luck (since shots like this certainly don’t always work out), part to practice, and part to reading and writing articles that are vastly more complex than what I actually needed to know in order to capture this photo. That’s why the technical stuff matters.
3) Conclusion
Learning advanced technical information is one of the best ways to be as efficient as possible in the field, internalizing the basic concepts that you’ll use all the time and making them into long-lasting habits.
Then again, I’m not saying that you should take pictures on autopilot; I actually believe that can take a lot of the fun out of photography. If you’re not thinking while you’re in the field, you’re not challenging yourself — but if you’re spending too much time thinking about technical information and camera settings when you’re in a rush, you probably need to practice and read more.
It’s that goal — internalizing and automating the basics as much as possible — that makes it worthwhile to keep learning the super-technical stuff, even if you don’t see yourself using that specific information very often. When you learn high-level techniques, whether or not you actually use them, you’re still reinforcing the knowledge that you need every day.
I know that not everyone will agree, but I firmly believe that technical information will never harm your photography. It doesn’t bog you down to learn about hyperfocal distance or ISO invariance, even if you never use them in the field, and even if (though I think this is rarely the case) they don’t help reinforce the basics.
At the absolute worst, learning about those topics still expands what you know about the world. If your goal is to stay interested and excited about photography, that sounds good enough to me.
Hi Spencer,
You always have fantastic pictures, and great articles. Thank you very much. I have learnt a lot from you.
When you focus on the hyperfocus distance, do you have your camera in autofocus? Or do you set it to manual?
Thanks in advance!
Micah
Hi Micah, I am sorry that I missed your comment until now. I’m happy to hear that you like my photos and articles — thank you for letting me know!
When I focus at the hyperfocal distance, I typically either do autofocus in live view, or magnified manual focus in live view. I prefer autofocus simply because it is slightly quicker, but magnified manual focus is at least as accurate, and it works much better if your camera is having a hard time focusing.
I sometimes autofocus through the viewfinder, but it isn’t quite as precise, and the autofocus points don’t always cover a wide enough area (since I prefer to compose, then focus). Autofocus through the viewfinder isn’t bad by any means — and is my usual method when I’m shooting handheld — but, for tripod work, I almost always prefer the wider coverage of live view, as well as the ease of checking for precision focus.
Hi Spencer, have not read the text in full yet (it is saved for reading later on my pocket app) but I just wanted to say that the picture is amazing – I would pick it to hang it on my wall right away! Great tonality, light, and the composition is just perfect. Thanks!
Love it Spencer. Exactly how I feel about it. The more I learn about and teach the technical pieces the more prepared I am to react to new situations I have never had.
well, if you are talking about technical aspects it is good to know your DOF calculations – like for example the fact that with 35mm on full frame camera you need to focus about 15ft away to get 7ft-infinity focus range at f/11. Resolution loss between f/11 and f/16 is about 7 lpmm at MTF50 (for the lens you took this photo with – I assume Nikor 35mm f/1.8G ED) – by going to f/16 you only gaining about 2.5 ft of niear limit… Nice photo btw….
Hey Jack, thanks, glad you like the photo. I don’t know exactly where you got your numbers, but the charts I mentioned at the top of this article (here: photographylife.com/how-t…t-aperture are the ones I tend to look at, since they’re the only mathematically accurate hyperfocal charts online (as far as I know). They show that if you want everything from 6 feet to infinity to appear as sharp as possible in a single photo, you’d need to use f/16 (and focus at 12 feet). If you want everything from roughly 12 feet to infinity to be as sharp as possible, you’d need to use f/11 (and focus at 24 feet). Although I didn’t have these charts with me at the time, I think that the closest dunes in my photo were about 8-10 feet away from my camera. So, in hindsight, the sharpest aperture would have been something like f/13. They’re all pretty close at this point. At f/11, my foreground and background likely would have been slightly blurrier; at f/16, diffraction obviously lowered overall sharpness somewhat.
Thanks for another great article Spencer and a beautiful image. Just wondering why you kept your ISO at 100 instead of increasing it to allow for a faster shutter speed. Even with a tripod it seems that you were risking camera shake given the shooting conditions.
Good question. I definitely was risking some camera shake, and I suspect that the final photo isn’t quite as sharp as it would have been on a breeze-free day. However, in the field, I reviewed my photos a few separate times and found the sharpness to be within the typical range for an f/16 photo (at least, nothing stuck out as being particularly unsharp). Looking back through all the photos I took that sunset, some of my telephoto shots have low-lying blur that was likely caused by the wind, but I don’t see major blur effects in photos I took at 35mm.
Hi Spencer,
I read something once that has stayed with me ever since, that I quote quite often. “Nothing learned is ever wasted.”
Surely we can encourage our brains to enlarge by learning things that are complex and difficult. We don’t lose by it. In a way, this idea embodies what Photography Life is all about: striving for excellence in photography. In my opinion, which I have embedded into my personal philosophy, good enough is never good enough. Only the striving to do our best all the time is good enough. Well done, Spencer. I applaud you. Keep offering opportunities for people to grow.
I kept teaching this same wisdom to my people: never regret anything you learned, it’ll pay off someday. Yours is shorter and probably more concise. As for “the good enough is never good enough” nightmare, it gave me hard times throughout my entire life. It is called alternatively “perfectionism”- read never finish a job on time
No, I cannot agree. Perfectionism is an obsessive need to find fault with every effort and so never feel satisfied either with one’s own efforts or the efforts of unfortunate subordinates. That person drives themself and others crazy. I meant something very different. I have often encountered a kind of mental laziness that let’s people make a half-way effort and say ‘that’s good enough’ because they don’t want to bother. They often then seek praise by trying to convince others that their halfway efforts were something more. Putting in your best effort and being satisfied that you did the best you could is what I was talking about. If we strive to do our best with our photography, then ‘good enough’ will never satisfy. That is why I applaud Spencer, because not only does he strive for his personal best, he tries to bring people along with him by offering his technical articles to help the rest of us do our best.
Elaine,
Perfectionism is a prerequisite in some fields of applied science, e.g., in the design, construction, launch, and the subsequent usage of the forthcoming James Webb Space Telescope.
The flawed mirror in the Hubble Space Telescope was corrected, in space, by extremely brave astronauts who risked their lives for the purpose of achieving perfectionism in the field of photographic imaging.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/…wed_mirror
See also: The Question of “Good Enough” Image Quality, by Spencer Cox.
photographylife.com/the-q…ge-quality
Pete, this is a great example. The best creations and achievements of history, regardless of the field, have been from people who had the intellectual fortitude to strive for perfection.
Thank you, Elaine, I like that quote. I also agree with you in terms of perfectionism and striving for the best. You should always strive for perfection, but, if you have a fear of showing the world something that is only 99% perfect rather than 100%, to the point that you never feel happy or proud of anything you do, that is perfectionism at its most counterproductive. (Though Pete brings up the good example of high-precision scientific fields, where 100% perfectionism is sometimes the only acceptable result; I’m referring more to creative endeavors.) The opposite problem is if your goal is to produce a 70%, “passable” result, simply because it’s easier. When you do so, you’re throwing away your potential.
I agree with you totally, Spencer. Perhaps we should disstinguish between artistic excellence and scientific perfectionism. Having been something of a technical perfectionist all my life, I can say that I feel it is important to do things right and pursue the action until it is complete and correct. In this I agree with you and Pete above. And I will always believe that ‘good enough’ is a sorry excuse for settling for a halfway achievement. In art, the pursuit of excellence is the worthy goal, in my opinion. It almost doesn’t matter if we get there, as long as we make our best effort to get there, since there is really no static perfection in artistic endeavors. In art, it is all about the journey. Excellence is like a muscle, it grows with use. I think that there is a lot of satisfaction to be had in achievement when we strive towards such excellence in our field of endeavor, in this case photography. And getting back to the original article, gathering knowledge along the way opens the door for us to achieve our goals.
The assumption that you have to defend the need for technical information speaks to the longstanding Western prejudice that favors either-or thinking. It’s unfortunate also because it tempts those who favor a very technical approach to photography to feel that they’ve got all the bases covered. This was typified, in my experience, by a guy I visited in his home, back in the mid-’60s, who showed me two small prints that he had hung on his apartment walls. He was obviously very proud of the way he had followed Ansel Adams’s methods to the letter. I was a sports photographer at the time, and I wondered, “Is that it?” Ansel Adams was a technically very advanced photographer, of course, but he was prolific and he didn’t confine his vision to a prissy/proud approach to the Zone System.
Yes, the either/or type of thinking is something that definitely pops up in the world of photography. In practice, though, I don’t think that learning the technical side of things will make your creativity suffer.
That said, it does seem like there are ways to approach photography unproductively — reading excessive reviews on equipment you won’t buy, for example, or getting dragged into never-ending forum arguments. Maybe these cases won’t harm the photos you take (though, for some people, they might), but they also are far from the most efficient ways to learn new techniques in your free time.
“I see “getting it right in camera” as capturing a photo with the most flexibility and ease of editing that lets me match my intended result in the end. I think many other people see it differently: as a way to end up with a photo that, out of camera, looks like the final result as much as possible. ”
As you probably know, I belong to the second group, with my “looks like the final result as much as possible” meaning in most cases a photograph that represents what it looked like with my eyes at the time I tool the photograph (not “my minds eye”, but my physical eyes). It’s fun to play around sometimes, but generally I shoot with the objective of producing a picture that if shown to someone who was standing beside me when the shot was taken, they would say…”wow, that captures just what it looked like”.
When I shoot with the objective of creating a more artistic final result with the help of some camera/LR/PS techniques, it is not normally in a time crunch situation. When on those rare occasions location, lighting, and weather present themselves at the same time, many times for a brief period, I tend to run with what nature has presented instead of attempting to obtain a photo that offers the most flexibility during post-processing. In these cases, the art is in what nature supplies, not what I supply.
Yes, exactly! We do approach it differently, but I don’t doubt that your method works very well. It is akin to the approach of many of history’s best-known photographers, particularly documentary photographers, though some nature/landscape artists as well.
I would add that two people standing side by side do not always see the same thing. There are differences in individual eyesight for example. I have some color vision limitations, while my daughter has a very strong prescription that alters her depth perception and how she sees a scene even with corrective lenses, so when we both look at a scene we see it through different eyes.
On many occasions we have shot side by side and come away with fundamentally different photographs. Getting it right in camera is a good thought, but when shooting raw, you are just capturing a data set and must process it somewhere to get the shot you saw in the field. I would say that it is good to get a shot that best captures your vision of the scene if that is the look you are going for. At other times, going for a more abstract or artistic shot is your target. These differences will lead to different versions of getting it right in camera.
This is why we all shoot, so we can enjoy the time and capture the scenes as we see them. Nice article and good comments today.
{” I would say that it is good to get a shot that best captures your vision of the scene if that is the look you are going for. At other times, going for a more abstract or artistic shot is your target.}
That’s what I said.
P.S. My objective when taking photographs is not to produce a final result that satisfies visual acuity challenged people.
I agree with the first part of your response. I would take issue with the second comment. I was citing an example of things which cause each of us to see things differently. I do not consider myself to be challenged in my visual acuity, just different. That difference affects how I capture a scene as compared to what you may capture, neither better nor worse, just different.
We each see the same scene differently just as witnesses to an accident or a crime will all report different versions of what they saw. Those versions will contain similarities and differences but they will each reflect what that witness saw and stored in their memory.
Cameras take single shots while our eyes are absorbing information continuously. Each camera sensor records the capture with slight differences. The processing software used to convert the raw image will affect what you have to work with. Your physical eye is no different. What you see is filtered and interpreted by your mind in everything you see. Your physical eye and your mind’s eye combine to create your view of that shot which you are seeking to capture in camera.
Post processing then corrects for those camera capture and other factors that lead to the camera view being slightly different from our our eye’s view. Your shots and my shots of the same scene at the same moment may both be accurate and different at the same time.
Enjoy your time with the camera as I do mine. It is a wonderful thing.
It seems that the statement “In my mind’s eye” is the go to reasoning many people use to justify their manipulation of the photograph into something that does not resemble reality. If that statement is honestly used to justify their “artistry” (versus their “realism”), then great. If not, then I consider it misrepresentation. It’s the “this is what I WANTED the scene to look like” instead of “this is what the scene ACTUALLY looked like”. Of course unless someone was actually there when you took the picture, who can also judge your final work, it’s up to the photographer to make the call.
I believe we are in significant agreement on real vs artistic. I will stick with my point that two people standing next to each other may not see the same reality. There may be substantial agreement between two observers but not identical. It is our knowledge, skills and experience as applied by each of us that lead to the different compositions, different views, different equipment, etc. Enjoy your time with a camera in hand. I am always seeking to build my skills and get a let more right in the camera than I used to. A light hand is best when post processing and I am working on that part too – just enough!
{“A light hand is best when post processing…!”}
I agree.
Wow! What an image! When all the technical stuff disappears into a thing of utter beauty – then you know why you have laboured for those many hours, days, years. These are the moments of reward for a life-long investment in what at times appears to be a peculiar obsession. Thank you for sharing these corrective amendments reminding us that photography is an art form requiring beyond our passion to be attuned to basic tools and measurements and rules.
Walter, very glad you like it, and I really appreciate your comments!
Hello. While I have a pretty good grasp (finally) of aperture, ISO and shutter speed, I am confused with the settings of the above photo. How can f/1.8 AND f/16 be used in the same photo? What am I not understanding?
Very good question. The first aperture number — f/1.8 — isn’t actually the aperture I used for the photo. It’s simply the name of the lens that I used: the Nikon 35mm f/1.8 lens! In this case, f/1.8 refers to the maximum possible aperture of the lens, although it wasn’t the one I actually used in the field.
The actual setting used to take the photo comes after the @ (at) sign