Photo Talk

I have written for club magazines over a long period. I'm helping with a magazine now, and will post the articles.

HOW SHARP DO YOU WANT YOUR PICTURES?

One of the time-honoured maxims of photography is the one that says: "Use a shutter speed of 1/25 or faster, and you won't get any camera shake". That belief has ruined more shots than I care to think about! Once upon a time, cameras were heavy, held mostly at waist level, and large enough to get a decent grip on. With such an instrument -and the large negative that didn't require a big degree of enlargement-yes, you probably could get away with your slow shutter speeds.

But this figure of 1/25 (or 1/30), solemnly copied through generations of text books and popular magazines, is not really applicable to the compact, light cameras used at eye-level. True, the extra weight and bulk of motor drives has helped, but a simple test will destroy your confidence in seconds.

Attach a small piece of mirror-the sort that used to be found in ladies' handbags is ideal-to the front of the lens. Big rubber bands, or strategic blobs of Blu-tack on the lens cap should do the job. Now stand outside so as to face a house over which the sun is shining. Point the camera at a shadowed area so that the reflected patch of sunlight may be seen on the shadowed wall.

NOTE: make SURE your lens is totally covered, either by the mirror or lens cap -the sun can burn right through your shutter blinds! Now see just how still you can keep that patch of reflected light, appointing an observer if necessary, to watch it closely. Notice what happens when you press the shutter release.

The movement of a hand-held camera as revealed by this test, will depend not only on the camera weight and the way it is held, but also on the steadiness of the holder's hands. Some people have steadier hands than others; there will even be variations from day to day, depending on fatigue or state of health. It will be found that the motion is essentially a to-and-fro waver; that is, there will be instants when the patch of light is moving quite fast, interspersed with other instants when it is momentarily stationary.

For this reason, the exposure of a single negative is quite useless as a check to see whether you can get away with some particular shutter speed. A whole series of exposures must be made, and the least sharp of the resulting negatives taken as typical of the amount of camera-shake at that speed. One test showed that a speed of 1/200 and a good steady hand would produce (for that person) a dead-sharp negative. At slower speeds the proportion of unsharp negatives rose, until at 1/15 second there was only one sharp negative in ten.

The moral is obvious: either use a tripod all the time-a counsel of perfection-or keep your shutter speeds as fast as possible. Most programmed shutters of today do keep the shutter speed as high as the lens aperture and light level will allow. This usually means that the lens will be working at a wide aperture and hence limiting the depth of field.
I have proved to my own satisfaction that I get less unsatisfactory shots [without a tripod] by minimising camera-shake with a high shutter speed, than by stopping down to get depth of field and hence sharper focus through the shot -and blurring the whole frame because the shutter speed was low.

Waste Management

In the days when the family camera was a Box Brownie, you purchased a roll film which gave you eight exposures. Family members had been through the Depression, and there was little enough money to spare on such things as film and developing. The miracle was that people did go without other things in order that they could do so-and the record of their life and times is with us today.

But because money was short, the shutter button presser couldn't afford to waste a precious shot. Waste was a Bad Thing. Consequently, a family group photo had everybody lined up stiffly and facing the camera with stern faces. Children were either anchored on someone's lap or sat down in front and forbidden to move. After the shot, the ritual of squinting into the little red window and carefully winding the film on to the next number.

Contrast that scene with the contemporary family photo: your camera has a great number of exposures available, and the autowind subtly encourages you to whip through several frames in succession.Why did you do that? Because the average family photo of today seems to lack the solemnity of the old traditional approach. It seems so difficult to get everybody to stop skylarking, looking over their shoulder, trying to drag a kid back into line etc, that we tend to take more shots in the hope that at least one frame will catch the majority of people looking at the camera with reasonably sane expressions.

Anyway, this is my experience in recent years—and I have no reason to doubt that others have experienced the same.
This modern approach possibly produces more spontaneous and hence more interesting shots; but at least our parents and grandparents got everybody looking at the camera at the same time! But your print wallet usually ends up with a selection of mediocre groups; you select the least mediocre negative to get the reprints for everybody and quietly forget the rest of the prints.

As a project this year, examine your past film usage critically and see where you might cut down on repetitive shots by taking more care in the taking of the first one. If you feel the need to repeat a shot, make a change of some sort. Rearrange the group, move them to another background, anything but just pushing the button again.

Extend this thinking further into your general photography. One of the useful snippets I learned many years ago was the acronym FAST. This stood for Focus, Aperture, Speed, Think; and I now know that the last is the most important.

• Think about what you see in the viewfinder.
• Think about composition.
• Think about what you can eliminate from the frame.
• Think about vertical or horizontal framing
• Think about contrast range and whether the displayed exposure is going to cope with it.
• Lastly, think about whether you really should be taking this shot at all.

Waste is still a Bad Thing—keep looking for a better shot and you must increase your percentage of good results.

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