So Far to Go

Theres the REAL photographer!
"Ooo, there's the REAL photographer!"

That is not false humility. It seems with every passing “serious job” I do, I realize how far I have to go. Sure, I took some pretty shots, but there were so many shots that I looked at and thought, “Hmph, that one was almost good.”

Funny, I knew so much when I did my first wedding. Maybe the good ones were lost or something, because when I looked back, all those killer shots just were not there. Strange. I certainly knew more when I started…or as some friends quoted to me recently from Bob Dylan, “Ah, but I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now.”

I think to sum up my thoughts about what is limiting me — yes, I am going to blame it on gear…well, and that blasted spotlight at the banquet — I would say a full frame camera would sure be nice for an extra stop of light or two. That really does make sense; I will explain. I want to go a little wider, but I lose a stop or two getting a wider lens so it ends up where I want it on my crop sensor camera.

Example: I am shooting a 35mm f/2, which is acting like a f/2 50mm. I just lost a stop of light from the 50mm f/1.4 basically because of my cropped sensor. You have to blame something. Then, if I wanted to shoot at 35mm, which I do, I would have to go for a 24mm f/2.8, and I have just lost another stop of light.

Maybe on Nikon’s (and now other companies) new high ISO, low noise cameras, this would not be an issue, but I will tell you what, on my decrepitly aged D100, you notice plenty of grain just moving from 200 to 400.

I think to really say it more clearly, I would not say it is just that I need new gear to fix all my problems. It would be more accurate to say this: I feel like my eye is seeing a full frame view, but that blasted sensor keeps cropping my vision…but a little less grain would be nice for an alternative solution. Seriously, any full frame camera with the Ai-S Nikkor 35mm f/1.4…that would be great.

Cooper Strange Written by: