Who Are You Going to Believe?

My son Clay is discovering that having to figure something out for yourself can actually be fun.

You’ve probably all heard the joke about the husband who, when his wife catches him in bed with another woman and accuses him of cheating on her, replies “Who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?”

I find myself thinking of this joke when I get e-mail questions from photographers worried about postings they’ve read on various Internet forums that report horror stories about a camera they own. Stories like:

“It has dead pixels. Set the image magnification to 100% and you can see them rotting away. The stench is overwhelming.”

“The anti-aliasing filter is too strong. I had to resort to making my own out of poly-fissure substrate.”

“The AT system exhibits .25mm of front-focus at color temperatures below 2500 Kelvin. How do they expect anyone to take pictures under candlelight with this piece of junk?”

I’m sure you could add a few of your own examples to this list. Yet when I ask the questioner if he (it’s always a he) has personally experienced any of the problems he’s so concerned about, he always says, “No, but…”

“But what?”
“But the other guy sounds like he really knows what he’s talking about, so…”
“Does he own your camera?”
 “Yeah, it’s the same model.”
“No, I mean were these tests performed on your camera, the one you bought, the one you have in your possession?”
“Oh. Well no, of course not.”
“And you didn’t try duplicating them yourself?”
“I don’t have that kind of time. That’s why I’m asking you.”
“Thanks, I’m flattered. So were these tests performed under the conditions you normally use your camera?”
“Sort of. They were performed at sub-zero temperatures and I might take pictures of a polar bear at the zoo one of these days.”

Sigh.

Now I grant you that some problems you read about on the Internet are real. Some cameras aren’t particularly fast or accurate in low light. Some tend to clip highlights in high contrast situations. Others will blur the image at certain shutter speeds unless you lock up the mirror.

The thing to keep in mind about these and other examples is that they may have little or nothing to do with how you use your camera. In fact, it may be that for what you do, no other camera can perform better or as well. But you would never know that unless you had actually used it under the range of conditions in which you normally shoot, examined the results, and decided for yourself whether it was up to the task.

Of course, before you could reach this conclusion you’d have to be able to tell the difference between camera/lens defect and user error. You’d have have to have confidence in your own opinions and observations. You’d also have to have a sense for whether a tester was on to something or simply on drugs.

I understand that such confidence comes more naturally to some than others and that not all confidence is justified. On the other hand, until you learn to trust your own lying eyes, you’re likely to believe anything you hear, no matter how absurd.

Comments

[Janne]

Part of my hobby has become collecting and using old junk^h^h^h inexpensive cameras. Friends and relatives hear I'm into old film stuff and they keep giving me old abandoned cameras they'd otherwise throw away.

A side effect of that is that I no longer worry about the kind of thing you mention above.

Take focus, for instance. All things being equal I'd of course prefer my AF to be as accurate as possible. But I'm using cameras with scale focusing ("Um, about five or six meters I guess"-level of precision) or with no adjustable focus at all, and I keep getting images I like with them, perfectly in focus or not.

I've taken images I like with cameras using a single-element lens coated only with sixty years worth of gunk; with random shutter speeds; with finder only vaguely framing the same scene that will end up on the roll; with the film plane so far away from flat I hear the film buckle when I wind it to the next frame.

I'm not going to sweat a slight misfocus, a bit of haloing or less than perfectly flat focus plane. I just keep it in mind and adapt. The picture will be fine.

[Syed]

Here are some more stories:

"The Nikon white balance was off by about 0.3 Kelvin. This is my fifth sample, and I am planning to switch to Olympus because of this."

"At 5000% magnification the chromatic abberation was barely visible, but still there. I can't believe I paid 2500 dollars for this piece of junk."

"What weather seals? After submerging the K5 in salt water for about an hour the camera failed miserably. I am so disappointed, and am getting a Canon instead."

I'm sure glad I'm not an equipment whore. :)

[Nikhil Ramkarran]

Apart from the incredibly nit-picky problems which blow up the forums sometimes you also have the extreme esoteric issues which suddenly become a big deal because 2 loudmouths (loudfingers :) post about them all over the place.

I have a weird issue with my Pentax K7, when I take very long exposures (30 seconds or more) while using either an infrared filter or a 6-stop ND I get a strange flare on the image from the side of the sensor closest to the battery.

Know how I solved that little problem? I stopped doing those types of (usually failed) shots and dedicated the time instead to other photos :)

[syv ritch]

I think that you have your facts wrong! I heard the conversation and the guy wanted:

"To take pictures of a polar bear in Antarctica and penguins in the high-arctic in winter."

Except for that many people forget to use that expensive gadget and press the "big" button.

[Andrew Burday]

As an intermediate-ish digital photographer, I I want to put in a word for all the insecure beginners. When you're starting out, digital photography is intimidating. You're thinking about spending at least several hundred dollars on a device that you're going to have to grow into. It's not like buying a car, where you might not understand how it works but you know pretty well what you want. Beginning photographers really don't know what's going to work for them. Unless you have knowledgeable friends, an unusually cool head, or Bill Gates's budget, it is intimidating.

It's not that long ago that I was spending hours poring over 100% enlargements. Two things finally clicked for me. (1) I realized I had no idea what difference the issues highlighted by the camera review sites were going to make for me. (2) On a camera blog (TOP), I came across a highly enthusiastic review of a Pentax lens. Looking into it, I realized that I could (barely) afford some of Pentax's top quality lenses, while Canikon's were far beyond my budget. I figured out on my own that the review sites weren't really helping me, but still it took a suggestion from someone more knowledgeable than I to get me thinking about a better way to choose a camera.

So, yeah, the really dumb questions are really dumb, but not all the people asking them are dumb. When you're starting out, you're thinking about spending a lot of money on something you don't even know how to judge. The review sites are mostly encouraging you to ask the wrong questions, because those are the questions they can answer. It's hard to get yourself to a place where you can start asking the right questions. I hope some of the people who have been bugging Gordon are on their way there.

[Gordon Lewis]

Andrew,

I understand where you're coming from. There's a lot of Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt (also known as "FUD") circulating on review sites and user forums these days. It's hard to know what's real, what's exaggerated, and what is pure fantasy. It takes time and experience to know whether it's your camera or your capabilities that are the limiting factor. (Hint: It's easier for a good photographer to take great pictures with flawed equipment than it is for a poor photographer to take great pictures with perfect equipment.) Wherever you start from, the goal is to eventually reach the point where you can learn to trust your own judgment rather than someone you don't know and whose opinions may have no practical value to you. And yes, that includes me.