> Posted by Roman Johnston (Roman)
> Put a P&S in larrys hands....and he will make an awesome
> photograph......put a stronger tool like a D2X in his hands.....and
> you wolnt see much diffrence except where the cameras features allow
> more control.....but larrys photography....will still have his
> signature on it.....he is right in that arena...where the camera used
> is often (but not always) less important than who is behind it.
This is true to some extent. I could play a cello concerto on bass clarinet, but would rather not.
The key is matching the instrument to the style of photography. SLRs are great for commercial work, product, hard-news and sports, wildlife, but lousy for sensitive people photography. To the point that when I pick up one of my SLRs, it feels like I am going to "work for the Man" again.
Put a D2X in my hands and most of my photographs in the past few years would not have happened - other than landscape work. A photo essay, such as the biker-bar essay simply could not have been shot with a SLR - it was shot with a Leica. The high-end Coolpix cameras have every bit the adjustability of the Leica coupled to through-the-lens viewing. With the Leica, they share the unagressive image, are discrete and non-intrusive.
http://www.larry-bolch.com/bike-week/
SLRs are big intrusive cameras that draw attention from everyone. Hoist my F3 to my eye and everyone in the room is distracted and spontaneity is gone. They proclaim that photography is about to take place.
This is no problem on a corporate location shoot where if anyone objects to being photographed, they may be fired. It is no problem working with professional models, since they are fueled by the obvious attention. It is no problem in the product studio, since the products could not care less. If well muffled, it is no problem on a wild-life shoot.
People who are not models or actors become uneasy if they are being stared at. Try in a restaurant, office or on public transportation. Watch the victim squirm. It is hard-wired in us – flight-or-fight. Now hoist an SLR with a big lens, and the feeling of being stared at is &lified by an order of magnitude. Shooting chromes for portraits in magazines, I would put the SLR on a tripod and frame the picture. Then I would never again look in the viewfinder for the duration of the shoot, unless the subject moved to another location. While this is fine for CEOs in the executive suite, it just does not work on the street.
When shooting decisive moment stuff where I am now specializing, an SLR is a bloody awful design. For low light, spontaneous shooting, it is like starting 25 paces back in a 100-meter dash. You can finish, but you can never win. It is totally inappropriate for the task.
Speaking of P&S, a couple of decades back I met the president of the Dallas Texas chapter of ASMP wandering around on a Sunday with a totally automatic Nikon around his neck. I raised my eyebrows to see what he would say. Made great sense. He said that like most of us, we haul great loads of gear around every day, and try to please the Man. Photography loses a lot of its fun in the stress and manual labour. He added that the P&S brought back the simple joy that made us go into photography in the first part.
However, the high-end Nikon Coolpix cameras are terrible as P&S cameras. Those who have bought them expecting good P&S performance have been very eloquent in their disappointment in the forums for the most part. I have not yet tried using the CP8400 on the full Auto setting, but did test it on the CP990 and the CP5000. Obviously the guy who did the programming and I did not agree. It gave me a profoundly helpless feeling! Once one accepts that they are fully adjustable cameras in every way, they become magnificent image gathering devices.
The Coolpix cameras also share the benefits of the medium format cameras with between the lens shutters, with flash sync at any speed. Again, in reaction to spending a lifetime hauling strobes, stands and all the crap that goes with them, I work almost exclusively with ambient light now. However, having the high sync speeds has been useful in a few back-lit or very harsh sunlight shots with friends. It was for this feature alone that I bought the Bronica system back in photojournalism days. Many of my other medium format cameras also have between-the-lens shutters.
The compact digital is really a whole new design, however. It really is the first completely new concept in a century since the SLR first came on the scene. It is truly a 21st century design, very much a digital device. It resembles the SLR in through-the-lens viewing, but shows not a symbolic projection on a bit of ground glass, but actually shows the picture as processed. It handles like a rangefinder camera, but does not need one, though Cosina has done one to be marketed by Epson.
I can understand people stuck in the past century having trouble grasping just how advanced the concept is, calling it a point and shoot - which it superficially resembles. It is vastly more. It is the camera I have been seeking since holding the first Leica early in my career and marveling at how incredibly badly designed it was, though the Exacta of that era was even worse. The ergonomics are superb, considering the complexity of the camera.
The big advance is the swing and swivel finder. Like a little view camera with the screen right side up and not reversed. All the infomation I need on a bright little screen. All my settings, a live histogram which is the ultimate Zone System light-meter, a grid that can be toggled on and off. Spot metering and focusing from nine locations. And my face is liberted from having a bloody big contraption jammed in it.
All this adds up to some of the best photography I have done in my lifetime. I can shoot spontaneous portraits with the camera out of the line of sight letting the subject relax, but I can fine tune settings, angle, zoom or whatever without interupting the flow. I grieve that it has come so late in life!
If I got a job offer that I simply could not refuse, and had to use a D2X, yeah, I would. Pay me enough and I will do most anything. While I would prefer a CP8400 and a CP8800 for going back to auto-racing coverage, I would happily do it with a D2X or D2H. I really would not be interested in doing product photography, but if I had to, there would be no problem with a D2X.
So far the D series is a bust for architecture, with the 1.5x cropping factor it turns my 28mm PC-Nikkor shift-lens into a 42mm equivalent. Utterly absurd, since it was never wide enough at 28mm. So long as the DX sensor is standard, there will be a need for at least a 16mm shift-lens. The 28mm PC-Nikkor paid for itself in less than its first day on the job, and left me enough change for a great meal for two with vintage wines.
Were there a good market for epic landscapes prints, a D2X or digital Hasselblad would be OK. With the exception of one image, the desert portfolio could have been easily shot with a SLR, for ex&le. The only advantage I had at the time was the 19mm equivalent lens. The only superwide lens for dSLRs at the time was a very pricey 14mm that gave the equivalent of a 21mm.
http://www.larry-bolch.com/desert2002/
For objective work, the SLR is fine – for subjective work, at least a Leica, but better a Coolpix. For the intimate stuff I am doing now, no SLR even comes close to meeting the requirements. See the first images – mother and child at
http://www.larry-bolch.com/ephemeral/
I was using a CP990 with spot metering and exposure, and shot more than two dozen shots over a ten minute ride, using the equivalent of a 24mm lens – yes, I was THAT CLOSE. The camera was in full view for the duration, but it did not intrude and the subjects simply ignored it. With a D2X I would have got the first shot and the mood would have been broken. Several other ex&les on that page and on
http://www.larry-bolch.com/sequences.htm
You may notice I have some shots of “birds†in flight just below the mother and kid. Except these birds were high-power rockets. I shot the moment I saw either the first bit of smoke or flame, and generally got a least two shots of each launch. In many cases I got three. These were with the CP5k – not the slug some inexperienced snap-shooters would make it.
I recently posted a selection from the first couple of weeks of use with the new CP8400. Again a number of ex&les where I was able to work extremely close, though this time with the equivalent of an 18mm lens. Some of these could have been shot with the 12->24mm f-4.0 zoom on a D2X, but mine is an f-2.6. No biggie, but nice. Others benefit from the gentleness and unobtrusiveness of the CP8400 and with still others, the camera really did not matter.
http://www.larry-bolch.com/CP8400/
Every camera has its place. I still will continue to carry my WideLuxe 140° panoramic and medium format film cameras where appropriate. No problem exceeding the resolution of a 22MP back with film in a 6x7. No special software needed with the WideLuxe, since the shots are already in panoramic format. Three or four shots need no stitching, but simply layering to make a full 360° panoramic. Far superior to panos shot with any digital camera.
If I had a D2X, it probably would get used now and then. However, for the most part it – and my other SLRs - simply do not match my goals and my vision at the moment. I have rarely used either the Nikon F3 or the Bronica systems in over a decade since I completed a big multi-year catalogue project of fine crafts.
Prior to the acquisition of the CP990 nearly half-a-dozen years back, film was shot mostly in medium format rangefinder cameras. My last magazine assignments were shot with the CP990.
I would not categorically say that I will never use an SLR again, but not for the foreseeable future. I have these few years for myself now, and I want to do the best photography of which I am capable. I simply will not sacrifice the quality of content of my work to use the wrong camera – because it is trendy. or “coolâ€. I will always use the most effective instrument that I can get my hands on. I will not compromise unless I absolutely have to. Trading the CP8400 down to a big and obtrusive SLR, is not a sacrifice I am willing to make. There are not all that many years of shooting left, and I just can not afford to squander them with a camera that will do less than the optimum job.
At this point, there is no camera AT ANY PRICE for which I would trade the grace and fluency of the CP8400 – no matter how advanced, slick or trendy. Content is everything and going to a SLR is giving away the edge that the Coolpix gives one in this specialty of photography.
larry!
http://www.larry-bolch.com/
ICQ 76620504
