Looking to get into photography profession

alokclicks

Please tell me how can we find that a lower MP camera is better than a higher MP camera ?

Thanks
alok

alokclicks

Please tell me how can we find that a lower MP camera is better than a higher MP camera ?

Thanks
alok

Haylo

Yes.

Or about the skill of the person taking the photograph! Once certain basic paramaters have been met, the camera has very little bearing on photograph quality. The best photographer I know used a very old and basic camera, but consistently produced exceptional images.

There are many camera review websites which test and compare different models, a google search will find many of them. They typically also have useful articles explaining various features.

If you want to break into professional photography, you might want to do some studying about the technical side of things.

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nycank

Yes. Without going into too much details, and to paraphrase Carville - "Its the Lens s***p" Lenses are the first things that change the quality, followed by the recorder in this case sensor, in old-era it would be the film. DSLR lens will get you a better control over focus, filters timers. There are many good articles in photo.net

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Uncle_Martin

Rob said it all, except for "and Balliol was their college".

Oh and the bit Haylo added, its the photographer wot frames the snap not the kit that makes for a good image ... many years ago a friend full of enthusiasm for the blues beaded Sonny Terry after a gig and asked the great man, from a position of experimentation, about which harmonicas to use to further his ambitions, only to receive a reply of "its not the harp its the man who plays it".

A thorough knowledge of post shot production techniques would be very important, as would getting to know your kit so as to be able to select 'horses for courses'.

And then there's the bit about being there and pressing the button at the right time. Plus not getting so intoxicated you lose the images you recorded, as a my harmonica aspiring friend did several years later when he got his first major gig doing a shoot with Alan Ginsberg around London, and then by chance happened into Captain Beefheart ... well it was 1969 and it was 1977 before he remembered the that he should have done something with the spools, along with being offered a place at the Royal College to do another post-graduate in stained glass by the reclusive professor of glass and some other things as well ... but there's no need to worry the lifestyle, age and the anti-depressants will have blurred his distinctionsbetween memory and fantasy. No-one would believe he was on the same post-grad as Gilbert and George, especially people who know them.

Several of my friends and my first father-in-law all wanted to be professional photographers. One made it, but as a major foreign correspondent (the one universally despised by his peers) so must have swapped his box brownie for an Olivetti. Another wanted to be the ice cube man on glamour shoots, but that's a different story. Two of my wife's friends are successful photographers, with strings of exhibitions to their credit and they just drifted into it, being in the right place and impressing 'movers and shakers' (their description not mine) with the snaps included in their artwork portfolio, who subsequently mentioned the quality of their work and provided supportive gossip on the art network when people asked about photographers.

Other than that its weddings, family makeovers and flattering landscapes involving the new shed by the motorway. Even with all the usuals like sheer hard work, good skills or contacts for networking, its a millimeter of talent and a mile of luck determining who makes it and who doesn't. Even then its not necessarily a recipe for a happy, fulfilling or prosperous life.

ngupta

Assuming a point-and-shoot, the one with higher "optical" zoom is better than the other having possibly higher MP. Please note that digital zoom is what you do on a computer, while optical zoom is purely a "hardware" feature. Similarly, a CZ lens would probably be better than any other in-house lens.

ngupta

That is probably because this guy was using a SLR (did someone say "a very old and basic camera"?), which with all due respect, I believe is anyday better than a DSLR in picture quality.

Haylo

Yes, it was an Olympus OM1, a camera that can now be picked up with an excellent quality 50mm lens for next to nothing.

While digital cameras, once purchased, are inexpensive to experiment with, I think that the discipline of having a limited number of shots on a reel of film can be better for beginners. Certainly I think that if I'd started out with digital, I'd have put far less thought into getting each shot just right, than if I'd been able to take shot after shot after shot and just pick the best later.

RusherRacing

I disagree some what Haylo.. Learning a cameras settings with digital is great because you can trail and error easier and quicker. I was working on taking pictures of flames the other night. I set the Fstop/shutter/iso took a picture looked at it on the camera and adjusted. It helped me understand what adjusments I needed to make to get the picture I wanted. Immediately.

fsg

@ RR , Yes digital has taken a lot of the guesswork out of photography, you can tweak with photoshop

@ Haylo I quite agree with the discipline of having a certain number of CASETTES, to use in photography, and make every shot count.

However its the skill of the eye of the photographer to SEE ,and anticipate, which makes them masters of the art, lens focal length, depth of field, shutter speed, to create just the image seen by the viewfinder.

Digital screens do nothing for me, having been always used to an eye level viewfinder , it is more immediate, as we,with eyes are used to looking at a scene, rather than a small image.

Any one can take photographs, its the income from them that counts, when you sell them.

My India ones give me a very reasonable return, over a long period with the bonus of meeting the people and loving the country.

Copyright in UK lasts a long time, and royalties can be assured ,a s long as you have a decent agent

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Haylo

Hmm... Good point, that could be a factor; I suppose that it depends on your method of learning.

If you're learning by taking a course, or being taught by someone or even learning from a resource like a book, the discipline of only having a few shots to get it right would be useful. But I guess that if you're trying to work things out on your own by trial and error, then digital would definitely have that advantage.

I know that when I first purchased a polarising filter for my Nikon compact zoom, I did take a lot of "with and without" experimental shots, far more than I'd have felt I could have taken with my SLR, even if I was still buying in bulk and processing my own film.

Hyderabadi

This is really getting into some advanced stuff, and I'm an amateur myself - but, with a D-SLR and a few lenses.

Elsewhere on this site there were recommendations to buy a 75-300 lens, and I was advocating something more 'reasonable' like 18-200, cheaper too. The justification for 75-300 was - "You'll regret it if you miss that once in a lifetime Tiger's Whiskers shot." Somelikethat.

I still love my Tamron 18-200 , it's my allround, allwayson lens. And gets me the whiskers or the wide angles, not disappointed at all. BTW, I do have a Canon 75-300.

Both pictures with my Tamron 18-200.
OK, can't see the goat's whiskers, but, it's no Tiger.

&:
From the passenger seat of a moving car.

There was a site I'm trying to re-find... the kid (from Canada, I think) was taking awesome pictures with just an 1.3mp fixed lens camera, and making money selling pictures on his website. He even had a booking schedule on the site..

As long as you know the rules of the game - capabilities and limitations of the equipment you have(or lack of it), imho, one could make good pictures. Bottom line. IMHO.

The more pictures you take the more expert you are. I think.

jyotirmoy

Wow!!!! My dear Hyderabadi bhai what beautiful photograph and as I just told you over phone the pics also tell us who is behind the camera and that is very important.

n kumar

Hi,
I still use my aashi pentax and minolta's with all the lenses and filter. It is not the camera eye but the head behind the camera which gives you results.

nycank

IS USM ?