The canyon picture here was probably 30 seconds or more on Kodak Gold 100 - I just sat and waited in the dark. If this is of concern you need to learn more about the technical details: more than we have here at present.Send any comments to the maintainer Roger Caffin
Photography inspires different people in different ways. Trawling through the News archives shows that some take a little disposable camera, some take a good automatic, while some hardy souls cart about 5 kg of cameras gear around with them. Some don't even bother, prefering to rely on their memories. We have here two "offerings": a little bit from the FAQ maintainer and a full article by Jason Freeman written especially for this FAQ. (One of these URLs may be obsolete now.)
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There are several sorts of cameras: cheap disposable ones, automatics, SLRs and even the large medium-format ones. Weight, cost and size go up in the same order. Then you can add in the digital cameras, which cover nearly the same range today (2004). In theory, the quality of the lens and hence of the photos you take also go up in the same order as cost - but that misses much of the point and the problems of taking photos.
Let's look at what really happens when you take a camera bushwalking. If it is a large expensive one (like an SLR) it probably travels inside your pack. Only cheaper ones are kept outside, where the risk of damage is that much greater. The trouble is, a camera inside your pack takes ages to get out. If what you want are carefully composed studies, a large camera is fine. Many of the really great calendar-quality photos of the bush are taken that way. But if you want is to get photos of your trip, and of incidents on that trip (like someone falling in the river), then the winner is a smaller cheaper camera which you can whip out in a few seconds. After all, the guy face down in the river isn't going to wait. True, the disposable cameras do not have very good lenses, so enlargements don't look quite as good, but they have the great advantage that it doesn't matter if they get a bit wet or knocked around. And bad weather conditions can give some wonderful photo opportunities (like, look what we suffered)!
A great advantage of the disposable and automatic cameras is they usually have a flash built in. I rarely got around to carrying a flash with my SLR: it was all too heavy. But with a good automatic with a flash I have been able to get lots of wonderful shots at night, inside huts and inside the tent. Often these close-ups are some of the best photos of the trip.
That leads us to ask what are the good and bad photos. Any experienced photographer will tell you that the "bad photos" are the ones you didn't get to take. Some people worry about making every photo count. It never works out that way. Film is cheap these days: take lots of photos and be surprised at which ones turned out the best. In fact, many photographers expect little more than one "good photo" per roll of film. Of course, if/when you switch to a digital camera, you discover that photos are free! You can take lots more with a digital camera and discard the ones which did not work when you get home. That said, we have to add that the Australian bush can be a pain to photograph. The colour is often not that variable, and what looked like a lovely scene often turns out to be either too wide for the camera or too hazy. Or both. I don't have any good solutions.
Once upon a time you had to use transparency film to get the best colour and resolution - and some would say "Kodak" at that. But today print film is also very good, although the final print does have less dynamic range. "Maki" (tartamillo@libero.it) pointed out that "negs can *record* more dynamic range than slides: in other words, when a slide is already solid black or solid white the neg is still recording details. Negs are also more exposure tolerant. That's why negs are a better choice for most point and shot cameras." I haven't checked the curves, but it is an interesting point. Of course, the world seems to be going digital these days, and that is a whole new world of technology and expense.
The real test is to see how often you look at your pictures. It takes a few seconds to grab a folder off the shelf and open it up to display some prints. You cannot do that with transparencies. Granted, looking at a wide landscape on a small print can be less than rewarding, but at least they bring back memories. And some of my best prints have been enlarged and hang around the walls of my house (I hide my bad photos!). What film you use is up to you and what you are photographing. One could get very technical here about dynamic range, linearity and so on, but only rarely is that necessary.
One exception is when you want to take tripod photos in dim light. Unless you use a flash gun, you will be using a long exposure. Now some films such as the Kodak Gold series of print film are happy about this, but others get all upset once the exposure goes beyond a few seconds or so. They lose "reciprocity" and the colour goes all over the place. Techncially, it seems the different colour layers start to absorb light at different speeds when the exposures are long.
The canyon picture here was probably 30 seconds or more on Kodak Gold 100 - I just sat and waited in the dark. If this is of concern you need to learn more about the technical details: more than we have here at present.
I'll give my (humble) opinion on film for what it is worth. I find the Kodak Gold films to be very good for a wide range of bushwalking. The 100 and 200 Gold/Max films are actually the same, except the 100 film has a neutral density filter incorporated. What this means is that there is no grain difference between the two, so you might as well go for the 200 over the 100. It will give you more flexibility. Why most shops still charge more for the 200 film than the 100 film is a bit of a mystery, unless everyone is still automatically buying the 100 and the volumes are hugely different. Anyhow, I bought my film in packs of 3 or 4 in the supermarket: it was always cheaper that way.
Of recent times "they" have introduced a new film format: the APS. It has a slightly smaller cassette and allows you to do strange and wierd things. I won't say "wonderful" as I don't want to record my voice with the photos. I guess it is OK, and the cameras which use it are small, but for my liking the negative size is just too small. It only does print film, so you can't get transparencies in APS. You get more grain. But, ymmv. Added later: I believe Kodak has discontinued work on the APS format: it didn't take off, while digital did. Ho hum.
Finally, watch out how you load and unload film, and keep the sun off it. I had a strange problem at one stage: vertical stripes of over-exposure on some of the first few frames on several rolls. It turned out that the film canister machinery had squeezed a batch of canisters too hard, so the felt-lined entry was bowed slightly open. This, plus the brilliant sun on a ski trip, fogged the outer layers of film. I got an apology, but that was all. So watch it when you load and unload film.
John Retchford wrote on the subject of resolution in Kodak films:
"The colour in transparencies is dye, not "colour dye couplers". Colour couplers are chemicals which react with the oxidation products of the developer to form dyes. Where Kodachrome differs from other colour films is that the colour couplers are not in the emulsion when it is exposed - they are introduced during the processing.
The silver halide that has not been reduced to the metal during development is removed from all photographic emulsions. Otherwise light would continue to affect it.
It is not true of Kodachrome that "no other film can match it's detail". Its resolution is limited by the smallest area of dye it can produce and this makes its resolution much lower than some other films."
The author has only recently started to experiment with a digital still camera after some years of using high-resolution TV cameras for medical work. The cheap 640*480 resolution still cameras are now way in the past, which is good because they weren't really much good for anything (imho). They appeared to have the same resolution as the TV cameras, but not really: the need to have a Bayer filter over the sensor meant you were only getting 320*240 resolution. By early 2003 4 Mpixel cameras were becoming available and these gave enough resolution to make respectable prints a little bigger than the normal postcard size, but they were still a bit expensive. By late 2004 prices had come down far enough that a 5 Mpixel still camera cost less than a good my film automatic. It is interesting and a shade frightening to find that by about mid-2004 digital cameras had matched the film camera in sales. Kodak have closed their film R&D lab and abandoned the (pointless) APS format completely. The portents are there.
In 2002 I wrote "at this stage this author is sticking with his film cameras, but the reasons are slowly lessening. You can take and carry an awful lot of high-resolution pictures with a few small rolls of film, at very low cost. And you can scan the negs or prints, as done for this FAQ site. Beyond that: contributions required." By late 2004 my expensive film-based semi-automatic camera had failed with a broken gear inside it for the second time. I gave up and bought a 5 Mpixel digital camera (Canon A95), and so I started to discover whole new horizons.
There are a number of trade-offs with a digital camera, but there are also a number of real features. They include:
The following was contributed by Jason Freeman, of www.gadgetaus.com. I hadn't thought about this too much, but dust particles on the back of the lens inside a compact camera have showed up on some of my pictures. Upon examination I could actually see the offending dust particles! I removed them with a soft clean micro-fibre lens cloth. I have also seen this on the sensor of my digital camera.
Clean up your act
Terry Lane
Proud new owners of digital single lens reflex cameras are discovering a problem that they were not warned about and that didn't exist with film cameras: dust on the image recording sensor. The sensor in a typical digital SLR is overlaid with a fragile filter screen. Dust enters the camera body cavity when the lens is being changed and gets past the mirror and onto the filter surface. The first the photographer knows about its presence is when he takes a photo with a lot of clear sky in it and sees dark blobs randomly scattered over the image. That's dust. [The photo below has such a dust blob dead center at the height of the arrow. RNC]
The camera manuals warn against DIY sensor cleaning, recommending that the job be done by a service department. There are problems with that caveat. First, there may not be a service department handy. Second and third, the cleaning is expensive and takes time. Camera Clinic in Collingwood cleans sensors for professionals and amateurs and promises same-day service for between $50 and $150. The charge depends on the time taken to do the cleaning (some dust is more persistent than other dust).
The camera makers advise that if a DIY clean is necessary, it should be done with the bulb from a blower brush - with the brush removed - directed at but not touching the filter. This method will blow the dust away, but it will probably lodge somewhere in the camera body. Wayne Rogers, the managing director of Camera Clinic, says his cleaning routine includes vacuuming the camera cavity.
Camera Clinic sells a cleaning kit, consisting of fluid, swabs and an instruction CD, for $99. Rogers says camera owners should not be terrified of doing it themselves but they should follow the instructions and heed the warnings.
John Swainston, the CEO of Maxwells, the Australian distributors of Nikon cameras, says dirt on the sensor usually comes from particles that are caught in the back cap of the lens when it is placed in one¿s pocket. Rubbing in the pocket, it becomes charged with static. Then, when you remove the lens and replace the back cap from your pocket, the charged particles are attracted to the back of the lens when the cap is placed on it. "The first time you use that lens, the air pump that rotates the zoom helicoid shunts all that muck from the back of the lens through the opening void as the shutter opens - presto: dirty sensor." Swainston suggests that an essential item in any photographer's kit is a sealable plastic bag. Lens and body caps should be put into the bags and sealed when not in use. And the camera should be held upside down and with your back to the wind while lenses are changed.
Camera Clinic's Rogers also points to the effect of the mirror, which acts as a fan as it rises and falls, blowing dust around inside the cavity.
Olympus makes a selling point of the self-cleaning function of its E-1 digital SLR. The sensor and low-pass filter are hermetically sealed, so dust can't reach them. There is another filter in front of the sensor array that traps the dust and removes it "by ultrasonic activation prior to shutter release".
Nikon recognises the dust problem and provides an elaborate and expensive method for reducing dust blemishes on images. It involves taking a dust reference photo by pointing the camera at a plain, white object. The reference photo is matched with actual images, using Nikon¿s supplementary software, Nikon Capture 4.1. Automatic adjustments are made in the program to reduce the dust effect. There are two problems with this system. One is that Capture 4.1 costs $325 and the other is that dust is not static but moves around inside the camera. For an important photographic session, it is necessary to have an up-to-date reference photo.
To test for dust, put the camera in P mode and point it at clear blue sky and take a photo. Any dust on the sensor will show up clearly on the monitor when the image is displayed. The dust motes on the filter causing the blemishes will generally be too small to be seen with the naked eye, and at that point the difficult decision has to be made: do it yourself or leave it to the experts? Whatever cleaning choice is made, the depressing fact is that it won't stay clean.
If using a compact camera with no control over the exposure and aperture, life can be difficult. I have had trouble with some snow scenes when the camera could not find something to focus on - so it reverted to close-up. One way of handling this is to use the spot focus/exposure feature of the camera if it has one. You usually have to remember to invoke this option, but I find it very useful. Alternately, some automatics have an "infinity" option, which usually works on general scenery.
A rather under-used feature on some automatics is the "Night Scene" setting. This needs a tripod for good results. It takes a flash photo of whatever is close up, then resets the exposure meter and takes a longer exposure to pick up the background. You can get some fascinating evening shots with this, but it does require some care.
SLR users may sneer quietly and pass on here: you get full control over everything. Curiously, I find it a bit of a jolt to have to think about all the options when I go back to the SLR after using a good automatic for a while. On the other hand, my digital "automatic" camera bought in 2004 combined both approaches: SLR and automatic. It can be used either way. It allows full control over all functions if I want it, or it can operate in automatic mode. The SLR has no advantages left.
These are great if you use them. Only too often I have carried one but not got it out: wasted weight. But see what you can do with one deep inside a canyon (above). The waterfall shown here was almost pitch black to the eye and I had little idea of what I would get in the photo. Most of the time if I take a tripod at all I take a little cheap plastic one: it's a lot lighter. But I have even had success with carefully sitting the camera on something and using the delayed shutter option.
The photo of my tent was actually taken in the middle of the night (we had got back to the tent VERY late, and dinner was even later). Again, the moon was dim and I had no idea what the photo would turn out like. But my mini-tripod and a time exposure, and bingo! (OM2, 10sec, K Gold 100)
A trick mentioned by some other readers of aus.bushwalking is to take a small bag and a piece of string with your tripod. You fill the bag with rocks and hang it under the tripod. This adds a whole lot of weight to the tripod and makes it more stable. It is especially recommended for use with the very light tripods.
Getting into the really fancy class we now have digital video cameras. These come in two forms. The latest digital still cameras will usually allow you a couple of minutes of video capture at limited resolution - the length of time depends on the memory card you have put in the camera. But there are also digital video cameras per se, and Bruce Finger has contributed the following.
With the advent of small and lightweight digital video cameras, a real option is to take one with you whilst bushwalking. Most models weigh around 300-500 grams. These cameras are powered by Lithium Ion batteries which are available in a variety of sizes and last for a long time. The smallest battery for my Sony, for example, gives over 100 minutes of recording and reviewing time. And they have a built in sensor which accurately displays the recording time left in the battery.
The digital video can be easily downloaded to a computer and edited. Using software installed on the computer, the order of scenes can be swapped around, scenes trimmed or enhanced using filters, and music background tracks, narrative, titles and transitions (fadeouts etc) added. Digital still images taken by other members of the party can be added. The completed "masterpiece" can be easily burnt to a DVD and shared with friends, relatives and workmates. And like digital still cameras, you can point and shoot and get great results. All cameras have built in "shake" compensators, auto focus etc.
A great resource for those wanting to know more is www.camcorderinfo.com. Here you will find reviews on cameras, hints on using them, newgroups devoted to particular camera brands, and hints on every aspect of editing your footage.
I have found that everyone is interested in viewing the latest footage from our bushwalking trips. There are lots of armchair bushwalkers out there!
[On aus.bushwalking? Never! RNC]A couple of hints -
1) Leave the zoom alone whilst filming. Set it before you press the GO button.
2) Pan slowly (if at all) and stop for a second or two to give the viewer time to take in the magnificent scenery!
3) Hold the camera level and still.
I have to endorse items 2 & 3. At one stage my wife was watching some amateur videos taken of young horses for sale, and the combination of fast jerky panning and camera shake left her feeling 'car sick'. She couldn't watch all of the tape, so the film-maker's efforts were completely wasted.
You can get rather technical with an SLR and do some close up photography.
A set of extension tubes and a "macro" lens are what you need for this. My pet hobby inside photography is photographing Australian native orchids. Unseen by most walkers, there is a huge range of fascinating flowers to be found - but they are all small and most don't last long. I normally use 10-40mm of extension tube and a 50mm macro lens - but they add to the weight. This works wonderfully with a small tripod for most orchids: Olympus OM2, 50mm Macro + 14mm extension, plus mini-tripod. late model digital cameras have a 'macro mode' in their zoom lens. This allows them to get to within 5 cm of the object. Some can take external close-up lenses, or telephoto lenses.
A cable release is very useful if you are carrying an SLR, and essential for macro photography. Most little automatics have a delayed shutter system which can substitute sometimes. Lenses of various sorts are also fun to play with with an SLR, but they add weight again. My own preference is to try to keep the photos as close to what I really saw as possible, but ymmv.
Maki (tartamillo@libero.it) wrote
"I think these make a good introduction to photography
Some of this stuff may seem outdated when it refers to specific old models (like my beloved Yashica T4), but in general the concepts are always valid. User comments also tend to keep things up-to-date."
© Roger Caffin 1/3/2002