The number two* question that every veteran photographer gets asked is: “How can I be more ______ as a photographer?” You can fill that in with any adjective you’d like: Creative. Wealthy. Original. Successful. Innovative. * The number one question is always about gear. Always. And, as always, the gear matters 10% as much as you think it does. Continue Reading
The post How Can I Be More ______ As A Photographer? appeared first on Photodoto.
Photographer and filmmaker Mathieu Stern is good to his word. He said he would start a series of videos highlighting vintage lenses, and he has. In his second installment of “three vintage lenses, one model” he shoots the same model (obviously) using the Konica Hexanon 28mm f/3.5, Minolta MD 100mm f/2.5, and Industar 50-2 50mm f/3.5.
You might remember his previous test where he compared the Canon FD 50mm f/1.4 S.S.C., the Soligor 21mm f/3.8, and the Helios 103 53mm f/1.8 (which he had modified for tilt focusing).
This comparison is shot exactly the same way: no overbearing voiceover, just a quick introduction to the lenses before he goes out and shows all three in action at three different locations. Results are shown on-screen so you’ll want to watch this full screen at the highest resolution your internet connection can handle.
Let us know in the comments which of the three lenses is your favorite, and if you like this comparison check out Mathieu’s YouTube channel for a lot more vintage gear goodness.
Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)
Feel stuck? Frustrated? Feel like you want to hang up the camera, or that you’ll never make it as a photographer? Those feelings are terrible I know, you feel like you’re in a prison from which you will never break out. But take heart, here are a few things to help you when dealing with your frustrations as a photographer.
The thing you probably need understand the most if you are frustrated as a photographer is not that it is going to be okay (it probably will), it’s that it is NORMAL. It’s always useful to remember that every artist/photographer had these feelings before you and others will have them after you. It’s just a normal part of the creative process. Doubts, frustrations, those “what’s the point?” feelings are all normal stuff.
So you just need to understand that it’s okay. If you want to have a dog, you’ll have to deal with feeding it, cleaning it, dealing with the brown stuff. If you want to be a photographer, you’ll have to deal with feelings of self-doubt, frustrations, and all. It’s all part of the deal.
Can you imagine that one of the greatest artists of all time, Michelangelo, wrote in his diary, “I am no painter”? He did, and let’s face it if someone like him could be frustrated with his art, it makes it pretty normal for you and I to have those feelings too.
But why am I telling you this? Because sometimes you may feel bad for feeling frustrated while it is a normal part of the creative process. Don’t worry though, it’s not quite your fault if you have felt that way. It is because you’ve been fed a lie.
One of the biggest reasons for frustrations is because expectations do not match reality. And most of our expectations are pretty much warped because we’ve been fed a lie. So it’s not quite your fault.
What lie am I talking about? You see it everywhere on TV, movies, newspapers, pretty much everywhere. It’s the lie of the edit, and it destroys anyone who believes it.
What is it exactly? You are fed selective pieces of life and believe them as true, warping your expectations, completely dismissing the process behind everything. Take this famous example:
A middle aged woman walked onto the stage of Britain’s got talent. She looked like your typical next door old lady that bakes cakes. She’s about to sing. The cameras zoom in on smirks, one of the judges tries not to laugh at the contestant. She opens her mouth and you can hear gasps. That woman has a stunning voice, the world was introduced to Susan Boyle. An instant star, an overnight success.
Boy oh boy do we love those stories. But they are not true. Susan Boyle has been practicing most of her life. You can’t just take her 5-minute viral video and call that an overnight success when she’s been putting in the work since she was little.
The reason why the lie of the edit is destructive is that it bypasses the most important part of all – the process.
Look, I’m not saying that it’s a media conspiracy or anything, but the fact is that everywhere we turn, we see the edit of someone’s life. Then when we start looking at our life, and how can we not feel frustrated with where we are?
Say you want to be a travel photographer. You check out Instagram and you see that this couple quit their job and now travel the world full-time. That’s the edited version. Then you look at poor old you and the only travel you can afford is to your job every day. How can you not feel frustrated?
But what was the process that couple had to through to get there? They scrubbed 150 toilets, spread 250 kilos of cow dung, among other things. That is a true story by the way.
I’m not suggesting that to travel the world you need to scrub toilets, but always remember that everything that you see has been edited. It’s only the tip of the iceberg. What you don’t see – and the only way to get where you want to be – is whole the process.
It’s my numero uno critique of certain photography gurus by the way. They sell you the edit. Quit your job, become a photographer, live the dream. They never tell you about the process of finding clients, being worried you can’t pay your bills, etc.
What I am saying is this: It’s okay to be frustrated. What you see out there of everyone living the photography dream you want to live is an EDIT. Don’t compare your life with someone else’s edit of their life. It warps your expectations, and when expectations don’t match reality, that’s a recipe for frustration.
So far I’ve said it’s okay to feel frustrated, and it’s usually because your expectations have been warped by unrealistic expectations (thanks, media!). But what if you are *still* frustrated? Good news, you can use your frustrations as fuel. How so? Just realize one thing:
The universe works a certain way, and the system is rigged so that only the most dedicated people get through. If it was easy, everyone would do it. So things like frustration, self-doubt, discouragement are good because it’s trying to weed out those who will press on from those who simply don’t want to do so. Once you realize that it’s a built-in obstacle to weed out those who are not committed enough, it can empower you to press on.
I’ve been around for a few years now. A month or so ago I started to click on the sites of photographers that I knew started around the same time as I. All I got was 404 errors, meaning their sites and their presence are not there anymore. They’ve been weeded out by the system.
All those frustrations and feelings are like fuel that can either block your vision or you can use them as fire to get you going. Whatever you want out of your photography, it’s a game that only the determined and steadfast win. Let those frustrations knock others out while you know it’s just an obstacle to go through to test your own resolve.
I interviewed a photojournalist once for my magazine, and one part stood out to me. He went to see an editor, and after some brutal comments went home and put his camera up for sale the next day. He was done with photography. Was that the end? No. He went on to be the photojournalist he wanted to be and to make some jaw-dropping images.
The moral of the story is that you as a photographer need to have resolve, the resolve to continue the path of photography until success. Whatever that may be or mean for you. Because every photographer you look up to, they had all of the same frustrations you have, but they are where they are because they pressed on.
Name any feeling you have, they had it too, but they just continued. Because it’s only failure when you give up. I’m glad the photojournalist got back in the game, but how many photographer’s careers were ruined that way? Resolve to do the work needed to achieve your photography goals. Keep your eye on the prize, but put in the work.
For Micheal Phelps, the most decorated Olympian, that meant going to the pool 7 days a week. What does it mean for you? Read interviews every day, shoot as much as you can, learn as much as you can. It’s different for everyone but the principle is still to focus more on the process, the very thing that is always edited out in the media.
There you have it, folks. Because I have a lot of experience with this stuff, it’s pretty much ingrained in my mind. But thinking about these points mentally always leave me with a state of renewed empowerment and I hope it will do the same for you. Be yourself, stay focused and keep on shooting.
The post Tips for Dealing with Your Frustrations as a Photographer by Olivier Duong appeared first on Digital Photography School.
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Over 100,000 Instagram users and some of the world’s best known media organizations were fooled for over two years by someone pretending to be a front-line war photographer. The entire stranger-than-fiction story was revealed recently by BBC Brazil after a lengthy investigation.
According to the BBC’s report, so-called ‘Eduardo Martins’ posed as a Brazilian UN photographer by using a collection of images stolen from other photographers’ websites and from news organizations. Stealing with care he built a body of striking work that brought him to the attention of BBC Brazil, Al Jazeera, the Wall Street Journal, Getty Images and many others, and amassed him over 120,000 followers on Instagram.
‘Eduardo’ posted tear-sheets of his work in print and recounted stories of his encounters and ‘humanity’ in the face of chaotic and violent scenes. He was able to keep the ruse going by never speaking to anyone in person, and sending only recorded or emailed messages. His photographs were placed with Getty Images and tales of his exploits made print with some of the world’s biggest newspapers.
An interviewer at the BBC became suspicious, however, and started to ask questions that revealed other Brazilian war photographers working in the same zones had no idea who Eduardo was. As the war correspondent community is tight knit and journalists in conflict zones inevitably know one another, alarm bells began to ring.
Enquiries with the UN also established that no one with that name was on its books as a photographer, and that neither were other UN photographer friends that Martins referred to—including some that Martins mourned in his posts after they were ‘killed’. Amazingly the UN even followed him on Instagram.
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| Pictures from the Facebook page of photographer Ignacio Aronovich that demonstrate how Martins manipulated photographs belonging to Daniel C. Britt to disguise them from image recognition software. |
It turns out the profile picture Martins used was of a UK surfer called Max Hepworth-Povey, and that the images Martins posted, distributed to news outlets and supplied for his interviews were stolen from other photographers. The images were often flipped, cropped and manipulated to disguise them from automated visual-matching services so Martins could pass them off as his own.
His technique became clear when a photographer noted that other photographers in a picture credited to Martins were holding cameras with the shutter release on the left hand side of the body instead of the right.
As news of suspicions got back to Martins via a photographer he corresponded with online he disappeared, deleting his Instagram account and shutting down the phone number he used for Whatsapp messaging. His last message said he was planning to tour Australia in a van for a year and to cut communication with the world.
Whether Eduardo is a man or a woman, or even owns a camera at all, remains unclear—and indeed whether he/she is even from Brazil and is or isn’t currently in Australia. These things may never be known, but the story does raise questions about how well news organizations vet their contributors and interviewees.
Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)
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Swiss photographer Madeleine Josephine Fierz has been stripped of two photography awards after it was revealed that she’d won them using someone else’s photo.
The contest-winning image, seen above, was taken by Thai photographer Sasin Tipchai, who had uploaded it under a CC0 license to stock photography website Pixabay. Fierz submitted the image as her own, ultimately receiving first place in the Moscow International Foto Awards (MIFA) and second place in the Fine Art Photo Awards.
The deception was discovered after Sasin posted on Facebook about Fierz’s use of his images, and someone else shared it with the Moscow International Foto Awards’ Facebook page. That brought it to the attention of officials who, after looking into the matter, revoked Fierz’s award and removed the image from its website. The image has also been removed from the Fine Art Photo Awards website.
In a statement to Khaosod English, MIFA jury member Hossein Farmani commented on the matter, saying:
[Fierz] claimed since she bought these photos, she thought that she could manipulate it a little and claim it as her art. As a jury of MIFA we take these allegation very seriously and we investigate and delete images in question as soon as we can verify the facts. It’s almost impossible for us to know which images belong to whom unless photographers let us know, like you did.
Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)
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New Carlisle News photojournalist Andy Grimm was shot by Sheriff’s Deputy Jake Shaw on Monday after the officer mistook Grimm’s camera and tripod for a gun, according to the news organization.
Per New Carlisle News—a local news organization in New Carlisle, Ohio—and Grimm’s statements about the incident, Grimm had left the company’s office around 10PM to photograph lightning. At some point after this, Grimm witnessed a traffic stop being performed by Shaw, which he decided to photograph. Grimm says he pulled his vehicle into the parking lot of a restaurant near the traffic stop, where he began setting up his tripod and camera “in full view of the deputy.”
Despite this, Grimm said, “I turned around towards the cars and then ‘pop, pop,'” referencing the gunfire he heard before being shot in the side.
The photographer underwent surgery and is expected to recover. Grimm states that he knows the deputy who shot him and that he doesn’t want him to lose his job; however, he says Shaw failed to give him any sort of warning before opening fire. New Carlisle News says that the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation is now looking into the incident.
Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)
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Last year, photographer Josh Rossi made headlines all over the world after he used his skills as a photographer and retoucher to turn his daughter into Wonder Woman. It was a fun passion project, but the viral outpouring of support it generated inspired him to do something more.
And so Josh and his wife Roxana teamed up with costume designer Julie Whiteley to find ‘the REAL Justice League’ and show them for the superhumans they are.
Roxana scoured the world to find six children with varying disabilities and diseases, who have shown incredible strength and resilience. The final Justice League lineup consisted of: 5-year-old Kayden Kinckle, 3-year-old Sofie Loftus, 9-year-old Teagan Pettit, 2-year-old Mataese Manuma, 7-year-old Zaiden Stolrow, and 5-year-old Simon Fullmer.
Each of the kids suffers from a disease, disability, or condition that makes them seem weak on the outside, and Rossi’s hope was that this photo project would showcase their inner strength. So they created costumes that cost up to $ 10,000 per child (donated to this good cause), photographed them, and then delivered poster prints to the family and taped the children’s reactions.
Here are some behind the scenes photos from the process, followed by all six reaction videos.
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You can read each of the children’s individual stories on Rossi’s website. From rare cancers, to heart conditions, to a young double amputee, these kids really are incredible humans. And, of course, you can see all of the final images in the gallery below:
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To see more of Rossi’s work, visit his website or follow him on Facebook and Instagram.
All photos by Josh Rossi and used with permission.
Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)
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| Photo by Allison Johnson |
After speaking with a bone-a-fide eclipse expert a few months ago, I’ve been a proponent of not taking photos of the solar eclipse. So, on the morning of August 21st, 2017, I was on my way to the office with no plans to take pictures. I happened to have the Nikon D810 and AF-P 70-300mm at my side, but that was only because I’d been shooting with it over the weekend and planned to bring it to the office and pass it off to someone else.
My grand plan for the morning included mooching my colleague Jeff Keller’s eclipse glasses and safely viewing the event from our building. This scheme was almost waylaid when I was initially turned away from the at-capacity roof deck by an actual bouncer. But I persisted, and by that I mean I just hung around for a few minutes, and eventually made it outside into the utter spectacle when someone else left.
As it turned out Jeff actually had glasses to spare, because he is good at planning ahead, so I found myself with a coveted spot on the deck and a pair of eclipse glasses just as the show was getting good. But I was surprised to find that equally as good as the show in the sky was the show on the ground.
There’s something that happens to your face when you put on these glasses and look at the moon in front of the sun. I felt it happen to my face, and I saw it on countless other faces Monday morning. Your mouth opens in awe. You smile, or laugh, or just stare.
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| Photo by Allison Johnson |
I watched, and eventually started photographing my fellow eclipse-viewers. And though I hadn’t expected to take any photos at all, I found myself really enjoying capturing the reactions around me. Not one person put on those glasses and looked bored or unimpressed. Staring at the moon eclipsing the sun turns out to be a great equalizer, because it makes us all feel like little kids again. In fact, Wenmei can verify this, because she took photos of actual kids.
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| Photo by Wenmei Hill. Also, two of these children. |
My lackadaisical approach to the whole thing was just one of a range of ways DPR staffers captured the eclipse. My colleague Dale Baskin planned for the big day months in advance. He traveled south to Oregon, where he’d staked out a place for himself in the path of totality. He’s an experienced night sky photographer and had a mostly set-it-and-forget it rig in place, so he photographed the whole enchilada and even managed to enjoy it too.
And then there’s Rishi. Never one to back down from a scientific challenge, he Frankensteined a rig that he was mostly certain would not fry his camera’s sensor. It worked, and his sensor is still intact.
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| Photo by Rishi Sanyal |
Stacking filters and doing math seems like entirely too much trouble to me, but if I’ve learned anything working at DPReview it’s this: that’s just how some people enjoy photography. It’s different from how I enjoy photography, but that’s okay – each is valid.
Really, the “don’t photograph the eclipse” advice wasn’t directed at every photographer. It was meant for people like me: hobbyists who might be tempted to try and capture the event at the expense of their own enjoyment of it.
The more precise advice would have been, “Enjoy the eclipse,” and for many people, that means photographing it: scouting a location, acquiring the right filter, picking a lens, getting in place and coming away with a once-in-a-lifetime shot. And it wouldn’t really matter whether that eclipse shot looks more or less like everyone else’s: what matters is that they did it and enjoyed the process. That means something different to me than it does to Dale or Rishi.
As a baseball fan with little interest in advanced stats, the sentiment I often hear that “there’s no one right way to be a fan” makes a lot of sense to me. For some people, enjoying the game means understanding how to calculate a player’s slugging percentage. I’m content just baselessly speculating whether Nelson Cruz will hit a 400-foot home run in his next at bat. To each their own.
Just as there’s no right way to be a fan, I believe there’s no one right way to be a photographer, and no one right way to enjoy an eclipse. It really is too good of a thing to miss, however you take it in.
Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)
It’s fair to say that as a travel photographer you can never be 100% prepared for everything. There are so many different scenarios and variables that can affect your photography and your journey that you simply can’t predict. But over time you will begin to learn techniques that will help you be able to tackle the issues you’ll encounter.
Part of this is your list of equipment. While the obvious photographic equipment might seem straightforward, there are also a number of non-photographic items that will begin to make it on your list. As you will discover over time they can also be invaluable. Here are seven of my must-have items that might also help you along the way.
It doesn’t matter how well you prepare and how many times you check the weather forecast, at some point every travel photographer will get caught in the rain. Most times you can avoid you and your camera equipment getting wet by trying to wait it out under some shelter. But sometimes you can’t or more importantly, you still want to photograph. After all, rain can provide wonderful reflections on the surface of pavements and roads not to mention people with umbrellas that can really help tell a story.
So to avoid getting your camera wet, simply take an ordinary plastic bag and cut a hole big enough for your lens hood to fit through. You want roughly half of the lens hood sticking out and the hole in the bag should be a tight fit. Put your camera in from the top of the bag (as if you were putting shopping in it) and stick the lens with the hood attached through the hole. Put the elastic band around the bag near the hole to keep it in place and voila you have created a bag to keep the rain off your camera.
When you want to shoot with your camera simply put your hand in the bag and hold the camera inside. Sure you can probably find an expensive version that you can buy, but why waste money when you can make it yourself?
DIY rain cover.
If you ask me what is the one non-photographic item that I always carry with me, it’ll be a small face towel. I have lost count of the number of times that I have used a towel in different scenarios. Whether it’s to wipe my camera dry after getting water, mud, or anything else on it, or wiping my face when I’m hot and sweaty (it’s amazing how much better you feel when you can simply wipe your face with a clean towel when you are out and about all day), wiping my finger when I have cut myself, or even just wiping a bench dry after rain so I could sit down while waiting instead of standing up (or getting my trousers wet by sitting on a wet bench). The number of times that a simple towel will come in handy will astound you.
The number of times that a simple towel will come in handy will astound you.
Okay, so technically speaking a Smartphone isn’t a “non-photographic” item but ignoring the camera element, it has become a must these days for travel photographers. Whether it’s to check sun direction, weather forecast, maps, making notes about potential shoot locations and metadata details, to simply having access to pass the time by reading the news while waiting for sunset, a Smartphone has become an essential tool for every travel photographer.
For the majority of photographers, a Smartphone has replaced the trusted compass. But it’s still worth having a small one in your bag just in case your phone runs out of power or you can’t get a signal. Besides being able to bail you out when you get lost, a compass can help you determine sunrise/sunset direction where the light will move, which is essential for any travel photographer.
Travel photography usually means early starts and late finishes as the soft light in and around sunrise and sunset is great for photography. This usually means you’ll be out and about when it’s colder than during the day and trying to work your camera dials with cold hands or even carrying a tripod is not an enjoyable experience.
During the daytime depending on the time of year, it can be pretty cold for your hands and even in the summer months it can get much colder in the evenings and early mornings. So do yourself (and your hands) a favor and keep a pair of gloves in your camera bag.
Sometimes you simply can’t beat pen and paper. It might be to take notes, to jot down ideas for shoots, to sketch a composition that you want to try and create later, or it might simply be to take the email address of the person who’s photo you have just taken so that you can email them a copy. Whatever the reason, a pen and paper is always useful to have in your camera bag.
It’s easy to forget sunscreen and a hat among all of the other things above, in addition to your photographic equipment, but they are essentials for anyone working outdoors. As a travel photographer, you will be spending most of your days out and about and it’s easy to get distracted and not notice a few hours going by. The last thing you need on a photo trip is to get sun burned.
Over the years, I have found that these small items have become invaluable. I will, of course, adapt this list as I go and add or remove things for certain destinations. For example, if I’m out in the wilderness I would carry a first aid kit, an emergency kit with things like a whistle, blanket, etc., a torch, and the relevant maps of the areas I’m planning to explore. But my basic list of items accompanies me on any trip even a short city break.
Over time you will build up your own set of items. But for the time being, I hope this list is useful for you.
Anything else you can think of? What non-photographic item do you always carry with you and why? Please tell us in the comments below.
The post 7 Non-Photography Items Which No Travel Photographer Should Leave Home Without by Kav Dadfar appeared first on Digital Photography School.
Photography is all about light, something you’ll quickly discover even if you’re not familiar with the word’s Greek origins. Most of the time, we use a standard framework (the standard exposure model) to discuss how much light your camera is receiving. However, this isn’t the only way of looking at things.
‘Equivalence’ gives us another way of looking at light, that just happens to give a clearer understanding of the capabilities of different formats. It’s a common misconception that equivalence and the more familiar standard exposure model are at odds with each other, but the two systems aren’t contradictory – they just tell different parts of the same story.
The standard exposure model uses shutter speed and F-number (the ratio of a lens’s focal length, relative to its exit pupil) to describe how much light your camera is receiving. Using this ratio normalizes the behavior of lenses based on how much light they project per unit area, meaning it works consistently across different focal lengths. The available light and the exposure you can devote to it tend to dictate most of the noise in your image, so are the most effective way of reducing it.
A third factor (which is applied after the light has been captured, so doesn’t affect exposure, per se) is sensitivity (ISO) which, at its most basic can be thought of as essentially ‘whatever amplification or brightening is needed to provide the expected image brightness from a given exposure.’ This has the effect of ensuring that the exposure system works, regardless of what format you’re shooting on.
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| Lightmeters are designed to express the light level in terms of the standard exposure model. Since this system is, by design, independent of format so are their results. |
There are many benefits to this system. It means that you never have to think about what format you’re shooting with: everything from your smartphone to a medium-format back will work using the same settings in the same lighting conditions. This is the reason light meters are able to work without giving a fig for what camera you’ve got.
The main downside to this*, is that it obscures the effects of format. There’s nothing wrong with thinking in terms of exposure, but it leads to slightly wooly conclusions such as ‘full-frame sensors can give less depth of field and are better in low light’ which is generally correct but not very precise. In turn, this can lead to confusion about why this is the case. ‘Something to do with bigger pixels?**’
Equivalence is simply a different way of looking at the same thing. Instead of thinking about light per unit area, it looks at the total amount of light that goes to make up the whole image. As a result, it assumes you’re trying to take a specific picture (matched framing, shot from the same position) and also requires you to compare images at the same size. In other words, it’s about pictures, not pixel peeping.
It’s not a matter of faith, nor does it contradict anything that the exposure model says, it’s simply a question of geometry. In the film era, where most people used a single format and only a generally knowledgeable minority used medium and large formats, the same underlying effects were usually discussed in terms of enlargement. But, since there’s no fundamental link between the size of your pixels and the size you choose to view or print them, ‘enlargement’ becomes a slightly arcane way of thinking about it.
Equivalence is simply a way of looking at how much light a system gets, and just happens to use the 135 film format as the baseline for those comparisons (because it was the dominant system in the film era, which saw it being used as the basis of comparison for focal lengths, when the many and various sensor formats emerged at the beginning of the digital era).
Equivalence, the basicsEquivalent f-numbers are a means of considering the combined effect of the aperture and sensor size. In the same way that equivalent focal lengths describe the effect of sensor size on the field-of-view a lens gives, equivalent apertures describe the effect of sensor size on the properties that aperture affects (depth of field, diffraction, total light projected). In both instances, the underlying properties are not changed: neither the focal length or F-number of a lens is changed by different sensor sizes, only their effects.
Comparing equivalent apertures allows you to understand how much control a lens will give you over depth-of-field. It also gives a good idea of how low-light performance will compare between two cameras of different sensor sizes, since it tells you how much total light is making up the final image (most noise is most images comes from the amount of light captured). However, because the exposure and ISO system is, by design, independent of sensor size, equivalent apertures should only be used to understand camera/lens capability, not exposure. To keep things real-world relevant, equivalence assumes you’re shooting the same framing from the same position and then viewing the images at the same output size. |
Looking at total light or light per image, means we can better recognize the effect of light on depth-of-field, diffraction and noise. Rather than vaguely saying that ‘full-frame is, er, better than APS-C’ we can understand why and how much more or less light a larger or smaller sensor will receive at the same exposure settings (same shutter speed and same F-number), by calculating what the equivalent F-numbers are.
So, since a 50mm F2 lens used on APS-C behaves equivalently to a 75mm F3 lens on full-frame, we can see that a full-frame camera with a 75mm F2 could receive up to one and a sixth stops more light, if you opened the lens up to its maximum aperture. You can see this would give a shallower depth of field and a little over one stop of noise improvement, assuming comparable sensor performance.
Looking at it this way not only shows us the boundaries of the capabilities of each system but also gives us a meaningful way to assess whether either system is under or over-performing, relative to other systems, since it gives us a set of expectations about what it should be capable of.
You do not need to consider equivalence for a moment when choosing an exposure. You do not have to multiply the F-number by the crop factor, unless you want to understand its behavior, relative to another system. However, it is completely legitimate to do so. The logic behind it is mathematically sound***, it holds up to real-world testing and it can be informative, if you’re interested. It’s an effective tool, whether you have need for it or not.
For more information, with real-world examples, read our more in-depth article on the subject.
* …beyond the flexibility in the ISO standard that means cameras don’t actually have to produce the image brightness you expect, and the fact that ISO as used by camera makers has very little meaning in terms of Raw shooting. [Back to text]
** If you view two images at the same size, the ones taken with the larger sensor at the same field of view, F-number and shutter speed will usually be cleaner in close proportion to the sensor size increase, almost regardless of the pixel size. Whether you have the same number of larger pixels or a larger number of the same sized pixels generally makes very little difference. [Back to text]
*** As Andy Rowlands’ Physics of Digital Photography points out, equivalence works at most normal photographic distances but, because it’s based on a slightly simplified depth of field equation, doesn’t hold true as you approach the close focus distances used for macro photography. This is equally true for focal length equivalence. [Back to text]
Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)
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