Author: Richard

The D800 has had lots of people including myself making comments mentioning that we now have near Medium Format Quality in a small format body.

With the cost of this why spend £20,000 on a medium format camera and lens at £5,000 each.

Or why go the other way, a Leica M, which needs manual focus, has no auto exposure modes, Costs £5,000, and lens which are anywhere from £1,000 to nearly £8,000.

Reading the internet forums people can get quite aggressive justifying their choice and putting down other cameras and users of other cameras.

The way a Medium Format Draws an image, the effect of Depth of Field on an image, and just the robustness of the files for processing means that for Medium Format users there is no comparison.

For Leica users, the small body, the ability to use a real view finder that shows more then 100% of the field of view, and the simply stunning lens that make it the smallest full frame camera system in the world, mean for them there is no other choice, why carry a huge heavy SLR.

Then the SLR user, the ultimate all-rounder that can tackle any job, why bother with any other system when you have such a capable system that can out perform in speed of focus, frames per second any other type of camera.

Choose you artistic tool of choice but please lets stop putting down other people for there camera choices.

There are places we visit every day. Often there are features and scenes that we walk past without a second glance.

Some may seem far from photogenic, often from sheer familiarity.  The Brayford Wharf in Lincoln is a route I walk many times each week.  The buildings and scenes often just walked past without thought.

The area does have some advantages; with it being next to the Brayford Pool there is often wildlife around, if one takes the care and effort to look.  Generally just Black-Headed Gulls but sometimes less common species can be spotted.

As well as the wildlife, over the last dozen years the Wharf area has changed considerably, the old buildings have all gone with the exception of the old library headquarters with its famous hyperbolic paraboloid roof designed by the architect Sam Scorer.  Now its modern buildings and architecture, just lift up your eyes and camera and spot a new view of the area.

Over familiarity can hold back your photography, but try and walk a familiar area with fresh eyes, look up, look down; try to find something fresh that you have not photographed before.

A challenge but a worthwhile one and one that can produce good results when you visit a new area and bring back original shots that other photographers have missed.

We are seeing some big pushes recently, as more and more manufacturers come out with full frame cameras.  As I mentioned in a previous article even high end compacts are getting bigger sensors, but is full frame the best.

If you go back fifty-sixty years or so most people shot medium format or large format. Cameras with negatives 6 cm x 6 cm or in the case of large format 5 inch x 4 inch or larger. Gradually though more and more people switched to the lighter and smaller formats as the technology got better and the image quality improved.

With the larger formats, depth of field was always what photographers wanted, there was even a club called the F-SixtyFour Club, where it was considered that all photographs should be taken at f/64 or greater. Some of my Large Format Lens actually go to f/128, where as modern 35mm lens tend to stop at f/16.

As formats get smaller then due to the physics of optics the depth of field gets greater, together with the advantage of the cameras being smaller and lighter. For many uses the greater depth of field gives many advantages.

Today the fashion seems to be out of focus backgrounds, a particular craze among Leica photographers currently with their advantage of full frame 35mm sensors and fast glass. Its even something I indulge in myself as can be seen from this months picture of the month.

But I hope we continue to get the option, smaller sensors like CX format in the Nikon Series One with its 2.7 crop do offer some types of photography an advantage. So let there be more cameras like the Full Frame Sony RX-1 but also more cameras with smaller sensors like MicroFourThirds, Nikon One, and even the little Fuji’s like the X10 with its tiny sensor.

Give us well built bodies, and direct controls but also options, so if I can use the right tool for the right job.

Most people think of the standard lens as the old 50mm, but what do we mean by a standard lens. Well there are a number of definitions.

Most of the books state that a standard lens is one that produces a field of view similar the human eye.

A simple statement except that the human eye and brain is a decidedly different concept. We can concentrate on a small object in the landscape or sweep our eyes across a majestic vista. This gives us the impression of going from a telephoto to a wide angle in a single moment. The camera is a much more simple affair.

One is often better to consider perspective. It turns out that a lens of a focal equal to that of the diagonal of the 35mm piece of film (or full frame sensor) produces a very natural perspective and field of view.

So what focal length should a standard lens be; well it turns out its about 43mm. As far as I am aware only one manufacture made a 43mm lens and that was Pentax.

So a standard lens could be considered either a 35mm or 50mm lens. Depending on whether you want something slightly wider or longer.

For Medium Format users then they generally use a 75mm standard lens, and for Large format users, well thats a topic for another post.