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21 Jul 2019 - Podcast #652 - (21:45)
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Is Nikon better than Canon or should you buy a Sony? Is it better to have interchangeable lenses? Do I need more megapixels? Should I trade in my cropped sensor camera for one with a full frame sensor? Maybe you've pondered some of these questions and determining the right answer isn't made any easier by the manufacturers. So what is the best camera in the world? The answer may be easier than you think.
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I have a several cameras of varying ages and with varying sensor sizes, megapixel counts, size factors, and interchangeable lenses. The one I choose to take along generally depends on where I'm going and what I'll be photographing. Let's consider six primary questions.
Megapixels was about the only thing that camera manufacturers talked about in the early days of digital photography (the late 1990s and early 2000s). Megapixels were king and some manufacturers even made up pixels by interpolating lower-resolution files to create more apparent pixels that didn't really exist. Fortunately that doesn't happen any more.
Even cameras in smart phones deliver 20Mpxls or more, 30- and 40-Mpxl cameras are common, and some high-end cameras (those in the $50,000 price range) exceed 100Mpxls. Those who want nothing more than a nice 60×40 canvas print for the wall will have no trouble achieving that goal with a 20Mpxl image. If you're a fashion or food photographer who depends on pixel-perfect images that involve a lot of pixel-level editing, you may need more.
The bottom line for pixels these days is: Who cares? Just about any camera on the market has more than you'll need.
In the early days of digital photography, choices were easy. Camera manufacturers such as Nikon and Canon made digital cameras that looked and felt like traditional cameras. Electronics manufacturers such as Sony, Ricoh, and Epson made electronic devices that took pictures. Long-time film photographers generally felt more comfortable using cameras from brands that they understood.
That's been changing. Sony now manufactures what many consider to be the best sensors, and most of the cameras Nikon manufactures have Sony sensors. Canon still makes its own sensors, but Sony is reported to be the source for about half of the sensors found in today's cameras and nearly three quarters of the sensors in smart phones.
Electronics manufacturers have also put considerable effort into developing the right look and feel for cameras. Sony in particular has a standardized menu structure that's virtually identical across much of the camera line. Canon and Nikon still manufacturer cameras that have substantial menu differences between models.
For me, the manufacturer is considerably less important now than it once was. What still is important is finding a camera that fits your hands and feels right.
Interchangeable lenses provide a great deal of flexibility, but they add complexity and weight. Many advanced point-and-shoot cameras have zoom lenses that range from moderate wide angle (20-25mm equivalent on a 35mm film camera) moderate telephoto (around 200mm on a 35mm film camera.) This range is sufficient for most uses. Cameras like these often weigh less than a pound and are small enough to fit in a tiny case.
When an extreme wide angle view or more than a moderate telephoto view is essential, you'll need a more complex camera. A Canon EOS 80D, for example, weighs nearly 2 pounds without a lens and the lenses range from well under a pound to for small fixed-length lenses to more than 4 pounds for a 150-600mm telephoto zoom lens. Carry a camera body and a few lenses around for a day and you'll remember the effort with little fondness the next day.
Today's point-and-shoot cameras with zoom lenses are well worth checking unless you need the flexibility that can be achieved with extra lenses.
If you have or are considering a digital SLR, one that looks like a 35mm film camera, you may be wondering whether you should have a "cropped sensor" camera or a "full sensor" camera. In fact, no sensor is a "cropped sensor" camera. That bit of nonsense is a holdover based on those who used to shoot 35mm film. Some cameras have sensors that are the same size as a 35mm film negative (36mm×24mm) and these are what many of us mistakenly referred to as "full sensor", while smaller sensors (28.7mm×19mm for Canon and 23.6mm×15.7mm for Nikon, Sony Pentax, Fuji, and others — the APS-C format) became known as "cropped sensor" cameras.
But using that logic, 35mm film should have been considered to be a "cropped" format based on cameras that used roll film with 6mm×6mm, 6mm×4.5mm, or 6mm×7mm aspect ratios. And roll-film cameras should have been considered to be "cropped" when compared to 4in×5in view cameras, which would be "cropped" when compared to 5in×7in view cameras, which would be "cropped" when compared with 8in×10in view cameras.
Whatever the size of the sensor in a digital camera, it is a full frame sensor based on the lens.
That's not to say that sensor size makes no difference. Larger sensors have larger photo sites and larger photo sites generate less digital noise in the resulting images, but APS-C and even smaller sensors such as those found in phones can have as many pixels as those found in "full frame" sensors.
The right way to determine whether a given sensor size will be adequate for your needs involves visiting a site such as DPReview and examining images submitted by people who are using the camera you're considering. It's also important to keep in mind that larger sensors mean larger, heavier, and more expensive cameras and lenses. APS-C cameras have what's called a multiplier effect compared to 35mm film cameras. A 50mm lens on a camera with an APS-C sensor will yield a field of view similar to a 75mm or 80mm lens when compared to the field of view on a camera with a 35mm film sensor. The attempt to compare lens lengths with 35mm film cameras that many people were familiar with had the unintended consequence of leading to all the talk about "cropped sensors".
So the right sensor is the one that comes with the camera that suits your needs.
Although I almost always set my cameras to shoot in raw mode, I'm not a fanatic who calls JPEG shooters fools.
The unquestioned advantage of raw files is that data from the sensor is stored without any interpretation by the camera. The unquestioned disadvantage of raw files is that data from the sensor is stored without any interpretation by the camera. If you compare a raw image to a JPEG that the camera processed for you, the raw will will appear flat, desaturated, and unsharp. So why would anybody want to shoot raw mode?
Raw images always need post-production processing. If your goal is simply to get good pictures that need little or no work when you get them back to the computer, JPEG is a good choice. The problem with JPEG, though, is that you can't do much to fix the image if the camera's processing is wrong. Slight changes to exposure are possible and, to a lesser extent, slight changes to color balance. But because JPEG files have been compressed and simplified, your photo application simply doesn't have access to the data needed for more significant changes.
JPEG is often a good choice for news and sports photographers who need to submit images for use immediately because it eliminates the need for post processing. Many news and sports photographers use cameras that can save both raw and JPEG images for each exposure. That gives them images they can use immediately while retaining all of a raw file's options for subsequent improvements.
So try shooting raw and try shooting JPEG. See which you prefer and stick with that most of the time except when switching makes sense.
Why is JPEG capitalized, but raw isn't? JPEG is an acronym for Joint Photographic Experts Group, the organization that invented the format in 1992. Acronyms and initialisms are capitalized in US English, so it's JPEG instead of jpeg. Raw, on the other hand, simply describes a type of file. Each camera manufacturer has its own raw format and each is proprietary, so it's a difference like that between Bourbon, which is capitalized, and liquor, which isn't.
This is actually a two-part question:
Cameras that offer full manual mode are usually more expensive than those that don't, but this is a good feature to have because it allows the photographer to control the shutter speed, the lens's f/stop (aperture), and the sensor's sensitivity (ISO). So if a camera with full manual settings is in your price range, the choice is easy even if you use manual mode rarely.
Some photographers, mostly those who have never made a living with photography, will say that the camera should be switched to manual mode and left there. That is nonsense. Today's cameras have extraordinarily good automation systems and they will be right most of the time. Program mode is what I use most of the time, switching occasionally to aperture- or shutter-priority and switching even less frequently to full manual.
Here's an example: I wanted to take some pictures of a Little League baseball game and I wanted some of the photographs to freeze the ball in the air. The camera's automation would have selected settings too slow to catch the ball in flight, so I used manual mode to set a 1/1000th of a second shutter speed, sacrificed a bit of depth of field with a 5.6 aperture, and matched those with an ISO of 500 to get a good exposure. The key is to recognize when the automation won't deliver what you're looking for and then understanding which manual settings will. There are lots of YouTube videos that teach these skills.
Just stick with program mode most of the time and make an effort to learn when the camera's automation will misjudge the situation.
We visited The Wilds for an overnight stay on 12 July and stopped at Brew Dog on the way home on Saturday. Instead of taking the usual contingent of photo gear, I took a single advanced point-and-shoot camera that weighs less than a pound. It was the best camera in the world.
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The answer is easy because it's a trick answer. The best camera in the world is the one that you have in your hand. No matter what camera you own, it's useless if it's not in your hand. You may have shelled out $48,000 for a Hasselblad H6D-400c camera (100 megapixels per image) and bought a lens or two with the camera body (these range in price from around $3000 to $96,000 each), but if that camera and all the lenses are at home and all you have with you is a smart phone with a built-in camera, the camera in the smart phone is the best camera in the world.
Photography is more about creativity, composition, and vision than it is about hardware, megapixels, and brand names. More expensive hardware will yield better technical quality, but just about any camera sold today will have the quality necessary unless you're shooting high-end fashion or food images for use in advertising. So get out there with the best camera in the world and make some images!
If your computer seems to be slower than it should be, now would be a good time to see what applications are needlessly running in the background. It's helpful to have some background apps running, but far too many developers believe that their application should be one of them. It's time to take control of your own computer.
Let's see what's running. Open Settings and type background in the search panel. Choose Background apps from the list and you'll probably be amazed by the applications listed there. In my case, literally dozens of applications were set to run in the background, from 3D Builder and 3D Viewer (which I never use) to the Xbox Console Companion and the Xbox Game Bar (which I also never use). Turning off most of these background application will have just one effect: Your computer will be faster. Those unneeded background apps will drain a laptop computer's battery, waste bandwidth on any computer that's attached to the internet, and needlessly consume system resources.
There's an option at the top of the list to turn off all background applications. That's not a good idea because Edge (if you use it), OneNote, and some other applications will work more efficiently if you allow them to run in the background. Most applications don't need to, though, so you can turn them off. Turning off the background application doesn't change the way the application runs when it has focus. Consider Solitaire for example. Why would you want this application to consume resources when you're not playing the game? It will open a bit faster if it's running in the background, but it will also slow all other running applications even if you're not playing the game.
I leave background processes for Mail and Calendar, Messaging, Messenger, OneNote, and Windows Security running and turn off the other 40+ applications that would like to run in the background.
Police departments have started using social media, perhaps in an effort to let people know that most police officers aren't monsters. Some are, of course, and they're usually the ones that we hear about. So Twitter, Facebook, and even custom-built apps are being used to communicate with citizens.
Bangor, Maine (population about 32,000) has one of the best known police pages on Facebook. The department posts the usual advisories for citizens, but they also have a stuffed duck in a case and people from all over show up at the Bangor Police Department to have their picture taken with it. Summer is Peak Duck Time, of course and the Duck of Justice is busy. Here's a recent Facebook description: "We are at PDT (Peak Duck Time) right now. From this point through Labor Day we find ourselves entertaining guests in the lobby for the sake of keeping them off the street. Most haven't even been drinking. I have questions about these two. Thanks for stopping by and getting your "Duck on." Keep your hands to yourself, leave other people's things alone, and be kind to one another. We will be here."
As of 16 July 2019, 303,351 people are following the police Facebook presence for the Bangor Police Department. That's about 10 times the population of Bangor. Other police departments occasionally use humor to make a point, but the department in Bangor reflects a light and positive attitude even with serious posts, such as the one that recognized a citizen for saving someone's life following a shooting: "A couple of weeks ago we had a shooting, two people were seriously injured, one of them was later arrested. One thing you learn as a cop, firefighter, nurse, or physician is that people do horrific things to each other and, in the midst of that, we also have people who do just the opposite. Kyle Langlois is a guy who did the opposite."
Closer to home, the Columbus Police Department routinely posts photos of officers doing good things on its Facebook presence, along with the alerts we expect from police. The Columbus Police facebook page has nearly 129,000 followers in city of 900,000 people (metro area population 2.1 million).
Recently the department released an app for Android and IOS devices. There are sections for alerts; media releases: Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter accounts; recruiting; contact information, substation locations; and such.
It's a new app and there are many opportunities for improvement. The alerts page is often blank and the substation map should display an address in addition to the zone information. Still, it's a start. The more information police can provide to citizens, the better — whether amusing or serious.