Mastering Your Kit Lens - Part 3

It's often macro shots like this that cause you to curse the mechanics of your kit lens, hunting and rough focusing are just annoying, but with patience you can work around the deficiencies, this shot was taken with Sony 18-55 OSS kit lens paired with a cheap and very short auto macro tube. 

Last blog entry we looked at the optical issues with kit lenses, now we move onto the mechanics. 

Kit lens issues related to mechanical construction may prove very difficult to resolve, in short these include lens de-centering ( which really grates on my pixels), poor focus due to sloppy lens fit inside the lens barrel, poor cross frame clarity due to misaligned mounting faces and perhaps a few other mechanical oddities, like misshapen apertures. 

All of the above will conspire to place the focus in unpredictable places that are always challenging and often impossible to fix in post production. Most of these mechanical problems are due to sample variation, so if you get a dud, see if you can get it swapped out for a good one. 

De-Centering 

Lets pull the problems apart, first off de-centering. In practice all the lens elements of the lens should be perfectly aligned both longitudinally and laterally and in a well made lens they are. In other words when the absolute centre of each of the lens elements are aligned perfectly and each element  is perfectly parallel with all the others the lens will perform as designed. If one or more of the elements are misaligned in any way you can get uneven clarity across the frame, with perhaps one side sharper than the other, soft spots, blurry corners and a sharp centre, flare spots or perhaps in extreme cases just mush all over the place. 

Good quality lenses are constructed in such a way that the centering of the elements is adjustable in manufacture, but many cheap kit lens are just simply fixed in their construction. Simply high quality lenses can normally be realigned, generally kit lenses cannot. 

I suspect that more often than not de-centering issues are caused by the lens being dropped, which gives you a hint as to why I won’t buy a second hand lens with a dented or chipped filter thread ring. 

The good news is that kit lenses are not designed to be de-centered from the outset, if everything is put together correctly then it should work fine. The bad news, if yours is de-centered, it is not going to be economical to fix it, so unless covered by warranty, buy another copy. 

And the other good news, another copy will probably cost very little anyway, as there are a huge number of “up graders” selling their cast off kitties on eBay for next to nothing. Hell it might be worth your while to buy a couple, keep the best one and sell the other....or perhaps keep one in case you accidentally sacrifice the other one to gravity. Mind you I have noticed that gravity seems to be far worse (sucks more) with more expensive lenses. There are also well known high gravity spots, these include Canyon edges, the tops of buildings, any area where concrete covers the ground, I also have it on good authority that the sides of cruise liners and other boats are subject to especially high gravitational fields. 

Now moving on to more insidious mechanical nasties 

I have actually used lenses where once you cranked the barrel out for close focus or telephoto settings the front of the lens gets lazy and droops. The inevitable result of such misbehavior is poor focus across the top or bottom of the image (dependent upon where you have focused). This effect usually gets worse as the lens ages and becomes sloppier in the barrel, such lenses are a total annoyance but you can often even things up by applying just a little upward pressure on the front of the lens. Nonetheless a lens like this is just frustrating to use and probably should be replaced with something better or newer or perhaps you could discipline yourself and not focus too close or zoom too far out. Or here is a thought, turn the offending lens into a fixed focal length one by gluing the zoom to a fixed optimal setting, (making sure you have it correctly aligned of course) which is likely somewhere in the mid range. 

Most modern kit lens do not have smooth metal helicoids inside to give that tight but buttery smooth focus action of old, instead they use clever plastics which work OK when new but eventually develop slop and make precise manual focus difficult or impossible. Naturally this can’t be fixed but a lens will usually need a lot of use before it gets to this point. Sadly, a good number of lenses seem to come out of the factory in a rather loose state so it is something you should check before you take your new baby home. 

Some kit lenses also have plastic mounting flanges, again these can wear in high use samples leading to slop and misalignment at the mounting faces. I must say the slop is pretty rare as a lens would need a lot of un-mounting and mounting to wear enough to become lose, so its just a little thing to consider with second hand kitties, it's unlikely the plastic mount will cause on problems on M4/3 lenses as they are amazingly light to start with.

Finally and thankfully rare, you can occasionally get a lens that refuses to focus to infinity, this is a manufacturing defect for sure but if you are not aware of what is going you will likely think the lens is just not sharp. The fix, get it swapped out or buy a new one, old school kittys like the 35-70 Minoltas and Nikons can probably be sorted via quick adjustment by a camera tech person. 

Flare 

A final issue is flare resistance and indeed many kit lenses are less than perfect in this regard, but I humbly suggest that for most instances, actually placing the lens hood on the lens and/or shooting a little more carefully would have negated the issue. Any lens can be made to flare if you shoot into the sun or other bright light sources, the issue is not “will it flare”...but “how bad will the flare effects be”. 

Older lenses are typically much poorer than new lenses due to radical improvements in lens coatings over the last couple of decades. I have many older lenses that have more flares than a seventies disco given the right circumstances but regardless are still terrific lenses 99% of the time. Despite my Sony 18-55 OSS being touted as more than a bit flare prone in tests, I have never had an issue with flare, so don't sweat it yours is probably fine too. 

Another issue that actually does cause flare is adding a UV filter to the front of the lens, trust me on this they are pretty much a waste of money and if you shoot into high contrast lights, like street scenes at night, they will generally degrade your pics by adding flare to them.

BIG TIP: More often than not in classes when someone says their lens is soft and flare prone, the problem is dirty haze and mushy finger prints on the front element, so keep it clean and fingers off. 

Back in the hood.....If you didn't get a hood with your lens, (and oddly some makers skimp on this essential piece of kit hoping you will pay through the nose for one as an accessory, yes I am looking at you Mr Olympus and Canon) you can pick one up on eBay for just a few dollars. 

The kit lens hoods are a bit of a compromise, typically having a petal shape that prevents vignetting when you adjust the lens to the wide angle setting, but providing minimal protection at the longer focal lengths. If you, like me you find yourself using your kit lens at predominately the one focal length you could purchase a far more efficient hood than the standard petal one. 

As a tip I often use a foldable old style rubber lens hood that can be adjusted to suit the different focal lengths.......and there is a big bonus with it. Should you need to shoot through glass it can be held up against the glass and will both act as a shock absorber and cut out reflections of the glass.....oh and they are very cheap on eBay too, like less than $5.00! 

To conclude todays blog entry, from my perspective a good kit lens is one that has the mechanical criteria well under control but may display some of the fixable optical issues we discussed in the previous blog entry. 

Ultimately your technique and artistic flare and editing skills will prove far more important than the actual quality of your lens, with the next entry we will explore the positives of your kitty. 

Mastering Your Kit Lens - Part 2

Some kit lens deficiencies are easily resolved in post and some are just ugly to the core, or is that the iris.  For today we consider the factors that can be sorted post shot.  

Here is an uncorrected image taken with an old 28-85 kit lens on a full frame sensor, whilst the lens is not that bad, the edges of the frame show Chromatic Aberration, there is some vignetting, obvious barrel distortion and some loss of corner detail.  At this small size it no doubt looks OK but a good size print would be a different matter.

Chromatic Aberration

Chromatic Aberration can be generally sorted and visually to my eyes makes one of the biggest differences, it effects colour and clarity and I personally find high levels of CA visually disturbing, I almost need to have a stiff drink when I see a bad example. CA can be aperture dependent and is always focal length dependent.

With most cameras these days CA  can be corrected "in camera" if you are shooting in JPEG format,  only the worst cases from the worst offenders will be seen in the final file, however Raw files will normally show the CA in all its awful glory.

It is worth noting that there are two types of CA, longitudinal and lateral.  Longitudinal CA is usually magenta - green and is normally only obvious at wide apertures using fast lenses.  Basically you get differing coloured fringes around the details dependent upon whether you are looking at the area in front or behind the point of focus.  This is hard to fix but far less common and actually rare with slow aperture kit lenses, the good news is if your lens is prone to it, you can prevented with stopping the aperture down to something more sensible.

The other CA, lateral is where we get coloured fringes around high contrast details, the strength of which increases as you move away from the center of the image, hence the term lateral. There is no fringing in the middle of the frame.  No, its not the purple fringing that many people refer to, it can be red, green, blue, magenta, yellow or of course occasionally purple.  

Many people think the pure purple fringing seen in a lot of high contrast photos is CA but in fact its often something else altogether, “sensor blooming” and is normally controllable by avoiding over-exposure.  Note however as said, real CA can also be purple too but is most likely in my experience to be magenta or green.

My experience is that some applications are much better at dealing with CA than others, I won’t make any recommendations as apps are always in a state of flux but don’t give up, if your current application can’t “kill the fringe” try something else.

Ideally you will always get the best sharpness from a lens which exhibits no CA, well chances are you will strike out on that one with a kitty, however it is highly likely that one focal length will display very low levels of CA compared to the others. You will need to dig around a bit.  For example, my Sony 18-55 changes its CA characteristics significantly between  25- 30mm with 27mm being close to perfect.  No other focal length comes close and as you move away from the 27mm setting things get progressively worse but in different colour directions.

         Here we can see a section from the right hand upper corner of the above image at the top of the page,

 the disturbing CA is obvious here and we can also see it has messed with the corner sharpness.  

This is a very old film era kit lens lens and no doubt, was fine for its time, 

but of course digital is far less forgiving.

Vignetting

Unless truly woeful, vignetting is easily sorted, but very high levels can leave your edges a bit noisy once it has been eliminated.   I often add vignetting in post production so it could be a benefit to you anyway. 

The worst cases of VD ( vignetting disease) seem to occur at the wider end of things, with most kit lenses displaying considerable vignetting between 18-24mm.  You may not actually see any vignetting if you're only shooting in JPEG mode,  almost all cameras now correct this in processing, but again for Raw files you will need to roll your sleeves up. 

Generally a little vignetting is actually quite tolerable for most image styles and unless you are shooting landscapes with lots of sky in them you probably won’t be overly bothered by it.

Distortion

Geometric distortions are generally easy to sort and again unless really bad you won't notice the issue.  The only thing to bear in mind is the more you have to correct the distortion the less final image area you end up with, and you may get an accompanying loss of corner/edge clarity once the problem is corrected. These days most cameras correct the worst of the distortion internally when shooting in JPEG format, so again you may never notice it anyway.

I suspect that many kit lenses actually shoot a bit wider than their stated focal length to allow for the needed cropping that occurs via the in-camera editing to get things squared away. The Sony 16-50 is a case in point, I think prior to processing it is probably more like 14 mm at the wide end. That leads me to a killer tip, by default the distortion correction is turned on on almost all cameras when you receive them, if you need a little extra angle of view, temporarily turning it off might just be enough, so long as you can accept the distortion. Even better if you shoot RAW you can disable the default distortion correction in your Raw Convertor application to get that little but extra in the pic.

Another tip to take to the bank on is that if you are shooting at focal lengths that will need distortion correction, just step back a bit and give yourself some extra wiggle room in the editing phase.

Normally the distortion is only really obvious if you are shooting objects with straight lines in them, for example architecture.  I must point out that even many fixed wide angle lenses have considerable distortion so buying an alternative lens may not solve the problem altogether.  From an optical point of view distortion is very to eradicate via lens design and usually involves adding more elements to the lens, making it both heavier and far more expensive, since it is relatively easy to fix in post, the justification for buying well corrected but expensive alternative lenses is somewhat diminished.

There are two primary types of distortion, Barrel and Pincushion.  Almost without exception wide angle lenses tend towards barrel distortion (which bloats the image outwards and telephotos tend towards pincushion distortion (which pinches the image inwards.   Normally for zooms there will be a point where there is no distortion and with most kit lenses this will be somewhere in the 26-35mm range. As a tip, the ideal focal length for easier panorama stitching will be the one that has neither type of distortion.

There is one complex type of distortion known as moustache distortion, in this case the middle part of the frame edge barrels outwards whilst the area about half way between the middle and far outer corners pinches in.  Normally such a distortion only occurs with focal lengths at the very wide end of the focal length range. This complex distortion characteristic unless dealt with in-camera generally defies the best efforts of Raw converters and editing programs, though there are some specialised panorama applications that can correct it.  Again in my experience unless you are doing a lot of architectural work this distortion is not likely to cause you any grief.

And now we have our finished specimen, the CA is gone, the corners sharper, vignetting removed and the distortion but a memory.  Of course it is a little cropped due to the distortion corrections, hence my tip to shoot a little wide if possible.

The final optical Aberration of concern is field curvature, I am not even going to start to deal with that in this blog entry, it deserves its own post so we will save that.

Mastering Your Kit Lens - Part 1

My Mother in Law, Ivy, one of the nicest ladies you could ever meet, captured with my 

Sony 18-55 whilst waiting at a bus stop in Brisbane.

So your kit lens is rubbish, you know this for a certainty because numerous photo blog sites and test sites have told you so. 

Don't worry most kit lenses are not great when measured or assessed in any empirical way, but realistically your kit lens was almost a freebie so what have you got to moan about.  In any case, without meaning to insult anyone, most kit lenses are capable of better results than most photographers are able to deliver.

Now I have seen a few articles on the web regarding “using your kit lens and getting more out of it” but most seem pretty token at best so I thought “how about I do a series of blog posts that really give new and maybe even established photographers something to chew on, something that will really help and hopefully inspire you”.  There will be lots of words and lots of pics to show you just what you can do but for today we will set the scene, but make sure you come back now.

In the words of a past Australian Prime Minister, John Howard, I want you to feel “comfortable and relaxed” about your kit lens.

This 8 part blog series might seem misplaced, after all, almost every photographic website will have articles telling you that you simply must replace that “hound doggy” of a lens with something better, the inference being that you cannot possibly get great results until you do so.  

What a crock!

Sure it’s a good idea to buy a new lens if the current one is limiting you, but being brutally honest you’ll gain more by really coming to grips with what your current kit lens can do.  The whole world of consumerism is built upon the premise that any shortfall or problem of performance can be resolved by throwing more money at it.....your money of course.  Truthfully, skill, technique and artistic application will drive you much further than a new lens.  

I think I can confidently say that the overwhelming majority of world famous images from the start of photography right up until a few years ago were taken with lenses much less capable than almost any kit lenses found on new camera, so don’t sweat it!

Yes it's true that your kit lens will not give you that beautiful shallow DOF and that “Bokeliciuos Blur” you hear so many Photographers waxing about on web forums, but realistically that look has limited applicability and in any case the lenses that will really sing in such applications are generally very expensive primes, not zooms.  Look I would love to occasionally get the look of the Ziess Otus but at $4500.00 Aus, it ain’t going to suddenly appear in my camera cupboard and if I find I actually need that look commercially, I will hire one and charge it to the client accordingly.

There are so many better things you could spend your dollars on if you are in the early stages of your photographic journey, like a good workshop or on-line course, travel to some nice location to use what you currently have and in a more practical sense a really good tripod or flash will open up far more possibilities for you than a marginally better lens.

Back to the kit lens.....

I have had a few kit lenses, of those, my Sony E series 18-55mm has proved to be a fine example of the breed and is in fact until recently was my most used lens out of the 50 or so lenses I own.  A Canon 18-55mm I owned for several years produced images that looked a little like they were shot through the bottom of a beer glass. I think my Sony "A" series SAM 18-55 actually was the beer bottle that originally contained the beer in the bottom of the Canon’s glass, but nonetheless even these less than perfect specimens redeemed themselves with plenty of good shots and funnily enough when I open old RAW files shot using those nasties I find I can usually massage them into something quite acceptable with modern RAW software.

I even have 3 Minolta 35-70 f4s from film era, two were really good and one was stellar, that is until I dropped it on a cement floor and misaligned its innards. It still works fine but is soft on one side at the wide end in the now “post flight state”. A warning to all photographers, be very careful of bad gravity spots, they do seem to pop up a lot when lenses are not attached to cameras and near hard surfaces.

Probably the best kitty I own is a tiny and humble “14-42mm Panasonic G II” (not the pancake version)  job, seriously no cheap as chips kit lens has any right to be as good as that lens and from all accounts the 12-32 Panasonic pancake is superb.

The main issues with kit lenses in my experience is "sample variability", which goes a long way towards explaining why user experiences reported on forums are so…..well, variable, and perhaps why some test sites will call a lens a filthy sow’s ear and others a silk purse.  Of course kit lenses are generally slow of aperture, slower to focus and slow to sell on eBay, but they are not without their virtues either.

Build quality is generally pretty average, lots of low grade plastic, sometimes even in the lens bayonet itself and in many ways it has got worse over the years, trust me on this, there is a world of difference between say a Minolta or Nikon 35-70 of 20 years ago and a new 18-55 kitty of today.  A single turn of the focus ring will lay bare the rough approach of most new kit lenses in comparison to their forebears.

Speaking of the Nikon 35-70, the one I have has consistently proven itself to be a brilliant performer on my NEX 5n, in fact it is probably one of the best lenses I have ever put on that little NEXY including fixed focal length jobbies. Note there have been an enormous array of Nikon 35-70s so don't take this as an automatic recommendation many are quite poor.

So are modern kitties all rubbish, are there no redeeming factors?  Actually there are quite a few, the modern kitty whilst no paragon of constructional perfection or optical excellence can be a very useful device indeed.

I must say up front I have found from playing with hundreds of kittys belonging to thousands of past students cameras, some brands and models are much better than others.  The best in terms of optical consistency seem to be the Nikons, no doubt about that at all from my experience, in fact some have been bloody impressive in terms of the rendered files. The worst, no that would be telling, besides my flameproof suit is at the dry cleaners today.

In constructional terms the M4/3 versions all seem pretty solid and the Fuji "X" series are very nicely done and as mentioned, the new “light as air” (70g) kit lens attached to the Panasonic GM1 is a bit of an optical revelation.

Anyhow make sure you come back for the next instalment.

Getting Real About ISO Settings

Getting Real About Comparing ISO Settings

800 ISO f4 @ 1/50 sec with 18mm with OSS,  NEX 5n, 

a very useable combination, why would I need to push the ISO higher?

Here's a newsflash for you, raising the ISO on your cameras always trades off image quality....always...no exceptions. Raise the ISO and you underexpose the image to some degree at the sensor level and maximum image quality is always optimal when the exposure is maximised...right before the highlights you want actually clip.

And why then dear friends do we then raise the ISO? 

To access faster shutter speeds to minimise subject movement.

To access a more adequate level of depth of field via a smaller aperture without going too slow on the exposure. 

Or to minimise camera movement so we can shoot hand held under very low light or with a longer focal length lens.

With me so far, great, now answer me this. What's fundamentally wrong when testers start bagging 1" or M4/3 sensors saying they look mushy and noisy at 3200 ISO and above and claiming they don't compare well to full frame sensors?  Simple, they are not comparing apples to apples! 

Accepted wisdom is that FF cameras are way better at high ISOs, they are, but…., they dammed well better be, because you are much more likely to need “those high ISOs’. 

You see it’s never just about the ISO, shutter speed and the aperture you need, it's about the interaction between the three of these, the mechanics of the camera in question and of course what you intend to do with the image. 

Let me run some numbers for you, I love numbers they can be so edifying, and so confusing as well when mis-used by politicians, anyhow let's get some edification happening.  

Say you are shooting a group of people in a restaurant at night, you know the sort of thing, a bunch of friends sitting at a table, you want everyone sharp, so no-ones nose gets out of joint or focus.  So there you stand 1.5 m from the nearest person and the furthermost bod is 4.5 meters away. Flash won't help, the inverse square law will see that,  Mr 1.5 m will be rendered as the ghost that walks and Miss 4.5 m as a woman of the dark shadows.

Nope you probably need to run with available darkness to get a natural looking result or radically change your subjects relative locations.  Now let's say you have a lovely 24 mp FF DSLR fitted with a 35mm lens which is just wide enough to fit everyone in without producing any “Humpty Dumpty” egg shaped head distortion or that horrid empty foreground syndrome.  And let's face it, no one wants a head like Humpty Dumpty! 

So here we go, according to the DOF scales on my computer, you would need to focus at about 2.2 metres with an aperture of f10 to cover your needs.  

In practice you should get from 1.43m through to 4.7m adequately sharp, with these settings, with the total DOF being 329 cm.

But wait what if I instead use APSC, now the lens will be set at 23.5 mm for the same angle of view and using the same focus point we can run with f6.3 for basically the same result according to the app.

The figures come out at 1.46 to 4.4m, 

But, and this is important the above figure is allowing for a tighter circle of confusion for the APSC sensor, which assumes you have to blow the image up a lot more to get a print, however that’s not normally the case as most folk don’t print bigger than A4 and often only shoot for small prints or web, so in practice you could usually go with the same size CoC or circle of confusion (larger) as the FF camera.

If you keep the CoCs the same then the APSC will offer a total DOF of 7.57m extending from 125cm through to 882 cm.

In udder wordz we can easily use a whole F stop and a bit wider or an ISO step and a bit lower or perhaps helpfully a shutter speed faster for much the same look/result. In fact according to the DOF scales with f6.3 at 2.2m I can get from 1.3 to 8.1 metres of DOF.  Anyhow in real world use we can easily say that f10 on FF and f6.3 on APSC are of equal utility.

(Geeky Point:  One thing that some photographers may note is that as the focal length decreases you get more gain in acceptable focus behind the point of focus than in front, this makes perfect sense of course, but in a practical sense it means that on the smaller format, using a shorter focal length for the same angle of coverage you ideally would bring the point of focus forward a bit.  In this case instead of focusing at 2.2 metres on the APSC format you might move the focus forward to say 2 m, as the extended acceptable focus behind the focus point using the original 2.2 metre setting puts extra DOF beyond where you need it.  Moving the focus forward a little balances it out somewhat and gives extra DOF in front of the point of focus which could allow you to get away with an even wider aperture, strange but true.)

Ah but what if we have a lovely little 16mp M4/3 pocket rocket, the focal length will now be 17.5 mm and the required aperture according to the DOF Master, just f5, but again that is assuming I use a much tighter CoC.  If I relax the CoC just a little to give me something similar to the standard APSC CoC I can get away with f4 for a total DOF of 3.8 m extending from 1.4 m through to 5.2m, which of course still handily exceeds what we need for this shot.

Ah but move the focus just a little further out to 2.4 m  Ah yes we can almost get away with f3.2, now that is near enough a whole 3 f stops or 3 ISO steps lower than the full frame...like we can use 1600 iso instead of 12800 ISO! Now seriously do you really think that 12800 iso on a FF camera is always cleaner than 1600 on a state of the art M4/3 camera. It might be  but generally I would say no, it's probably about the same.

Again all of this assumes that we area trying to make roughly the same moderate sized print from each camera.

Ah but let's dig a little deeper, let's dig right down to a 1" sensor like the one in the sony RX 100. Our crop factor is now 2.7x, so 35mm equals 13mm.  Guess what aperture you will need, allowing for a sensible CoC...f 2.8  Basically we don't have that option on all the Sony devices at 13mm but we sure could in the future and Nikon has a lens that will comply with f2.8, but heck, f2.8…..that’s 3.3 stops wider than the FF DSLR or 3.3 ISO steps less. In other words its like saying iso 400 on the 1” jobbie has about the same utility as instead of 4000 iso on FF.  And trust me, that award winning x100 series performs pretty excellently at that ISO level, in fact it’s quite brilliant at 800 ISO.  

That’s a big deal fellow photographers and it provides a whole bunch of other options when the light packs up and leaves.  You of course have the option to also shoot much faster shutter speeds or go up a bit on the ISO for example. 

NOTE AGAIN...look, I know people will claim the differences in the needed aperture are not as big as I am claiming for the smaller sensor sizes but trust me in practice they are unless you are really planning to try and print files from your Sony RX100 to very large sizes.  Additionally the fall off into “unsharpness” is far less steep with smaller formats so objects close to theoretical DOF limit often don’t look as soft and unfocused as they do with larger formats….meaning basically you have more wiggle room with smaller formats.  In fact you could probably get a way with wider apertures than I have indicated here.

But there's more, well there usually is...DSLRs have mirrors and going low on the shutter speeds usually incurs a sharpness penalty. Trust me, I am a pretty steady shooter but there is no way on earth I can hand hold my old Sony A900 with its inbuilt IS and say a 100 mm lens anywhere near as slow as I can go on my old Nex 5n with the Electronic first curtain shutter enabled and a 55-210 OSS lens set at say the equivalent 65mm or so. 

I always need about an extra 2 shutter speeds higher on the A900 to get the same results clarity wise due to the greater camera movement. That folks gives the NEX 5n about a 3 stop advantage for real world low light work....or I can use lets say 400 iso instead of 3200, yes I know that sounds extreme but I have to do this stuff for a living and it really does work out that way in practice.
  

There is more, if you go to a camera with a full electronic shutter like an Olympus em5 mk2 (with 5 axis stabilisation ) then god knows how slow you can go on the shutter speed, especially considering it is far easier to properly support such a light package!

I have certainly taken plenty of sharp pics with my EM5 mk 2 in the 1/4 to 1/2 sec range.

Actually out of interest I tried shooting my old Panasonic GH2 with a 20mm stabilised lens at f5.6 and 1/2 sec mounted on a small selfie stick which I used as a grip, I got an easy 60-70% success rate, and I imagine the Oly em5 mk 2 would be even better!  Oh and I should add the GH2 does not have an electronic first curtain so there is a fair amount of shutter vibration.  

As I said I regularly have to shoot jobs at very slow shutter speeds without flash and I know from painful editing experience what works and what is just wishful full frame thinking. 

And still more! On almost all cameras, noise reduction or to put it more accurately detail reduction starts to kick in around 800 to 1600 iso, even with RAW files in many cases. Any camera that let’s you stay under say 1000 ISO is going to have some obvious

advantages, regardless of format. 

And on it goes, for a great proportion of photos the ISO you will need will be closely related to the efficiency of the cameras image stabilisation and it is here that many DSLRs start to drop back because the stabilisation is normally in the lens....or not at all. Non-stabilised glass will ultimately force you to a tripod 2 to 3 stops earlier, or cause you raise the ISO by an equivalent number of steps. 

Currently the Olympus OM models are probably king of the hill where practical shooting under low light is concerned, the 5 axis image stabilisation offers 4 to 5 stops of compensation with pretty much any lens, but maybe a bit less with some. On top of that remember that m4/3 is 2 stops ahead on DOF to start with, but maybe even 3 if you are not printing big. So up front the advantage compared to a regular DSLR with non - IS lenses in marginal light could be a massive 7 stops where the subject itself is still!   Or lets put this another way, you could use 200 iso instead of about 25000 iso. Yes I know that sounds implausible but I have hundreds of hand held images taken with my Em5 mk 2 in low light at 200 ISO on my computer, very few are lacking in critical sharpness.  

Ah but I hear the DSLR fanboys yelling, "yeah but man, we got da fast glass and the super clean high ISOs, and I respond..so? 

Just read back a few lines, I said “practical shooting” not DXO lab test king...practical.....like actually holding the camera in your hands, you know, without a tripod.  

The m4/3 cameras give you access to some equally fast native glass of top quality and they can use all your fast FF glass via adapters with full IS too in the case of the Olympus cameras and even some newer Panasonics.

Hell, you could even use a Metabones speed booster for another f stop boost with fast Canon or Nikon glass and IBIS on the Olympus!  What is that sound I hear…could it be perhaps the deflation of the wind out of someones full frame balloon. 

Now you can argue all you like, and I know those Big Boy Canon and Nikon users will, but using say a 85 mm 1.4 lens wide open under low light for anything even mildly close to the camera is never going to give you a reliable real world usable DOF for any practical use other than very low res web images. 

To hell with the current shallow DOF fashion I say, it’s just not practical when dollars and useable shots are on the line.  

Like an example, let’s say we take a shot at 5m, 85mm, f1.4, and what pray tell is your total DOF....oh about 17 cm or half a head! Your focus better be totally spot on 100% of the time otherwise it’s a crap shoot. What’s the chance of you reliably nailing a singer in a nightclub actually singing and moving around against those DOF odds? 

Now.....just hold on a bit now as I have to go into the bedroom and pop my Ultra Flameproof suit on.........dum de dum dumm dum....Ok here I am all back. 

I often run low light night photography workshops and one little aspect that became really obvious early on was that 400 ISO on one camera is not necessarily 400 ISO on another. Many Canon DSLRs in particular seem to be, ah, how can I put this...ah ....using ISO ratings that are fantasy compared to say Nikon or Sony. 

I am talking about people shooting on full manual at fixed ISO with identical apertures and shutter speeds and the good old Canons ending up around 2/3 to 1 stops under exposed compared to their peers. No it's not all Canons, the 6D for example seems to be fairly honest but frankly there's more than a fair share of porkies been told. 

Again, don’t bother arguing with me, I am not going to be convinced, remember this is when taking groups of people under real world conditions with various camera models and brands and looking at the resulting images side by side, it's not an isolated case, it’s happened in every single workshop, I don’t make this stuff up. 

Moving beyond the settings and brands, camera style and ergonomics has an enormous role to play in what you can get away with. Currently Sony has the A7r and the RX1/2 in their catalogue, one has a smooth as silk leaf shutter and no IS, the other has a rattle gun shutter ( sorry, I mean a slightly loud and little bit clunky) ....oh forget it....the shutter is crap.  Anyhow the RX1 can be shot at very low speeds despite the lack of IS, the A7r is by all accounts a bit hit and miss dependent upon the shutter speed and lens fitted.   The A7 is far more likely to actually need those marvellously clean high ISOs. (Yes I have used an A7r and confirm that I thought it was bloody hard to get reliably sharp results, but I readily admit the A7R2 is a whole different box of tricks)

Granted there are some very specific circumstances where a FF DSLRs better high ISO performance will translate into better, or at least lower noise images. Mainly these are situations where DOF really doesn't matter, like astronomy or shooting really distant landscapes under very dim light, or perhaps arty super shallow DOF stuff, of if most times you shoot using a tripod. 

Let's say you shoot a moonlit landscape at F2 using a 50mm lens, so long as the nearest element you want in focus is at least 20 metres away you're good to go....or not.  There is a fly in that ointment, we are assuming you have a lens that is able to actually perform well at that aperture under low level but high contrast light conditions, don't assume that can done well at any sane price point for a FF format lens. 

On the other hand, your puny little m4/3 camera can probably access an almost reasonably priced 24mm f1.4 lens that really will deliver at f2 (maybe even f1.4)....it's just easier to achieve this with smaller image circles, period.  Realistically with full frame you will at least need to stop down to f2.8 to clear up the residual deficiencies in most 50mm FF lenses, barring of course the new $4000.00 Zeiss Otus or perhaps that new super duper Sigma Art 50 and 35mm lenses.

So we have arrived at an end, I think those with open minds have perhaps got my drift but just to be sure, what is my take away point?  

ISO ratings and high ISO performance by themselves are quite meaningless, unless of course you're in an argument in the Pub and the next shout is at stake, then tell whatever porkies are required. 

But.... 

What matters is how the system as a whole works because that's what determines what you or I can actually get away with.  In other words unless you can tell me about, shutter action smoothness and shutter type, DOF requirements, real ISO rating, lens choice, camera ergonomics, IS or no IS, actual focus distance, intended print size, all you’re doing is sprouting useless DXO numbers that may or may not translate into improved real world shooting results. 

So the next time you hear some knowledgeable camera tester berating an m4/3 or 1 inch sensor camera for not having stellar 6400 ISO performance, think carefully before you start nodding in agreement at their infinite but badly flawed wisdom.

Before You Shoot

My son Aaron, tired but happy after his first ever race win, originally shot on film 1996

Ask Yourself Why

Is there one little piece of wisdom I can impart to help you elevate your photographic results, something that just might make it a bit easier?

Yes I think there is one little photographic morsel that may help.

Before you shoot, ask yourself a simple question:  "Why am I shooting this"?

Simple enough, but how is this going to help, bear with me, let’s look at a few other questions and ultimately the answers that may flow from this initial self question.

In the world of professional photography, the question of why is usually pretty obvious, you have a client and  brief with a final result in mind as part of the process, but for the casual shooter the camera is simply carried around and used whenever the desire arises, normally casual shooting does not involve you leaving home with a load of gear and a plan in place,  well really otherwise it wouldn’t be casual in nature.

Thing is, people fall into the default mode of just shooting with little thought involved, snap shooting in other words, with all that that implies - instant decision, instant settings on the camera, no user control, instant composition.  In other words everything done in a very perfunctory manner.

Now the usual response a snap-shooters to the idea of taking a little more deliberate approach is that it will be slow and tedious and they will miss the moment, but I feel this is a misguided belief.  Choosing the right camera settings should only take a few seconds, framing more carefully a few seconds more and checking your results better on the cameras screen just 15 secs maximum.  We are not really talking about huge time investments here and in fact you will be getting a huge saving in frustration and editing time once the results are put on your computer.

Just to see how a simple question may prod you into productive action lets take an example:

 You are at a family birthday party and you decide to take some shots of your young nephew who is the subject of the party.  So to the question, Why am I taking this photo?  The answer, birthdays are special and in years to come it will be great to remember this point in his life, which marks a stepping-stone along the way and anyway kids are normally very happy on their birthday.

OK so that is the reason, now then what then are the ramifications that flow from that answer?  Well they could be:

1. A birthday being a special day needs to be recorded somehow in a way that shows it was actually a birthday?
2. We will have several birthdays in our life (we hope) so how can we make it clear that this is his 10^th birthday?
3. Birthday parties are about friends being gathered together, how can I show that in the photo, and who in particular should be in the photo for future reference?
4. Kids should look happy on birthdays so what is the best way to capture the happiness of the moment?
5. What is not important in this photo and is best left out?
6. What sort of lighting is going to work best, natural, flash, mixed?

There may well be a whole bunch of other questions that may flow from the decision to take these shots but the above will do for our discussion.  Now taking those questions what may the answers be and how will that translate to the photograph.

1. To make it clear, this is a birthday so we need to include some things that are obviously the trappings of a birthday, this could include the cake, a wall banner, present wrappings, food on the table.
2. A banner that actually says 10^th birthday or the candles on the cake, a birthday card held up, all of these things would give the right chronological context.
3. Friends are important but they are not the core element of the shot so somehow they need to be included but in the background, recognisable but not dominant.
4. Kids are always happy opening presents, cutting the cake, munching on lollies etc, these moments will occur naturally, they don’t need to be set up, you just need to see them coming first.
5. Who is the kids best friend, in years to come that will have great sentimental value, make sure that child is more dominant than the others but less than the subject.
6. Flash ruins most shots and badly effects emotion in photos so natural light is a better choice, the trick is to make sure you have enough light and the camera is set to the correct settings.

Having resolved the above how are we going to set the camera.  

1. It is best to use available light so the flash is going to be killed and if needed the ISO raised, this might make for a grainy image but that is better than blurred photos due to camera movement or subject movement.
2. Cool skin tones are not good if we want folks to look happy, so the white balance needs to be set manually for the light source in use, and if it can be made a little warmer toned then even better
3. Since the framing is important, you need to get in close enough to exclude distracting stuff but you need to leave a little leeway for selective cropping to match print formats/aspect ratios that you may want to use.
4. Timing will be important, perhaps a good strategy would be to use the continuous mode and take lots of shots knowing that you will likely only keep a couple of good ones.
5. Kids look more impressive if shot at eye level or below, shooting down onto them can look pretty condescending so bend se knees and get down to their level.

So there you go, now you’re ready to shoot.  On the surface you may feel all this thinking and set-up will take lots of time, but in reality it shouldn’t providing you know how to actually use the functions of your camera, remember, it is the person behind the camera that creates the image and the most important aspects of image creation are seeing and thinking and perhaps a little forward planning.

Happy Shooting!