This isn’t about hedging your bets, such as always keeping a UV filter on your lens to prevent damage to the front element. It actually is literally about an insurance policy.  Having recently had to update my homeowner’s policy, my agent asked me about a special “Inland and Marine” policy to cover my camera equipment.

It is its own policy so, if I ever have to make a claim, it won’t count against my regular homeowner’s policy. It’s also more comprehensive. Not only are my cameras covered against loss such as theft but against accidental damage. So if I’m trying to get pictures of rock climbers like I did last fall and my camera takes a tumble off the cliff, I’m covered.

If I take a camera out in my kayak and suddenly get capsized, I’m covered.

Even if I take my camera out on the beach and get sand in it, I’m covered.

And the best part of all? The coverage costs me the princely sum of $3.33 a month (based on a replacement value of around $3,200).

If you live in Delaware (and possibly even in Maryland or Pennsylvania) contact my agent, Pam Steinebach with Nationwide Insurance. Her number is 302-328-1212. Tell her Jeff sent you. I don’t get anything out of it but we’ll both appreciate it.

In recent months I’ve gradually become aware of just how much I can learn about what people need or want to learn about photography simply by watching how they use their cameras. There have been times when I’ve handed one of my own cameras to someone with the very complex and detailed instructions, “All you have to do is point and shoot.” Then I step back and observe as they look the camera over, confidently turn the dial to AUTO (thus wiping out all the settings I’d carefully preset for them) and begin shooting. I’ve seen people with their own cameras struggle to properly line up a lens so it can be mounted. Or not properly attach a hood because the markings on it are not especially intuitive. I’ve seen people take the camera from their eye and go to some lengths to check the settings on the LCD screen, never even realizing that those settings are visible right in the viewfinder.

A whole host of what most experienced photographers would consider such basic things that we never even stop to consider that no one just pops out of the womb with this knowledge already fully formed and deeply ingrained. There’s no use in assigning blame because there’s plenty to be shared all around — by the camera makers for not making more user-friendly products, by users for not actually reading the manual, by instructors for assuming an unwarranted level of knowledge and making people feel dumb for not knowing.

In all this I see opportunity. So we are currently developing learning tools to teach some of these absolute basic things. Things that may have little affect on image quality but which may profoundly affect one’s enjoyment and ease of taking pictures.

Last night I photographed a roller derby bout. It wasn’t my first but it occurred to me that it would be beneficial to share some thoughts on the experience.

First of all, roller derby is an awesome sport. If you haven’t seen it, you really owe it to yourself to go.

Photographically speaking, roller derby is a very tough sport to get good pictures of. It has fast action, terrible lighting and typically small venues. Small venues mean few good sight lines and lots of lousy backgrounds. Also, being the hyper-social sport that it is, viewers are invited to get very close to the action. There’s never a bad seat at a roller derby bout. But what makes good seats for spectators, usually means obstacles for picture taking.

Of course I try to capture the action when I’m there. However, knowing the limitations I am dealing with, I also make it a point to watch for alternate viewpoints. I look for interesting figures in the crowd, derby girls interacting with people in the audience, warm-ups, the crew setting up and tearing down the track, etc.

Last night I met this absolutely adorable reindeer.

She didn’t want her picture taken at first. Ordinarily, I am very respectful of people’s wishes in that regard. I’ve even been known to voluntarily delete photos after they’ve been taken if the subject doesn’t like them. After her daughter and I both convinced her of just how beautiful she was, she reluctantly acquiesced to this single photo. It was one of the highlights of my night. (Who knew, surrounded by twenty-somethings in fishnets, I’d be so taken by one of the derby moms in felt antlers?)

Last night’s bout finished at nearly 11pm so I haven’t yet processed the 500+ photos that I took. When I do, I will first be sharing them with the two teams who were competing. After that, some of the better ones will undoubtedly make their way into this blog and our weekly newsletter.

We’ve been working at break-neck speed, trying to start getting more useful content up on our site. It may also seem that we’ve been a little bit scattered, attacking every front at once. Video is progressing but we are determined to do it right so the progress isn’t as fast as any of us would like. That’s where the multi-pronged approach is beginning to bear fruit.

We’ve long been sending out a weekly newsletter, and our readership has been growing. I think the newsletter has just been getting better and better every week. (Just airing a bit of my own neuroses, the weekly newsletters have gotten so good in recent weeks that I’ve begun to worry how long I can keep it up. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not going to back off and lower the bar. I just hope no one laughs when I eventually stumble over it.)

Back to content development, we put up some fun little mind maps a few weeks ago then followed that up with a revamped discussion board and article comment system.

Last week we put up a slew of holiday buying guides. The thinking on these was that people may not need to know what to buy so much as what features to look for (or look out for). So they’re really more like buying advice guides, but that’s kind of a clumsy name.

Over the coming week, we plan on posting the first of a long series of downloadable ebooks on all sorts of photography-related topics. There are currently 15 titles in development (three of which are already finished) and there may be more to follow.

Our plan is still to introduce video by the end of the year. Even our approach to video is multi-pronged. Being the easiest to implement, we may lead off with short video snippets in the weekly newsletters. These would be 2-3 minute clips of me sharing some trick or technique. We’ll follow that up with the first of our full-blown online courses. We have at least 18 of those in development and they will be released at the rate of about one per month.

Somewhere in between all that, we also have some educational-slash-promotional video that we plan on releasing. The goal of those will primarily be to attract new visitors but of course we’ll give our current community the first sneak peeks and let them weigh in.

Exciting times!

I personally know several people who have DSLRs that cost more than $1,500. Often that price is for the camera body alone and then the price of the lenses is added on top of that. I think some people are scared away from DSLRs because of:

1. that price tag, and
2. the seeming complexity of them.

First, let me address point #2. The number of additional features offered in an entry-level DSLR is only incrementally greater than what is found on high-end point and shoot cameras. Learning to make use of those extra features is why we are here. For very low cost, we’ll teach you what those features do and how you can make use of them. From there on, the creative and artistic possibilities are much greater than you’d get with a more limited camera.

As for the price tag, let me tell you that my first DSLR cost me around $650. That was for the body and two lenses. Most of the images seen on our web site were taken with that camera and it’s one I still actively use to this day. Since it came as a kit and that particular model is no longer being sold, I don’t really have any way of accurately knowing how much the body alone would have cost me but I think it’s safe to say it would have been less than $500. (Surely the two lenses, both of which I also still use regularly, are worth at least $150 for the pair of them.) The second camera body I bought cost me less than $300. The third DSLR I bought cost me $300 and came with a lens.

All told, I’ve bought three cameras and three lenses (not counting lenses I’ve bought or made separately from camera purchases) and still haven’t put out $1,500. In fact, if I shopped carefully enough, I could buy yet another camera and lens and still not reach $1,500.

So why would anyone ever pay that much for a camera? What does that extra price tag really buy you?

To be fair, you do get more from higher end equipment. However my feelings are that most of the benefit is in the margins. Things like slightly faster frame rate when shooting in burst mode, slightly faster focusing, maybe a few extra whiz-bang features you won’t find on lower end models. There are usually only three main benefits to higher end equipment that actually make much of a difference:

1. more autofocus points
2. better dynamic range
3. better low-light capability.

If you are a professional and actually make money from the pictures you take, there is likely a valid case to be made for getting one of these more expensive cameras over a cheaper, less capable model. If you regularly use some feature found only on higher end models and simply couldn’t take the kind of pictures you want to take without it, there might even be a case to be made. Outside of those two scenarios, opting for the more expensive camera is just showing a love of the gadgetry.

I’m not saying that there’s anything at all wrong with a love of gadgetry; there certainly isn’t. Just realize that collecting cool gadgets is a different hobby from taking pictures. The two aren’t mutually exclusive of one another, but they are different.

I’m of the mind that the lens contributes more to image quality than the camera body. The body is primary there to record and store the image. Pretty much any camera body can do a good job of that. All it has to do is record what it sees. It is the lens delivering that image that makes all the difference. An average body with a great lens will take a better picture than if the reverse were true.

The person behind the camera makes even more of a difference than both the body and lens combined. A competent photographer with an average body and lens will almost always take better pictures than someone with a great camera and lens but no real clue how to use them.

I’ve never paid more than $500 for a camera and yet I’ll pit my pictures against anyone else’s any day. That’s not to say I’m the best photographer there ever was. Far from it. I personally know at least two dozen photographers who I think are better than me. I’m just saying that I put a lot of time and effort into learning how to make the most of my equipment and I think it shows in the pictures I take.

That brings me to the final point I want to make about expensive versus (relatively) inexpensive equipment. I use my cameras. I mean I use the hell out of them. I’m forever climbing up on precarious cliff edges or laying in the dirt or taking them out kayaking with me. If I destroyed a $500 camera by dropping it off a cliff or capsizing my boat, I’d be very upset. But it wouldn’t be totally devastating. It might be a hardship but I can afford to replace a $500 camera. I’d be so much more upset and so much less able to replace a $1,500 camera.

More than that, because I’d know how much more upset I would be and how much less able I would be to replace it, I simply wouldn’t take the kind of risks I do with the cameras I have now. And that means I wouldn’t get a lot of the pictures I now get. Which begs the question, what’s the point of owning a “good” camera if you’re not going to use it?

Think about how cool it would be if cameras and lenses were interchangeable. I don’t mean just that you can put any number of lenses on your camera body. I mean if you could buy a camera body made by one manufacturer and mount a lens made by any other manufacturer. A Nikon lens on a Pentax body. Or a Sony lens on a Canon body.

At that point, camera companies would be competing based on price, quality and features.

Don’t be fooled into thinking that is currently the case. Most people, when they go out to buy a camera, are presented with only a small number of options. Walk into most camera stores and you would be lucky to find cameras from more than three manufacturers. (It’s almost always Canon, Nikon and a token “other” brand.) Even among those, you will find only one or two models from each manufacturer. The buying decision is made from among these limited choices and is usually heavily influenced by the “guidance” of the salesman behind the counter.

Here’s the thing, once you’ve bought into a system, you are pretty much stuck with that system forever. The only way out is to sell all your gear (usually for less than you paid for it) and start all over again with a new system. Or to buy and use two systems side-by-side. Both are very expensive propositions.

Most people never even give a serious look at any systems other than the one they’re using. They don’t even know if there’s a more user-friendly menu, or some innovative special feature, or better quality lenses that might be available to them if they were using a different system. They don’t even know if the shape or weight of some other camera might feel better in their hands. Or if another camera’s battery lasts longer. Or one renders certain colors better than another. They are missing out on a lot.

If cameras and lenses were truly universal, you and I could share lenses (or flashes or other accessories) no matter what brand each of us was using. People would spend more time trying out cameras to find one that feels more natural for them to use. Hard-core hobbyists and professionals might get different cameras for special uses; one with a fast frame rate for sports, another that’s weatherproof for hostile shooting environments, a third with great low light performance for nighttime. The whole, pointless debate about which system is better would go away and people could concentrate on what really matters: taking great pictures.

When Olympus first invented the four-thirds mount, they tried making it “open source”. They invited others within the industry to sign on and adopt the standard. A handful did: Leica, Panasonic, Fuji, Kodak. A few others didn’t but probably should have: Sony, Pentax, Konica-Minolta, Sigma. No one ever expected Canon or Nikon to surrender their death grip on their customers.

When looked at from the camera manufacturer’s point of view, there are a few big reasons why not to sign on to this concept of universal interchangeability.

1. It would mean abandoning their old mount. They would be abandoning all their loyal customers who are already invested in the existing configuration. They would also have to retool all their factories for the new standard. (Canon has done this twice in its history, though both times it stuck with a proprietary mount. It was just a different proprietary mount than the one which came before. Then again, even having done this they’ve still managed to become the largest in terms of camera market share.)
2. A measure of pride would be dented by switching to someone else’s standard. Even if they had a hand in developing it, making the switch would be somewhat akin to admitting that the technology and configuration they were touting last year is inferior to the new standard.
3. Worst of all, they would no longer have a captive population of customers. If it were easy for consumers to brand hop, they would have to build brand loyalty through actual quality and value. Maybe they’re doing that now and maybe they’re not. There’s just no way to really know for sure.
4. They would also give up quite a bit of profit potential. It’s not at all uncommon for high-end models from each of the manufacturers to cost three times as much as entry level models. They certainly are better and have more features, but are they really three times better? More to the point, is a high-end model from any given maker “better” than a comparably high-end model of another brand? Or an entry level model for that matter? Camera prices right now are relatively arbitrary. Greater competition between brands would mean pricing that more closely reflects features, quality and value.
5. Most camera company profits are in the glass. A few camera companies price their camera bodies low enough to just barely make a profit on them. This is a sort of loss leader strategy. Because accessory mounts are proprietary, once you buy into their system, you’re locked in for life. There is a very high likelihood that you will buy at least one “better” lens some time throughout your entire lifetime. There’s a fair likelihood that you’ll buy more than one. While it’s true that a good deal of optical precision goes into the making of high quality lenses, there is still room for a good bit of profit in selling lenses and other add-on accessories.

Maybe what I’m dreaming of is completely unreasonable. After all, it is a little like wanting to put a Ford motor and a Subaru hood scoop on my Toyota. Come to think of it, why aren’t cars more universal?

Disclaimer: I know very well that Canon cameras are perfectly capable of taking wonderful pictures. I’ve seen them. I’ve even taken some myself. This is not about image quality, it’s about usability and Canon Corporation’s irrational need to differentiate themselves from the rest of the photographic world by making their user interface as unfriendly and confusing as possible.

How’s that for a lead-in? So here’s my rant. The more exposure I have to Canon cameras, the more it baffles me why they are so popular. I know that most people buy them primarily on the basis of the strength of the brand name. I can only assume that most of those people did not seriously look at or hold any competing products.

Here’s the thing, photography has been around for over 150 years. All cameras do pretty much the same thing. Cameras of the same “level” (style, type, price, etc.) are all pretty much the same, no matter who makes them. You’d be very hard-pressed to tell what brand of camera was used to take a picture based on just looking at the picture alone.

And yet, for some reason, every manufacturer tries very hard to make it seem like their cameras are somehow more “special” than everyone else’s. Yes, they pretty much all do it but this rant is directed specifically at Canon because that’s what’s fresh in my mind at the moment.

Canon’s use of Tv to mean shutter priority is pretty well known. The entire rest of the photographic world uses S, which makes sense since S is short for shutter, with Canon the lone dissenter. The same is true, but to a less perplexing extent with their use of Av for aperture priority when everyone else uses just A.

It just gets worse from there. S-AF (single autofocus) and C-AF (continuous autofocus) are reasonably self explanatory. Hence the reason they are more or less standard in the industry. Canon chooses to use the designations “One Shot” (okay, maybe that one’s not so bad) and “AI Servo” (just what the hell is that supposed to mean?) Stepping even farther afield, Canon invented a whole new hybrid type of autofocus wherein the camera automatically switches back and forth between the two. This new mode is confusingly called “AI Focus“. Now it may very well be useful (though I question that) but knowing which mode to choose is certainly not intuitive.

They also have a group of features called “Picture Style“. With names like Portrait and Landscape, one might initially think these are preset shooting modes. They are not. They are ways of setting color intensity.

Another baffling thing happens when reviewing digital images in-camera. All digital cameras will let you review your images, or see the image plus some of the data associated with that image (such as camera settings, histogram, etc.) Most will even let you choose between several different data layouts. What makes Canon different is that, with most manufacturers, while you are reviewing an image you press an “Info” button if you want to see the information associated with that image. Pressing it multiple times cycles through the different configuration choices. With Canon, the button you press is labeled “Display“. Since the image must already be displayed in order for this button to work to show you underlying image data, pressing a button called Display doesn’t seem very intuitive. (Many Canon cameras have an Info button but it does something entirely different, just to add another layer of confusion.)

Also, where most cameras will let you use the thumbwheel to zoom in or out on displayed images, Canon uses it to scroll from one image to the next. Instead, you must use zoom buttons which are hard to read and not especially intuitive to use.

None of the above features is inherently unique. Every camera from every manufacturer has all these same features. Most just assign a more intuitive, more sensible name to it.

To be sure, all of the above is more or less a one-time learning curve. Still, the curve shouldn’t even be there. Does changing the names of things to deviate from the industry standard make your product somehow better than that of your competition? In this case, absolutely not. It only makes it harder to use.

I guess as someone whose business is to teach people how to use their cameras, that’s good news for me. It keeps me in business. So, on second thought, nevermind any of the above rant. Long live Canon! Please change some more things on your cameras. And refer all your users to me so I can teach them how to use the dang things.

I just found out today about a really cool innovation in camera gear. Some may have heard of Nikonos cameras. They were made for many years by Nikon and are widely considered to be the best line of underwater cameras made. While many cameras have had underwater housings available, Nikonos was specifically designed to be natively waterproof. Alas, the Nikonos cameras were all film cameras and Nikon never commercially produced a digital version.

Since the Nikonos had interchangeable lenses (of course you couldn’t actually change the lenses underwater!), many hobbyists and inventors tinkered with adapting the old Nikonos cameras to the digital age. Some have tried adding a digital back to the original body. Others went a different route and adapted a standard digital body in a waterproof housing to use the Nikonos lenses.

Enter the Olympus EP-1. This innovative little camera sports two features absolutely crucial to the search for a digital body that can take Nikonos lenses:

1. It is designed to shoot using live view. Live view is the LCD screen on the back of the camera. While many interchangeable lens cameras now let you compose and use the LCD, it’s really a supplement to the optical viewfinder. Long term use of the LCD screens on those cameras drastically shortens battery life. Not so with the EP-1, which doesn’t even have an optical viewfinder.
2. Because of its sensor size, the EP-1 requires legacy film system lenses to mount farther away from the camera body in order to maintain the ability to focus to infinity. Perfect. That allows enough room to insert an adapter which is also part of a waterproof housing.

A company called PiratePro has already made prototypes of such a housing and expects to begin offering them for retail before this year is out. Good news for divers and other water sports enthusiasts.

Yesterday’s post veered off in a direction I had neither planned nor intended. Still, where it went was a valuable place. We all want the whole world but it’s a good thing to realistically assess your true needs.

So many people lust for some kind of “wonder camera”. Full frame versus cropped frame. Super fast lenses. Wide angle. Macro. Telephoto. Low noise. Long exposures. Exposures in near total darkness. ISO12,500.

Do you search for a magic box that you believe will make all your photos grand works of art? Or do you spend time learning and honing your skills to make best use of the tool(s) you have?

I think often about the photographic masters. Names like Weston, Steiglitz, Adams, Cartier-Bresson, Ray, Brady, et al. Without exception, the tools and equipment they used were positively archaic by today’s standards. Some of them didn’t even live long enough to see the advent of color film. (Brady, whose work was all done on glass and tin plates, didn’t even live long enough to see the invention of film at all!) And yet the work these people produced transcends generations and continues to be meaningful, inspiring and even beautiful.

Given that, is it really that new lens or that new camera that will suddenly take your pictures from mediocre to magnificent? Or is the key missing element one of technique? Time spent learning the art and the craft of photography will transcend generations for you too. Generations of camera equipment. Of planned obsolescence. Of the next great magic box that’s even better than the last great magic box.

Perhaps then you too can produce photos that will inspire someone. Maybe even you.

Photocopying, remembering your parking spot, remembering the name of “that” restaurant, insurance claims… There are even alternative professional uses of cameras such as security, theft deterrence and so on.

There are lots of legitimate uses for cameras that don’t demand artistic merit or technical wizardry. People very often tend to discount or simply not think about such uses.

This all came to mind for me when I was consulting on a project recently. A group of investigators was trying to settle on a new technology platform. They needed a host of new generation gadgets to be able to perform their jobs effectively: laptop computer, universal wireless internet access, cell phone, digital camera, digital voice recorder and even a portable document scanner.

I was brought in to consult on technical specifications for the cameras they would need but that last item on the list caught my attention. I began asking more about it and found that the scanners were used to scan documents such as handwritten notes, medical records and other documents that might be included in their investigation but for which they could not take physical custody.

A bit more probing found that the documents were never converted to an editable format, they were simply “pictures” of pieces of paper. That led me to suggest using the digital camera to photograph the documents instead of scanning them. Such a move would eliminate the cost and hassle of one piece of equipment from the list above.

Eventually, I and other technical experts consulting on this project, managed to determine that the investigator’s photographic needs could be met by one of the higher quality cell phone cameras. Another piece of equipment eliminated from the list without any loss in functionality. We also found models of cell phones which had built-in digital voice recorders (one more item down) and could be tethered to the laptops to act as a modem in rural areas where wi-fi may not be available (another item down.)

In all, we managed to get the entire list down to just two well-planned items. Together, these two items provide the full range of functionality needed by the investigators.

Bringing this back to photography, I was brought in to consult and recommend what kind of cameras the team should buy for what is very non-traditional photography. By assessing true needs, versus just the wants of the baddest most whiz-bang $5,000 camera setup available, I brought true value to the project and satisfied the customer.