What’s Tech Got to Do with It?

Image: Today's camera tech opens up some amazing photo ops that would have been near impossible before and makes us think less about how we make the image than why we might be making it. This shot of Taos Plaza at Christmas time was made at an ISO of 12,800 with a handheld camera at 1/10 sec using a VR (vibration reduction) lens. Copyright George Schaub

Do today’s SLRs: A) help us make better pictures; B) change the way we see; C) all of the above; D) none of the above

There’s no question that modern SLR cameras represent the height of photographic technology and in many ways echo the ingeniousness and at times presumptuousness of all machines today. The speed at which these cameras make and apply judgments about focusing and light reading is incredible, at times following focus and adjusting to changing light at 10 frames per second. Considering that we are often still dealing with a mirror assembly (though this may change with Sony’s new “translucent” technology) that must raise and lower while the camera simultaneously changes light settings and focusing distance, the coordination of calculation and mechanical application is fairly mind boggling.

Many people have mixed feelings about just what this technology offers. They question whether it helps or hinders the photographer in becoming more expressive and spontaneous, yet have little doubt that it allows him or her to more productive in their work.

The obvious response to all this is that it’s the eye and not the camera that makes pictures. But there are other factors involved. In some instances the capabilities of today’s picture machine demands that the photographer think beyond what their eye can see and that presumed limitations on the kind of images that can be made no longer hold true. It is becoming evident that photographers should consider changing their thinking and go beyond what he or she might have created with a standard bred 20th century 35mm SLR. The new technology is challenging in and of itself, in that photography must be relearned in the context of how it is now applied. The challenge necessarily extends to considerations of just what kind of images the new technology allows us to make.

Recent advances have a lot to do with speed, both in operating and capture times. There are now super-fast shutter speeds (such as 1/8000 second is typical) and super fast framing rates (8 frames per second is not uncommon). We can also now use longer lenses at faster shutter speeds with vibration reduction technology. Along with speed comes increased exposure and focus automation. One of the most exciting fields is in flash exposure automation and multiple wireless flash with TTL automatic exposure.

The old school still insists that photographic principals haven’t changed for 150 years and that we should continue to teach photography in the same way we did in the middle of the 20th century. Where I teach some of my colleagues still insist that students go out and buy a manual exposure SLR, take manual exposure readings and set them by hand. The thinking is that this is the only way to understand light and equivalent exposure, learn depth of field, and so forth. This might have been true twenty years ago but to me it’s like considering the divine spirit as some sort of thirteenth century robed patriarch with a beard sitting on a throne up in heaven.

It also misses the point of just what the modern SLR offers. True, there is certainly merit to the thinking that much of the new technology is technology for its own sake, a competition between rival engineers who sit up at night gnashing their teeth over how to shave microseconds from mirror bounce effects. But there is also merit in considering just what this new technology means to a photographer’s view of the world and how he or she can express it.

To me the changes in camera technology, which I have reported on for the past thirty years, have as profound effect on photography as the affordability and accessibility of digital imaging techniques. Anyone who has worked for any amount of time with images in the computer know how it changes your relationship with your work. It has freed photographers from the old limitations of the chemical darkroom and made imaging more available to more people than ever before. I am of the school that the creative cycle is not complete until you make your print from the image you captured. Anyone who has done so knows how it closes the circle and how essential it can be to the photographic process.

Today’s SLR technology might seem quite shocking to anyone who hasn’t played with a new camera even in the last three years. Autoexposure is one clear example. Today’s systems are a far cry from past light measuring cells that sent out current to a meter that converted the light energy to aperture and shutter speed values. Evaluative or Matrix metering systems now analyze the image by dissecting it into a number of zones. The system then calculates exposure by performing complex calculations. This compares the distribution and intensity of light in those zones to a large set of stored exposure solutions in its microprocessor. Only then is the exposure value sent to a system that holds one factor constant (aperture or shutter speed depending on the photographer’s chosen metering mode) while calculating and setting the other to match the light intensity at hand. Add built-in tone compensation, built-in “HDR” and more and exposure, and even consideration of light, is a far cry from the work done even in the late 20th century.

With this automation comes the recognition that overrides are needed to sometimes correct the camera-recommended exposure. This is especially true should the photographer work in any of the spot metering modes, where tonal placement must often be adjusted for the classic metering failures such as bright and dark dominance within the frame. We can take for granted that these overrides will allow us to finesse the automation. We also have autoexposure bracketing, autoflash bracketing and easy exposure compensation inputs. We can even control which variable will be affected by choosing aperture priority when we want to compensate via shutter speed and shutter-priority should we want to have aperture change in our bracketing sequence.

Autofocusing has come a long way since it’s first awkward attempts at hands free distance settings. I remember the amazement that met the Minolta Maxxum camera when it first hit. But I also remember going out on a field test with Sports Illustrated photographer Richard Mackson with one of the early AF cameras (not the Maxxum). About ten minutes into the basketball game Mackson asked me to hold the camera between toe and finger so he could make a field goal kick of it into the stands. It couldn’t follow any action and often jumped from player to player just as he was about to take the picture.

Now we have follow focus, dynamic focus and multiple focusing targets within the viewfinder. AF lock stays with a subject even if another one momentarily blocks the view. Subjects are passed from one focusing target to another through the viewfinder frame. We can select single or multiple AF sites and even link or separate metering from those sites. True, autofocusing still has its foibles, but ask nature and sports photographers how AF has affected their work.

Advances in flash exposure, especially when coordinated with ambient readings and fill flash techniques have been particularly impressive. Those who grew up with guide number calculations and chart reading on the back of flash units and who haven’t experienced a modern dedicated flash can only guess at the convenience they afford.

Tricky daylight fill flash, night slow sync techniques and off-camera and wireless, three unit flash exposure is now through the lens automatic. Even close-up flash techniques, which in the past required bellows extension factors and all sorts of angling and reflectors, are now pushbutton automatic and multi-flash capable. Flash overrides and compensation can now be coordinated with ambient light exposure compensation to give the photographer more control over light and its manipulation than ever before.

You can now also customize SLRs to operate in ways that you feel fit your personal style or shooting needs. These custom function settings arrange or re-arrange the camera’s default operating procedures. You can change the buttons and dials you use for exposure compensation and autoexposure and autofocus lock, change the degree of compensation, change the focusing patterns and spots, link or disengage autofocus and spot metering coordination, change the coverage of the center-weighted meter, add or eliminate a grid screen display in your viewfinder or LCD, etc.

All in all, it’s fairly easy to scoff at automation as a crutch for the less photographically gifted. Sure it’s easy to figure out flash exposure if you have the guide number and know distance and aperture, or to even gain an instinct for it. And one could say that it is best to learn enough hand/eye coordination to release the shutter to catch the peak of the action rather than bang away at 10 frames per second knowing that the peak will probably not fall between the cracks.

But to me that misses the point. No one has to prove themselves to work with a camera. There is no test you have to pass to make images. There is no gauntlet you must run to prove yourself worthy of the name “photographer”. Life is too short for that sort of nonsense.

But there is some added responsibility with this new tech. First there’s the need to understand the new terminology and how it translates from the old. Following that there’s the need to consider what a shutter speed of 1/8000 second or a ten frames per second framing rate might teach us about how we can image time and motion. Or how multiple flash automation might change the way we think about light manipulation in the field.
Consider the new tech as a springboard to new ways of making images.

If you could be fairly well assured that 90 percent of the time exposure and focus will be on the mark, how would that free up your “seeing”? Perhaps this automation allows us to dwell on what we want to say rather than how we need to make settings to go about saying it. Perhaps we can waste less time making settings and more time looking.

In essence it raises the question of what’s more important--the how or the why. Today’s automation diminishes the worry and time taken with the how and gets you closer to the perhaps more essential issue of the WHY.

Weighty issues those, considerations of time and motivation. And, perhaps, pretentious ponderings as well. But if we are to take our photography seriously, and I contend that it is one of those things we should take seriously only because it often tells the story of our life, then we should perceive automation not as a deterrent to learning about photography but as a way towards gaining a newfound freedom of expression. Of course we should know what increases and decreases the zone of sharpness and how shutter speed settings affect how thinly we slice the arc of time, but let’s leave it at that and let the machine handle the rest. The more transparent the machine the more we can think about where it can take us. Perhaps we will have less control over camera operation. But letting that go might just allow us to create images that we might not have imagined possible before.