I was just thinking about what kind of equipment I like.
After all, I had all kinds of cameras, lenses and other gear, and I do have my preferences. It’s just hard to put in a single statement, but if I had to, I’d say I love it when the gear isn’t fragile.
That doesn’t mean I bang my stuff up. In fact, I have a lens from 1984 that, according to my son, is in the best condition he ever saw for something anywhere near as old. By fragility, I don’t necessarily mean resistance to physical abuse, although I certainly prefer lenses and cameras not to damage easily with normal use. I mean the ability to use them within their full spectrum of nominal functionality with excellent results. This means that I can open the aperture and still get excellent sharpness and no stupid artefacts. It means being able to use the lens or camera in the rain, not because I would deliberately do so, but because I might get rained on by accident when I’m on a hike somewhere.
Guess how much water I had on both lens and camera here 🙂
It also means being able to shoot into the sun with the lens without flare ruining the shot. That’s what I mean by fragility, or lack thereof. A fragile lens will work great when everything is perfect, and fall apart when conditions are not ideal. I like working in non-ideal conditions; that’s usually where the best pictures are. If I have to baby the camera or the lens and use them only where they are comfortable, I will get rid of them in short order. Sometimes I will walk in strong sunlight and the camera will get very hot; or I will shoot in frosty conditions, or I’ll get caught by persistent rain. I’ll have sunlight that causes flare, chromatic aberrations and all kinds of nonsense in lesser optics. I’ll take pictures hand-held in deep dark, with stars visible in the sky. I want the equipment to follow me there and not crack under pressure. When I need to crank up the ISO, I want the image to still look great after I process it. When I need to open the aperture, I want the corners to still be sharp. If the lens is f/1.4, I want it to be great at f/1.4. I hate having to have mental markers, such as “don’t use this lens at these settings because it’s shit wide open and it’s shit at the longer end”. Thanks, but no thanks. A lens that has those caveats is fragile. A tripod or a tripod head that loses rigidity with my heaviest lens on my heaviest camera is fragile. A camera that can’t do really long exposures because the image falls apart from noise, or I can’t shoot in strong sunlight because it doesn’t have a viewfinder and I don’t see anything on the LCD in those conditions – thanks, but no thanks. If I want some function that I rarely use, I want the camera to have it, if it’s something reasonable like long exposure noise reduction (in other words, dark frame subtraction). Entry-level cameras are notorious for omitting such features, which is why I don’t like entry level cameras. It’s not snobbery; it’s the fact that some things will be omitted from those models because it’s expected that the expected user base won’t need them. It’s not that I think that those cameras can’t make great pictures.
Olympus E-PL1
I made great pictures with Olympus E-PL1, which is the entriest-level of all the entry-level plasticky thingies. That’s how I learned that I don’t like fragile cameras, because that one was fragile. I would need something, and it wouldn’t have it. I would use some function like ISO 1600, and it would fall apart. There was no viewfinder, and I challenge anyone to try taking pictures without one at noon on the southern side of Hvar in broad daylight. If you can’t compose the image because you see nothing on the screen, let alone focus precisely, then what is the point? Aim in the general direction of the island and hope it works? I swore I’ll never buy such a camera again, and I didn’t. It annoyed me so much that I almost gave up photography. That’s why I roll my eyes when people show that entry level cameras can make great photos. I know. Been there, done that. The problem is, they make great photos when all the stars align just right – you can see on the screen, you can use base ISO, there’s enough light but not too much, or you can use a tripod… how about making great photos when I want to make them, not when the camera is happy?
Hand-held at blue hour, wide open.
Fragility means a macro lens that’s soft and terrible when focused on infinity, and a landscape lens that has terrible minimum focusing distance, and it’s terrible at those conditions. It’s the opposite of robustness. Robustness doesn’t mean the lens will be able to do everything, but if it’s rated as f/4, you can shoot it at f/4 and get good results, not blurry mess. If it’s 24-105mm, you can shoot at both ends and get good results. I don’t expect it to be as good at closeup as a macro lens, but it needs to do well enough for me to pull off a shot in a pinch and not throw it away in frustration at home, when I see what it actually looks like.
Shot with what I had, wide open.
I expect a landscape lens to pull off a portrait when my wife steps into the frame. I know it won’t match the 85mm f/1.4, but it needs to do well enough. If it’s rated at a certain aperture and a certain focal length range, and if it focuses from 30cm to infinity, you can bet I will use it at all those extremes, and I expect it to do a good job. That’s the kind of lens I like.