It’s funny how photographers, the very ones benefiting from technology advances, have been quite reluctant to progress if we take a look back to camera history. Not all of them of course, but a large majority have had this fixed mindset that makes them extremely tough towards change.
When large-format photography appeared, painters diminished it. When medium format cameras appeared, plate-based photography users opposed to it. When 35mm format appeared, medium format users were very rude to it, they even called it “a post stamp”. Could you imagine that? The very thing we all worship as true full-frame format nowadays was just a stamp for them… And when digital SLRs arrived, 35mm users said many awful things too. Now that mirrorless cameras have come to stay, there are many DSLR users complaining about it.
You do see the pattern, don’t you? Because we do. That’s why we wanted to share with you some 5 definitive reasons why you should pick up a mirrorless camera system, and just move on. If you are just about to start in this beautiful world of photography world then you shouldn’t strings attached towards S, C or N brands. Just go straight to mirrorless cameras, and you’ll have a blast. If you are almost married to a brand because you have invested a considerable amount of money on lenses, then you should develop a smart strategy to move on.
If you are still doubtful about mirrorless vs. DSLR cameras even after reading the second paragraph of this piece, then sit back and read the following information. Our main goal is to clear your head of some of the most common doubts about this not-so-new-by-now camera format.
They Aren’t Longer the Future, They Are the Present
Mirrorless camera systems had a bumpy start in 2004, and has had its ups and downs ever since. After fifteen years of their appearance we can firmly say that this format isn’t the future anymore, it is the present. Many people have been quite reluctant to changing from DSLR to Mirrorless cameras, just like some people said “no-no” to digital when it first appeared. Let’s face it, this is the new standard, and we should embrace it, despite its (decreasing) cons.
For some reason, DSLR cameras had the power to make anyone feel like a “real” photographer. And the reason might be traced back to marketing strategies. Those efforts aimed at casual users and made them feel like professional photographers for a while with that bulky system and wide camera straps. Entry-level cameras with 18-55mm sold quite well back in the day, but eventually, they got replaced by smartphones. Don’t get me wrong, smartphones didn’t replace photography for everyone, it simply fulfilled the image necessities of casual users.
These cameras had a lot of potentials to offer at first, but after a while, there were basically two options left. The first was the most common one, people eventually got bored of carrying that massive thing around and eventually stopped using it. Other people got quite serious about photography and eventually upgraded to more useful tools. But honestly, these last ones would have fallen in love with photography even if they were shooting with a potato.
I think only Canon and Nikon are the ones still developing DSLRs, and at some point, they will stop doing it too. There are plenty of brands out there like Sony, Leica, and Fujifilm, etc that have matured their mirrorless systems quite nicely by now, and they are all offering superb image capabilities and quality.
Lightweight and Inconspicuous
Do you actually need a bulky camera to shoot great photos? Of course not, but some people like the feeling of carrying around a massive camera around. As a street photographer myself, I love small and inconspicuous cameras, and when the mirrorless camera appeared, a whole array of options became available. Before this magnificent happening, only point and shoot cameras offered small size, and not all of them offer a nice ergonomic experience. Even if they were capable of shooting raw images in manual mode, there was something odd about looking through a screen all the time, or not being able to make exposure changes quickly.
Long gone are those days by now since the appearance of mirrorless camera systems; they offer even better ergonomics than some DSLR cameras, and they are usefully small. Trust me, it is way better to travel or to walk long hours on the streets with a lightweight camera than a massive DSLR. Manufacturers have cut down all that bulky mirror and pentaprism system in order to achieve a more efficient camera.
Nowadays mirrorless cameras even look more like film cameras than some roundy and plasticy DSLRs, so they look awesome too!
Better Image Quality
This will sound quite cold and even cruel, but it is the very truth; camera manufacturers don’t care about nostalgia. They are always investing in research and development in order to deliver better and faster image solutions, so they won’t be nurturing DSLR cravings for much longer anymore. So, if many camera manufacturers have moved forward and have left DSLR systems behind, where do you think you’ll find the most advanced image sensors now?
I really don’t understand this to a technical level, but I do understand one thing. Image quality has a very strong inverse relationship with the distance between the rear element of the lens and the image sensor. So, if the image between these two gets shorter, the image quality will increase. Mirrorless cameras reduce this distance quite massively by getting rid of the internal chamber needed for the mirror to flip in a proper way.
There is one thing that is true, nothing beats reality being seeing right through the lens, that is a fact, and might be the only price to pay in my very own and personal opinion. Electronic Viewfinders (EVF) have gotten quite powerful, and it almost feels like a non-digital through the lens experience due to minimum image lag, but it still feels funny. But there is a pro of EVFs, and that is focus peaking in manual focus mode. Focus peaking in simple words is a tool that allows you to know which things from the scene are in proper focus thanks to some digital sparkles that appear and disappear as the focus ring is being turned.
Sony was the first to focus on the alpha mirrorless series cameras and the quality they are delivering lately is outstanding to other brands, they even launched a new camera the Sony A7R MK 4 with 61 megapixels which is the largest megapixel in a full-frame mirrorless camera in the market. so speaking of better image quality vs the DSLR, you must check out this camera.
You Can Go Beyond Full-Frame
Alright alright, we are talking about one narrow portion of the market here, which is owned by Fujifilm. This deserves to be mentioned because they are the only ones offering not one, nor two, but three mirrorless medium format cameras, at least at “reasonable” prices. Hasselblad has a couple of options as well, but those prices are just insane so they aren’t really an option for the masses, and since we aren’t part of that exclusive market, we’ll skip it by now.
Fujifilm decided to avoid developing full-frame mirrorless cameras, and instead, they embrace the journey of developing medium format cameras. There are three options available now, and the least expensive one is even cheaper than a high-end DSLR from Canon or Nikon. Sounds quite tempting huh?
Beyond that, other manufacturers have been developing full-frame mirrorless camera systems for quite a while now. And just recently, Canon and Nikon joined the party; kudos! Better late than never. This also has opened access to full-frame cameras to even more users since prices are more accessible as technology evolves. The only downside with this happening is that lenses have been needed to redesign, and some brands are still quite short in optical offer.
Adapters Make it Easier, And Fun!
And speaking of lenses, this opened a whole new market for adapters. The most famous ones are Metabones, but they are quite pricey though, but for someone with multiple expensive lenses, this should be a wise investment to make. These adapters make it possible to move from a previous DSLR set-up into the shiny world of mirrorless-cameras seamlessly, but it doesn’t stop there. Some adapters have even made it possible for film-era lenses to have a second breath, enabling a whole array of visual and creative possibilities. Oh, and many of these lenses are still easy to find in mint conditions and at cheap prices online and even some random swap meets.
Some other cons that have stopped people from moving forward into the present are battery life and device fragility. They both are true, although battery life has been enhanced with the years. But honestly, you can just simply shoot less and better photos, or you can carry around some spare batteries as many of us do. About that sensor being freely exposed, yeah, you folks (big brands) have access to high-quality translucent materials, can’t you just cover that thing in order to make it less easy to damage? Jeez!
We hope that you have cleared your mind of all that still thick confusion about DSLRs vs. Mirrorless Camera Systems. Please share your thoughts with us in the comment section below!
To learn photography by top photographers, check our Online Photography Courses.
Using light outdoors with Ali Al Rifai
Photography is all about capturing light in the most compelling possible ways. This sounds quite easy to achieve, and in many circumstances, the light won’t be calmly waiting for you to capture it in the most pleasing ways. You need to have a trained eye that knows how to react to specific lighting situations, and this is only achieved with practice. Today we want to share with you some bits of information that will make you a better photographer when the light isn’t as generous as you could wish it for.
Low light can be soothing, and it can transmit a huge amount of moody feelings. In fact, low light is sometimes preferred rather than abundant light, but you still need to know how to deal with light when it is scarce. Otherwise, you’ll end with shaky or very noisy photos. So without further ado, let’s talk about the best low light photography tips we can share with you!
1- Get to know your camera
Long gone are the days in which any photographer wouldn’t dare shooting with a higher-400 ISO value. Nowadays technology has become better in practically all senses, and that includes ISO behavior and sensitivity. This one depends on what sensor your camera has, and is extremely important that you get to know what your camera is capable of doing.
The best way for doing this is to shoot some test shots that include a generous amount of dark tones with various ISO settings. First, start with the base ISO value your camera has. Some cameras come with a base value of ISO 100, other cameras come with 200. Increase the ISO values on each shot, and after cranking it up sufficiently, zoom in the photos. As soon as you start noticing unpleasing noise, then you shouldn’t shoot further from that.
Some cameras will start showing nasty noise at ISO 3200, others at ISO 1600. Getting to know your camera in this way will allow you to take wiser exposure decisions when the time is needed, especially under low light situations.
2-Lenses matters
One of the most powerful elements that build exposure is aperture, which is the one with f/x values. These values are sometimes hard to understand, but if you see them as what they are, fractions, and you mentally change that “f” for a “1” you’ll understand it better. By selecting different aperture values you will be allowing more or less light to enter through your camera. Therefore, if you have a low light situation, what you think you should want to have?
If you said “more light”, then you are correct! What you need to do is exactly that, you need to allow your camera to “swallow” more light. Each lens is capable of allowing more or less light depending on the largest aperture value. Some lenses have a variable maximum aperture value, like a kit lens for example. These lenses usually achieve a maximum aperture of f/3.5 at 18mm and f/5.6 at 55mm. That is a sad price to pay, but it allows people to understand the importance of that extra stops of light that are lost when changing from 18mm to 55mm for example.
Some lenses are extremely useful under low-light situations, like those that can deal with aperture values of f/1.4 for example. As soon as you start browsing lenses out, you’ll notice that some are way more expensive than others. Among building materials and inside-electronics components, aperture values are a decisive feature of a lens price.
3-Keep everything still
A good tripod will be your best friend in photography, pretty much always. But attaching your camera to it isn’t all you need to do in order to shoot decent exposures at low light situations. You also need to make sure everything is completely still. Therefore, use a remote release or at least shoot in timer mode. If you are shooting with a DSLR make sure to learn how to block your camera’s mirror. Everything from that mirror to your finger in the shutter button produces shakiness, and being extra careful won’t harm your precious shots!
4- Learn more about practical lighting
Alright, this is something we are borrowing from the film industry, but it will make your photography way more capable under low-light situations. You’ll need to watch this video about how Stanley Kubrick rarely used professional lighting solutions in order to understand the concept. Oh, and trust us, he was one hell of a photographer too! Life-spoiler warning, after watching that video, you’ll sort of diminish certain artificial lights.
5- Nice and Slow
Many low-light situations are best approached when slow shutter speeds are used. Of course, a tripod or at least something to make sure your camera stays perfectly still will be mandatory. Anything gets well lit after the proper amount of time has elapsed, and the best part is that based on this principle, you can use ISO 100 for extremely clean results.
What about an experiment? Go to your living room in the middle of the night, make sure your camera is absolutely still at ISO 100 and f/5.6 if you wish, then crank the shutter speed to 15 or even 30 seconds, and then press the shutter button. You’ll see that your living room appears to be perfectly lit. That is the beautiful magic of photography, it allows us to capture the world in a way our eyes simply can’t.
6- Be patient
Mastering photography isn’t something you achieve out of the blue, you need to practice and you need to be patient. If you are in front of a scene that could appear to you in a better way at a different time of the day, then wait for it. If you can’t simply wait, then sacrifice a bit of image quality with ISO. The trick is to know that something is been given in order to capture a scene that has limitations involved.
7- Do some research
If you wish to shoot a specific scene, then do some research about which is the best time of day according to the available light (and people too). This tool might come in handy for this. Sun and weather are very easy to predict, and sometimes overcast days give a better lighting situation than a sunny one. If you see a storm coming down your way, don’t freak out. Manage to get your gear dry, and you’ll be able to take photos that will make you immediately stand up from regular and lazy photographers.
8- Hack the Autofocus
Autofocus is one of the biggest wonders of modern and contemporary photography but is still quite clumsy under low-light situations. One beautiful trick is to target a different portion of the scene that is relatively at the same distance as your main object of interest and then recompose. If this isn’t viable, you can also give a scene an extra light with your phone’s LED light.
9- Use manual focus
If you simply can’t hack the autofocus, then you can try something more powerful, the manual focus. We don’t advise to use manual focus mode always, but for some situations, it will be more useful than the autofocus. With manual focus, you can truly watch what your lens is focusing on, and there shouldn’t be missed.
Some cameras nowadays even allow you to watch all that is getting perfectly in focus via a feature called “focus peaking”. It sorts of sprinkles out what is in focus in the scene, and it has been designed exclusively for manual focus. This feature is sort of exclusive of mirrorless cameras, so you won’t be able to see this magic pixies on a DSLR camera, but you can always rely on your eye. Oh, and remember to calibrate your camera’s diopter to the proper focusing distance if you use prescription glasses on a regular basis.
Wrapping it up!
The only reason why light could feel like a very uneasy to predict thing is due to a lack of practice. You need to see photography as a physical discipline that requires training, just like any average sport. New coming photographers have a peculiar mindset, they think that practice isn’t much required in order to capture things in a beautiful way. If you ever feel like this (we all are guilty of this at least once, don’t feel bad about it), grab your camera, get out of your place, and start practicing again!
If you are able to read between the lines, you’ll see how we’ve covered the principles of the exposure triangle here, but in a more digestible way. The fundamental skill that you need to develop here is being able to expose properly in any lighting situation. We really hope that all these tips that we have shared with you here will actually make you a better photographer with time. On the next run, we’ll talk about the opposite, about how to shoot photographs with harsh light situations.
To learn photography by top photographers, check our Online Photography Courses.
Just like any other highly developed discipline, photography has a unique set of words that build up the jargon. Today we want to share with you photography tips and some of the most common words, and we’ll try to explain it in the best possible way we can! With these brief photography glossary, you’ll feel more comfortable when talking or reading about photography, especially in forums, workshops, and online courses.
Aperture: This is one of the principal building blocks behind exposure and one of the most abstract things to understand in photography. Aperture expresses itself in f-stops or f-values and can be read like this “f/5.6” or this “f/2.8” and even this “f/16”. At first, it always seems hard, but as long as you remember that these all are mathematical fractions, then you’ll have a better time remembering which value is smaller than others and vice versa. This value depends entirely on the lens and not the camera.
Bokeh: This is one of the most desired features in photography and refers to the way a section of the photograph blurs out due to focus. It has a strong relationship with aperture, and in recent years more and more people have come to accept that bokeh can’t be measured in “amounts” but in “visual quality”. A nice way for perceiving the relationship between aperture and bokeh is simply by placing one of your own fingers close to your eyes and focusing your stare on it. Can you see how everything else blurs out? That is basically how aperture produces bokeh.
Chimping: This refers to the constant habit of looking to the camera’s LCD screen immediately after taking every single photograph. This is something highly common with digital photography thanks to the ability of immediately being able to watch a photograph, but it can lead to missing some other great shots.
Crop: You can crop either on camera or in post-processing, and it simply refers to the act of framing a scene or re-framing it in the case of post-processing.
Depth of Field: Also known simply as DoF, is the distance between the nearest and farthest objects that are in sharp focus in your camera. Having shallow depths of field result in highly noticeable bokeh, and deeper depths of field depict focus throughout the whole image.
Dynamic Range: This is quite abstract, but it refers to the total amount of stops of light a sensor can handle. Alright, it is still quite dull, but a nice perspective is to compare it with our own human eyes. We humans are on average able to handle 20 stops of light, really expensive cameras are able to handle up to 15 nowadays. Pro-tip, when investing in a camera, look for the dynamic range rather than the megapixels.
Focal Length: This is the proper way to measure a lens, and it comes in millimeters. Anything below 50mm is considered to be wide, and anything further from 50mm is tele. 50mm refers to “normal” since it is the most alike length to the human eyes.
Full-frame: This refers to a sensor that has the same size as a single 35mm film frame. Remember those pieces of negative from the analog photography days? Well, that is a 35mm frame.
Gear Acquisition Syndrome (GAS): This is quite funny, and we all photographers have suffered it a little bit at some point. It is simply the crave or need of getting more and more gear (cameras, flashes, lenses, bags, straps, you name it).
High-Key: This is a creative technique, and it happens when a photographer decides to create an image with extreme amounts of brightness. These photos can be extremely white, depicting just a hint of the object or subject, and they are quite hard to achieve in a pleasing way.
Histogram: This is one of the best tools we have in digital photography, it is a visual interpretation of all the light registered by our camera, and it splits into 255 bars or channels that reproduce a nice and smooth histogram. Learning how to read them takes a bit of time, but is the best way for knowing how your photograph has been exposed.
Hot Shoe: Have you ever seen a clip-like piece of an electronic metal component at the top of your camera? Well, that is the hot-shoe, and it serves as the communication hub between your camera and other devices like remote triggers and flashes.
ISO: Perhaps the easiest to understand building-block from exposure. ISO controls how the sensor inside your camera behaves in relation to the light. The higher the number, the more sensitive to light it becomes. This is extremely practical for low light situations, but don’t rush into it! This comes with a mighty price, as you increase the sensitivity, you also increase the amount of noise your camera will show in a photograph. This is achieved via electricity, so the more sensitive you make it, the more static it will have, hence the amount of noise. Cameras have evolved quite impressively, and noise is almost unnoticeable at ISO values as high as 1600, but before going nuts with it, test your camera and see how further can you crank up that ISO.
Lens Hood: Have you ever seen those nice things photographers attach to the front of their lenses? Well, these are called lens hoods, and all camera manufacturers should sell lenses with them. Every single lens has been engineered to render light in a specific way, and hoods have been designed to go along with these lenses, so shame on those who sell them separately. Avoid generic hoods since they won’t create the proper correction for your lens.
Long Exposure: This refers to the act of taking a slow photograph, anything with a shutter speed longer than 1 second is considered to be a long exposure. You think that 1 second is fast, don’t you? In photography, 1 second is almost an eternity.
Low-Key: this is the exact opposite of high-key, it is a very dark photograph that has been created like this intentionally (or at least that is what we expect).
Nifty Fifty: For some amazing reason, certain camera manufacturers have built some cheap yet powerful 50mm lenses. Canon and Nikon to be precise, and they are more or less within the $100 range, and they are an amazing early upgrade in photography.
Prime: Any lens that hasn’t the ability of zooming in and out is a prime lens, and they come with fixed focal lengths like 28mm, 35mm, 50mm, 85mm, 100mm.
Shutter Speed: The last but not the least exposure building block, but perhaps the most fun to work with. Shutter speed controls the amount of time your camera is open to receive and register light. This enables photographers to both freeze motion and register movement in ways that are simply impossible for our human eyes to record. Anything between 1/60 to 1/250 of a second will be useful for regular photographs, anything below will start depicting huge amounts of motion, and higher values will freeze movement, but will start to look darker if you don’t have the proper lighting and lenses.
Stop: This is the standard measurement for light. Exposure is measured in this value, and all the aforementioned building blocks (aperture, ISO and shutter speed) workaround stops of light.
Telephoto: This refers to any lens that goes beyond 50mm, some of them can be extremely big, and are usually used in wild-life photography and sports, or any other circumstance in which getting physically close is nearly impossible to achieve.
Uncle Bob: Pretty much a soft insult or derogatory name used by professional or semi-professional photographers to refer to casual users with huge cameras getting inside their frames. This happens a lot in weddings and other social events in which the main hosts have hired a photographer and have to deal with these characters.
Vignette: A slight gradient bordering the photograph. Excessive use of it will look funny, and slight can be almost unnoticed. Good vignetting has to have a purpose, and there is not an exact recipe for handling it properly.
White balance: This feature refers to the way your camera will register light’s temperature, and it spans from cold to warm. This is measured in Kelvin degrees, but we won’t go into further details about but the following: Tungsten, Fluorescent, Daylight, Flash, Cloudy and Shade. They all have precise kelvin values that span between 2,500 K to 10,000 K. The true power of white balance happens in post-production when developing our raw files. By adjusting this you can create completely different moods for your photos from dark and spooky to cozy and romantic simply by sliding the temperature. Hence the importance of shooting in raw, because as long as you have the raw file, you can leave the WB in your camera in Auto mode, and you shouldn’t worry too much about it.
Wide Angle: If anything above 50mm is considered to be a telephoto, anything below 50mm is considered to be wide-angle. There are mid-wide lenses (24mm~35mm), which distort reality in beautiful ways, and they are highly popular in street photography and photojournalism. And there are some heavy wide-angle lenses (anything below 18mm) which are best used in small places in order to capture everything going on inside of them.
There are many other words that build up the slang, and we highly encourage you to read more about them. Please share some of the photography tips and the words you have heard and have no clue about, or just toss around the ones you use the most!
To learn photography by top photographers, check our Online Photography Courses.
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