Kory - Human Statue Project - January 2015 (Canon 70D)
In this case, Canon’s excellent EF-S 60mm Macro (one of the few lenses I almost regret from my APS-C DSLR days) proved quite the worthwhile instrument to capture Kory’s pensive expression. It provided the speed I needed for the shot, whereas I did not really need a particularly shallow field as I was shooting in studio. Although I wish the shot could have been a bit wider, well, it was not. At the time, the 60mm Macro was the only 50mm-ish lens that you could get for the Canon system with a decent focusing system without shelling out well over a thousand dollars, which I did not have at the time.
My mood is such right now that what I want to talk about now is to defend something that no one is really attacking and, to the extent that it is under attack, well, just about everyone readily knows the answers to. Needless as it may be, the subject does give me the opportunity to reminisce about past shoots and wax philosophical about something that probably does not even really deserve it, so I’ll give it a go anyway.
It also provides me with an opportunity to share some photos, which I have not done for some time in any format, including some which I may not ultimately include in my portfolio when it goes live on this website. (The photo above will almost certainly make the cut, as it has to be one of my all-time favorites.)
It also is always a bit fun to indulge in some gear talk, but I like it to be more about anal retentive evaluation (which I gorge on every week on YouTube, even if it’s about gear I have no interest in nor could even afford to buy) of any given lens’s sharpness or any given body’s dynamic range.
Fox - Geisha in Bloom Project - May 2014 (Canon 60D)
The Geisha in Bloom shoot is one of the first model shoots where I feel like I got worthwhile images which, while not perfect, I would not hesitate to put into my portfolio. Here, using the excellent 70-300L at a moderate telephoto focal length, I was able to compress the distant background behind the model and achieve reasonable subject separation. (I would be lying if I said this approach was deliberate on my part - it is only later that I learned to analyze the situation in a such a way.) I also did rather well with the EF-S 60mm Macro I used for the photo above, but my attempts to really achieve ‘optimal’ subject separation with the 35mm f/2 lens I had were limited with the relatively poor autofocus accuracy I had to deal with on the 60D - such troubles did not abate when using the same lens with the 70D.
And, let’s be honest, most of us here who are taking the public health advisories seriously have way too much time on their hands. My apartment, as it were, it rather small, and there are only so many ways in which I can clean up and optimize space. So here I am shooting off (pun intended?) about something that no one seriously cares about. (The only ways in which I could be even less productive would be by playing video games or by watching ‘television’, but even that has gotten old by now, and my back is asking me for a break from slouching on my couch.)
At the very least, writing about such a non-argument as the validity and usefulness of the APS-C camera format does provide somewhat of a relief from the incessant doom and gloom of current times.
I wish I could tell you that this will be a highly methodological argument offer point and counterpoint to the (real/perceived/imagined) critics of the APS-C format, but that would go right against the very premise of this post, which is that the subject does not really even deserve such rigor.
Fallen Kingdom Project - July 2014 (Canon 70D)
The period between my T1i and the 70D must be one where I had a tragically high turnover of cameras, going from one to the next while hoping to get the performance I wished out of it. Although the 70D went on to become the APS-C camera that I might have used the most (in terms of photos taken with it throughout ownership) and possibly still only second to the 6D, this was not a period of contentment. I cannot prove this, of course, but I am still convinced to this day that Canon’s 20MP APS-C sensor and autofocus system had something not quite right, in how I never really trusted it, much less so than those of the cameras I had previously owned. This lack of trust proved reasonable in this case as, despite my doing pretty much everything ‘right’, I did not manager to nail focus on this image at f/2.5.
It does not actually detract from my liking the image, even to this day, as I’m writing about it. However, my belief that sharpness is not a substitute or even necessarily an ingredient for art does not conflict with my belief that a photo, especially a portrait, should be sharp by default, at the exposure stage. I am not sure which quality is lacking the most in this photo - either its sharpness or the overall aesthetic outcome this lent itself to - but, judging by the awkward lack of response I got from the model when I shared this photos and others reasonably similar, she certainly thought something was missing… could it have contributed to my genuinely not remembering her name?
I will prove that last point right away by almost taking away APS-C’s merit for its own praise (which I’ve not even yet really started to talk about yet) by saying that, technically, it feels like APS-C owes its revival almost entirely thanks to the advent of mirrorless cameras. Before, in the DSLR days, it seems like the overwhelmingly dominant companies, Canon and Nikon, treated APS-C as an afterthought, for those without either the budget or genuine enough commitment to photography to even consider going full frame. The feature set and quality of the cameras mostly followed from that philosophy: by and large, APS-C cameras were outfitted with far inferior autofocus systems (generally less coverage, less responsiveness than their full frame cousins). Dynamic range was limited - particularly problematic on those pesky reflex systems, especially for the noobs (like myself) they were marketed to and who purchased them.
Only time will tell how Canon will approach APS-C in its RF line-up, but one can only hope that some parts of the M system (which, despite being a good idea on paper, suffered greatly from its execution) will be Canon’s answer. The M system really did prioritize lenses that were usable in the scenarios that most people would use them for, though Canon’s snobbishness at APS-C certainly was showing in the relative lack of quality of those same lenses.
Lily & Patrick - Eyal Zimmermann Fashion Show - October 2014 (Canon 70D)
Could having had a fast lens that could have melted way this comically ugly background made for a better photo? Possibly. Though I for one am always wary of context when taking even portraits - people do not fly out in the void represented by a miasma of color, and I would like that to remain an important element of my portrait photography going forward, now that such a miasma is more and more accessible with the faster lenses I’ve acquired over the past year.
Patrick & Samantha - Eyal Zimmermann Fashion Show - October 2014 (Canon 70D)
Certainly, I am happy, and I know in this case that they themselves were, of the photos I took of them as a recently married couple (if I recall correctly). It was an early vote of confidence I had in my photographic ‘career’, and a welcome one after the Fallen Kingdom ‘debacle’. Frankly, most of the time where you are looking more at the background than at the subjects might be indicative of the lack of interest generated by a particular photo. (I’ve still had photos ruined by poor subject separation, but ironically I feel it’s happened to me more on full frame than on APS-C...)
To the extent that Nikon is caring at all for APS-C in their entry in the mirrorless market, they are still more interested in fairly basic lenses even after having produced what seems like a rather successful body in the Z50. However, this impression might be due to Nikon having arguably completely fumbled its entry into mirrorless. It still appears that they have significantly changed its paradigm from when they were sharing dominance of the DSLR market with Canon, producing pretty basic, slow, and even poorly designed lenses for its APS-C system. Going by their full frame lens roadmap, one wonders if they could become totally marginalized before they even solidify their APS-C offerings.
To be honest, though, I cannot that I particularly care about Nikon’s fate in the camera market. In my little time using a Nikon DSLR, I found it about as unergonomic as anything you could think of - not sure why people find those comfortable, maybe the Z line is better - and just downright ugly: I don’t care much for yellow.
A frog sitting in a pond/swamp in around Mud Lake, Ottawa, sometime in the second decade of the third Millennium since that arbitrary Year Zero. (To hell with mathematics and logic, there WAS a Year Zero!)
Taken with a Canon 60D paired with the 70-300L (just to be contrarian with the point I’ll try to make below).
Wildlife and birds, it’s where it’s at for APS-C, at least for those like me with a (relatively) slim wallet and (definite) chicken arms. Aside from a very few exceptions, it is hard to find a quality lens to shoot wildlife/birds with (personally, if we are talking in full frame terms, I’ve always found it hard to get good bird shots at a 400mm focal length) that will not break the bank or my literal back to carry them. Therefore, most full frame options are out - Canon did release interesting f/11 600 and 800mm primes, but even these are sufficiently big while lacking versatility that I would not see myself packing them in my camera bag ‘just in case’ I encountered birds on a trip, and I also could not see myself using either of those, even the 600mm, as a travel telephoto to capture details in a urban environment.
Sony has what looks to me like the best compromise lens in that regard, the excellent 70-350. It offers a very versatile telephoto focal length in a relatively light and cheap package which delivers photos that are sharp, compressed, and nearly free of distortion and chromatic aberrations. Of course, the only APS-C cameras that you can pair it with are rangefinder-style and lack a good offering of good zooms - when it comes to APS-C, Sony truly is all over the map - Sigma and Zeiss offer well-reviewed primes. However, I personally prefer to travel with zooms, especially when Sony sensors are such dust magnets.
This, for me, constitutes a strong disincentive to invest too much in the Sony APS-C system.
Mural in Ottawa, not too far northwards from Bank/Flora Streets, circa summer 2020.
I still like the portability of new APS-C offerings for travel/urban applications. If there is anything that has often held me back from taking a photo while traveling is simply not wanting to pull out my camera from its bag, but with the relatively compact offerings by Sony and Fuji, this reluctance could very well be a thing of the past. There only has got to be decent lenses to pair with these cameras, however, for the kind of enthusiastic but definitely not professional photographer that I am.
It seems like my rant has just led me to pour out the opinions about the different APS-C systems are (and not really) out in the market, I might as well spare a few thoughts for what is arguably the most advanced APS-C system out there, Fuji’s.
As opposed to other companies, Fuji developed an APS-C system with the idea that advanced users might be interested in getting compact cameras that can be paired with premium lenses that are fast and compact, offering a number of ultra wide angle and standard zooms - which would be perfect for most vacation situations.
I would like to go over my complaints about each and every zoom from what I’ve seen, but the bottom line for me for those I have used is that their autofocusing capabilities seem unreliable, almost as much as with a DSLR, meaning that obtaining that one cannot really expect a sharp-by-default image, as much as I seem to be able to do so with Sony.
Dinner is served at the Kex Hostel in Reykjavik - July 2018.
Food porn, one of the lowest forms of photography, and one I do not really want to have to give up, as it is such a staple of any travel album. Which makes me wonder: what is the ideal minimum focusing distance and magnification for optimal casual food porn?
Which brings me to the wonderful Sony system that everyone knows. The a7 III is a wonderful camera, it has decent ergonomics, IQ and AF that hold up pretty well, and a compact form factor. It is also complemented by a series of excellent cheap lenses by Tamron, which make 2.8 zooms which are normally super expensive rather accessible. As first glance, Tamron lenses are a bit big for travel, but not so much that this option would be rejected out of hand. Maybe it could actually be my future travel kit? Not sure.
At this point, I am not even sure what point I truly wanted to make with this post, nor how I really wanted to make it. Nevertheless, it has allowed me to do one part of what I had wanted to do, and that is to reminisce about past shooting experiences, relive tiny bits of past vacations, and just recognize how much I have learned since I picked up my first APS-C camera close to a decade ago.