I was on the light rail transit this morning, commuting to a business meeting at the other end of town, when I saw this guy with a Canon EOS camera on the train.  That would have been perfectly normal, carrying a camera around, but I do remember a memo a while back stating that taking pictures inside the train is subject to a fine.  (The reason for the warning is pretty obscure, but it was a way of telling peeping toms not to take stolen shots of passengers with their cell phone cameras, spy cameras or any other camera.)

At the end of the line, the photographer and his guide, walked to the connecting station to ride the other train.  Since I was also on my way to the other line, I didn’t pay much attention to this as I was deep in my own thoughts.  Until I saw him raise his camera and casually took a shot of a security guard.  The photographer was walking towards the pair of security personnel, raised the camera with one hand, and without looking through the viewfinder shot straight ahead.  I noted that he didn’t use any flash and that the LCD didn’t have a LiveView feature.  After taking the shot, he continued walking with his guide, who seemed to be acquainted with the security people, as if nothing happened.

On taking the train on the next line, I didn’t notice the pair at first.  It seems that they got on to a train prior to the one I rode.  After two stops, here was the pair again, stepping into the train and casually continuing their conversation.  The photographer again was very casual, asking questions and giving observations.  It seems that this was the first time he ever commuted on the light rail system.  On one shot he did take the time to look through the viewfinder, but on two other shots, he just raised his hand and pointed the camera to shoot.

While I found this to be too casual a method of taking pictures, I did find some method to what he was doing.  I was able to see one of the pictures he shot when he reviewed the picture immediately after shooting it.  It showed a vanishing point of lines pointing towards the center.  The lines were the posts, and ceiling and vents all pointing towards the end of the train cab.

Thinking about it and understanding the process, I can see that at least he was repeating a process which he most probably already did with the other train lines.  Alternatively, it was also possible that he had already studied the shots he wanted to take and just took them without any need of looking through the viewfinder.  It did help a lot that he had a good camera, with a good auto-focus and light metering.  The process of taking pictures looked less technical and he could concentrate on what he wanted to shoot, and if he repeated the process with several trains, he can choose which one would be best among other like pictures.

My son took out the old Canon SLR camera during the weekend and started asking technical questions.  He’s been playing around with the Kodak ZR lately, and as part of his school curriculum, they’d be studying photography next year.

 

He’s a late bloomer, as his younger sister has been interested in photography since she was in grade school, and using the Canon.  I’ve retired the SLR a while back and was using a motley group of digital point-and-shoots from Sony, Pentax, Fuji and Canon.

 

To answer his questions I had to go back to the basics of photography:  light, and the capture of light.  After a short discussion where we also connected the Kodak to the TV in order to better see the metering and on-screen info, he started a more thorough study of the manual SLR.  It’s not really a full manual, but in order to explain the relationship of the camera elements, I had to use the manual features.

 

Even with the use of a point-and-shoot and digital cameras, it all boils down to the capture of light and the relationship of the focal length, the aperture, and the shutter speed.  (Admittedly, the ISO rating is slowly losing significance.)  And the best way to explain the inter-relationship of these elements is to use a manual setting.

 

I gave my son an assignment:  to use the old Canon SLR to take some shots and study how to use the controls.  We will, of course, have to buy film for that exercise.

 

I also pointed out the depth-of-field markers on the Canon’s 50mm lens.  It’s quite hard to explain the concept of depth of field if your digital camera has a very deep depth of field, where everything is in focus.  Though it has interesting effects for various shots.

 

During further discussion, I explained that there are some shots where the only option is to use the camera’s manual settings.  And, in fact, there are some circumstances where it would be faster to shot multiple subjects or take multiple shots with the manual settings.  This is due to the auto-focus taking up to two seconds (depending on the camera) to properly read the subject.  I’ve ruined shots because of the auto-focus feature.

 

And I am still not too trusting of a digital camera’s white-balance.

 

On a whim, I took out some old copies of photo magazines and showed him a photo of the regular gear carried by an Italian photojournalist, Ferdinando Scianna.  When on assignment, Scianna carried six SLRs.  He uses  four Nikons with prime lenses,  two of which are full manual camera FM2s.  He uses the FM2s for their mechanical reliability, and besides, these don’t have any batteries.  His other Nikons are a N6006 and a N8008.  The prime lenses on the Nikons were 24mm, 35mm, 50mm and 180mm. He also carried a Canon EOS 10S with 20-35mm zoom and a titanium-bodied Olympus OM-4T with a 70-210mm zoom.  That was in 1992.

 

Nowadays, I doubt if there is any reason why a professional photographer would use a manual camera.  Except for the concern of running out of battery power for a photo journalist.

Ask any portraitist or advanced (amateur/professional/hobbyist) photographer and they’d tell you that the hardest subject to take a picture of is a kid.

There are several reasons for this.  The most obvious is that kids have short attention spans.  Another reason is that it’s hard to give directions to kids, as a rule, they don’t follow.  Worse is if the kid is old enough and likes to ham it up before the camera.

However, one viewpoint I can present for this is that the photographer doesn’t have the time to take the shot.  For all the photographer’s preparations, the kid will not cooperate.  Composition is an exercise in dynamics.  In this context, taking pictures of kids is like taking pictures of a fast-paced sports event, or of a photojournalism assignment.  Just a little bit more frustrating because you want to finish the shot as soon as possible.

Patience is a virtue.  Specially when it comes to kids as photo subjects.  Seriously.  The best way to take a kid’s picture is to wait. and wait very patiently.  The alternative is to keep on shooting.  There’s got to be a good shot in there sometime.  When using film there seems that there’s not enough film in the camera.  And it’s a good thing digital cameras came along.

An old rule of thumb for professional photographers, is that out of three rolls of film (each of 36 shots), you’ve be lucky to have one very good picture.  That’s roughly one shot in a hundred.  With careful composition, and lots of patience, this number can be trimmed down to one good picture for every roll.  If you’re not picky, you can just choose one out of every ten. This is particularly true of kids.

However, when using a digital camera and playing with those numbers it just makes lots of sense to keep on shooting.  Of course, when you do that, there would be less composition, more pictures which are off-focus and blurred, you might not have the depth of field you want, and other problems.  The numbers would go up just to find that one picture.  And then you go back to the original problem:  how many pictures of ears and napes does it take before you get that one good picture with the distinctive facial expression?

Me, I’d rather wait, and wait patiently, with the camera aimed at the subject, taking the shot inside my head before taking a picture.   I have found that this is more fun than the shotgun approach.