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Manchester Street photography
- Thread starter Niall
- Start date
Rob
ClioSport Moderator
Some cracking photos there, definitely captured that morning feeling.
50mm on full frame and 35mm on a crop is meant to be the 'what you see' range.
The Nikon 50mm f1.4 is ok, but its slow to focus and matched on sharpness by the much cheaper 50mm f1.8 which is not only lighter, but has a much faster focus speed. Unless you truely need f1.4, and you are on a budget, the f1.8 is a real Nikon bargain, and alongside the 35mm f1.8 you have two gems in Nikons line up for very little money.
Sigma looks like a superb lens and cracking pics too.
The Nikon 50mm f1.4 is ok, but its slow to focus and matched on sharpness by the much cheaper 50mm f1.8 which is not only lighter, but has a much faster focus speed. Unless you truely need f1.4, and you are on a budget, the f1.8 is a real Nikon bargain, and alongside the 35mm f1.8 you have two gems in Nikons line up for very little money.
Sigma looks like a superb lens and cracking pics too.
Thanks guys, yeah from testing my 50 by looking through the viewfinder and then away again I think that 50 is closest to what you see with your eye, everything seemed the same just with the black box of the inside of the camera around it, but whether it is or not is irrelevant to shooting really.
If I turned out the images you do when I was 15 I would be much better now at twice your age plus erm 7 
I did GCSE toggling too but had to use a manual zenit camera it didn't even have a light meter, let alone autofocus! Wasn't until I was 21 that I had an autofocus Minolta SLR which may explain why I shoot sony now!
That said what improved me the most was feedback on forums and being able to afford nice kit and filters and the instability of digital imaging rather than having to wait a week or so or even save for your rolls of film to be developed and then being pissed off because the cheap printers you used we're crap!
I did GCSE toggling too but had to use a manual zenit camera it didn't even have a light meter, let alone autofocus! Wasn't until I was 21 that I had an autofocus Minolta SLR which may explain why I shoot sony now! That said what improved me the most was feedback on forums and being able to afford nice kit and filters and the instability of digital imaging rather than having to wait a week or so or even save for your rolls of film to be developed and then being pissed off because the cheap printers you used we're crap!
Yeah photography was a lot more technical and skilful back then, you not only had to be good at taking the photos themselves you also had to be skilled in the dark room, but just as everything else, things move on and make it easier for the user.
GCSE photography is somewhat of a joke though to be honest, the things that you learn have barely any relation to real world photography and the fact that you aren’t judged by the merits of your photos but more the research that goes behind them and the processing after you’ve taken them annoys me given that a client in the real world doesn’t care what research into other photographers you’ve done, only the images that you are producing, so it is more of a fine art sort of course. I find it all very rudimentary due to doing what we’re doing in class about 3 years previous, but at least I can use images from outside of the classroom for my projects which given the extent of my photography outside of school makes it very easy to put a whole project together very easily.
As you say, improvement comes from having gear that you’re comfortable with and then learning techniques from the abundance of sources on the internet, you can’t listen to everybody on the internet because there’s no sure way of determining the value of someones opinion with photography being such a subjective thing. Mostly though, self-criticism is the biggest factor in your improvement, I’m incredibly self-critical with my photography and have found myself deleting streams of photos on Flickr until I’m happy with them, I also find myself thinking about the shots more and then also weeding out the poor ones.
GCSE photography is somewhat of a joke though to be honest, the things that you learn have barely any relation to real world photography and the fact that you aren’t judged by the merits of your photos but more the research that goes behind them and the processing after you’ve taken them annoys me given that a client in the real world doesn’t care what research into other photographers you’ve done, only the images that you are producing, so it is more of a fine art sort of course. I find it all very rudimentary due to doing what we’re doing in class about 3 years previous, but at least I can use images from outside of the classroom for my projects which given the extent of my photography outside of school makes it very easy to put a whole project together very easily.
As you say, improvement comes from having gear that you’re comfortable with and then learning techniques from the abundance of sources on the internet, you can’t listen to everybody on the internet because there’s no sure way of determining the value of someones opinion with photography being such a subjective thing. Mostly though, self-criticism is the biggest factor in your improvement, I’m incredibly self-critical with my photography and have found myself deleting streams of photos on Flickr until I’m happy with them, I also find myself thinking about the shots more and then also weeding out the poor ones.
Not sure I would describe fine art photography as personal use, the lines have become very mixed, look at newspaper photos most are dire but some are really very good, same with wedding photography and car photography. I would wager there's nothing you need to learn about the technical aspects of photography, at lest with your current style. There's a whe world out there of learning for all of us when it comes to artistic and creativity.
Yes there is that, but on the whole not everybody on the course is at that stage, the artistic side is important but when it gets to the point of copying somebody's work I think it loses touch with your personal creative drive, and I think that your own creative drive is something that should be taken into account when getting marks in the subject, for instance your own ideas and techniques and then ultimately the image itself, that's what'll make the difference in the real world of photography.
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