Photography lovers are a funny sort. When I was using a simple point and shoot camera, they took every opportunity to lecture me on the joys of "real photography," which according to them could be done only on a digital single reflex lens (DSLR) camera - those bulky cameras which every professional photographer carried and seemed to come with a dozen lenses apiece. However, no sooner had I turned up with a Canon EOS 600D DSLR camera than their tunes changed. Radically.
"A DSLR? What are you doing with a DSLR? You are the chap that clicks pictures with cellphones and point and shooters. What do you want a DSLR for?"
Well, the first entry in my DSLR blog seems the best place to explain this.
Not all roses...
Mind you, I can appreciate their outrage. For, all said and done, I really do not know that much about cameras, apart from clicking the button to take a snap. Photography for me has largely been about getting the subject in the viewfinder, waiting for auto focus to kick in, and then hitting the shutter. Thanks to the wonders of digital photography and storage, I can take dozens of snaps and hope that one will come out right - something that was impossible in the days of film, unless one had pockets deep as oceans.
But I digress. To return to the matter of using a DSLR camera, a few years ago, one could have said that the best reason for using them was the fact that they simply took better photographs, as they boasted better lenses and processors and the like. That cannot be said to be the case today. The emergence of the prosumer segment has seen the coming of cameras that have very good lenses, processors and even super zooms. You can take some terrific pictures with them as well, and without the need to fiddle with lenses.
So why should one use a DSLR? They are generally more bulky, have more buttons to mess around with and are therefore more difficult to use, and last but not least, cost a pretty penny (the EOS 600D costs around Rs 47,000 with the most basic lens - more than a desktop computer!)?
I wanna be in..CONTROL
The answer can be summed up in one word: control.
As one of my photographer friends explained to me, "In a point and shoot camera, it is more often than not the camera that takes the picture. In a DSLR, it is you who takes the picture. Because you can control just about every aspect of the photograph. With a point and shoot, you are mainly a photographer. With a DSLR, you are an artiste, as you control so much of the picture that you take."
All right, so that might be a bit of an exaggeration, but the stark fact is that the biggest charm of a DSLR camera are those very buttons and lenses that seem so intimidating to casual shutterbugs like me. You can change a lens as per your requirements. You can tweak buttons to take shots in different conditions. You can blur the background...the list is endless.
Yes, DSLR cameras are also faster at auto focus, have lesser time lags between the hitting of the shutter button and the taking of the picture (so you end up taking pictures of what you saw rather than what the camera saw a few seconds AFTER you saw the same thing), and generally serve up better images than other cameras.
But what makes them special is the control they give to the person behind the lens. In very simple terms, it kind of separates the casual photographer from the serious one.
Which is exactly what I am trying to become. Hence the DSLR. Hence blog. Stay tuned to see what havoc I wreak.
"A DSLR? What are you doing with a DSLR? You are the chap that clicks pictures with cellphones and point and shooters. What do you want a DSLR for?"
Well, the first entry in my DSLR blog seems the best place to explain this.
Not all roses...
Mind you, I can appreciate their outrage. For, all said and done, I really do not know that much about cameras, apart from clicking the button to take a snap. Photography for me has largely been about getting the subject in the viewfinder, waiting for auto focus to kick in, and then hitting the shutter. Thanks to the wonders of digital photography and storage, I can take dozens of snaps and hope that one will come out right - something that was impossible in the days of film, unless one had pockets deep as oceans.
But I digress. To return to the matter of using a DSLR camera, a few years ago, one could have said that the best reason for using them was the fact that they simply took better photographs, as they boasted better lenses and processors and the like. That cannot be said to be the case today. The emergence of the prosumer segment has seen the coming of cameras that have very good lenses, processors and even super zooms. You can take some terrific pictures with them as well, and without the need to fiddle with lenses.
So why should one use a DSLR? They are generally more bulky, have more buttons to mess around with and are therefore more difficult to use, and last but not least, cost a pretty penny (the EOS 600D costs around Rs 47,000 with the most basic lens - more than a desktop computer!)?
I wanna be in..CONTROL
The answer can be summed up in one word: control.
As one of my photographer friends explained to me, "In a point and shoot camera, it is more often than not the camera that takes the picture. In a DSLR, it is you who takes the picture. Because you can control just about every aspect of the photograph. With a point and shoot, you are mainly a photographer. With a DSLR, you are an artiste, as you control so much of the picture that you take."
All right, so that might be a bit of an exaggeration, but the stark fact is that the biggest charm of a DSLR camera are those very buttons and lenses that seem so intimidating to casual shutterbugs like me. You can change a lens as per your requirements. You can tweak buttons to take shots in different conditions. You can blur the background...the list is endless.
Yes, DSLR cameras are also faster at auto focus, have lesser time lags between the hitting of the shutter button and the taking of the picture (so you end up taking pictures of what you saw rather than what the camera saw a few seconds AFTER you saw the same thing), and generally serve up better images than other cameras.
But what makes them special is the control they give to the person behind the lens. In very simple terms, it kind of separates the casual photographer from the serious one.
Which is exactly what I am trying to become. Hence the DSLR. Hence blog. Stay tuned to see what havoc I wreak.
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