1 Introduction
Last
year (2013), more than half the photographs taken, world-wide, were
taken with mobile phones. It's an impressive achievement for the
phone industry but it begs the question, “What were the rest taken
with?”
Cameras,
obviously. Mobile phones are handy but they only fill a niche. Here's
a brief history of that niche:
History
lesson
February
1900 – The 1st Box Brownie camera was launched.
Suddenly, everyone could take photographs. The snapshot was born.
November
1948 – Polaroid started selling the Land Camera: The first in a
long line of instant, self developing film cameras. Among other
things, naughty pictures of the wife became a real possibility.
December
1989 – The Fuji DS-X was the first mass market digital camera. It
was the beginning of the end for film cameras.
November
2000 – J-Phone launched the 1st mass market camera
phone. This was the first truly 21st century paradigm
shift.
The
rise and rise of social media would not have happened without this
technology. 'Taking photos' is higher on the list of top ten uses for
a smart phone than 'making phone calls' is. Using it as a phone is
only 6th on the list of smart phone uses.
The
state of play today
So
now, as you read this, you've probably got a phone within reach that
gets more use as a camera than all the film camera's you've ever
owned. Here's another mind-blowing statistic: More than 10% of all
the photographs ever taken, were taken in 2013.
The
reason for the massive increase in photographic activity is it's
easy. Digital cameras just work. You point, you click, you have a
photo. You don't need a light meter reading, you don't have to know
about ISOs or F-stops, you don't even have to focus... And you can
take as many as you want because you're not wasting film. It's a
brute force approach to getting the good shot.
Yet,
with such a simple alternative so readily available, there are still
those who crave the complexity of “proper photography”. For them,
there are the DSLRs: the evolutionary descendants of the once
all-powerful 35mm Single Lens Reflex cameras. There is no comparison
between DSLRs and camera phones. It would be pointless.
And
between simple-but-limited and complex-but-versatile, occupying the
middle ground, there are all the other digital cameras. They range
from simple point-and-shoot pocket-friendly (cost and size) cameras,
through various levels of bells-and-whistles, to the compact system
cameras that are challenging DSLR supremacy right now.
Enough
waffle! This book is about one small part of that vast range of
options: The bridge camera.
A
Bridge camera, sometimes called a super-zoom camera, is a result of
lots of compromises: Less portable than a camera phone but more
portable than a DSLR; Better picture quality than a camera phone but
poorer quality than a DSLR; more options than a camera phone but less
than a DSLR; more expensive than a camera phone (because who pays
list price for a phone?) but lots cheaper than a DSLR.
A
bridge camera is a jack-of-all-trades sort of camera that'll handle
most types of photography passingly well but not well enough to
satisfy a professional.
I'm
a geek. All my friends would say as much. I love technology, worked
in computing for many years and actually know what makes my many
gadgets work. So it came as a surprise to many when I didn't buy a
DSLR: Surely I'd like all those options and settings and twiddly
knobs and upgrade options and stuff?
It
goes to show how misunderstood I am. Yes, I love techie-toys and like
to know how everything works, but I don't want to do manual
repetitive tasks that can easily be automated. That, IMHO, is what
technology is for.
So
I bought a bridge camera (10 years ago) and then another bridge
camera (this year) and my next camera will probably be a bridge
camera too. After 10 years using one, I am still comfortable with the
compromises and convinced that they represent the best value in
photography.
The
Budget
My
new camera was less than £260, which in camera terms is dirt cheap.
In fact, it's about half the price of a top-end phone.
One
of the themes of this book is 'getting better pictures on a budget'.
I hope to show you just how much camera you get for that sort of
money. What I won't be doing is rewriting the handbook or getting
into the many settings options available if you stray from the
righteous path of Auto Mode.
How
not to (have to) learn photography
This
is very much a personal journey for me, written over the course of
one year with my new camera. As such, I'm not setting out to write a
how-to-do-it book so much as a why-you-might-want-to-do it book.
This
is about enjoying the art of photography without having to learn the
science of photography.
Because
I believe in letting the camera do so much of the work, Most of this
book is concerned with what happens after you press the button: image
editing.
Photoshop
is not cheating. Nor is it as difficult as many seem to believe. I'll
take you through a few simple tools and techniques that will get the
most from your photographs. Certainly, you'll be able to do a lot
more than those image tweaking apps on your phone... unless starry
borders are really your thing.
I'll
show you some of the more advanced tools in action too. Hopefully,
I'll persuade some of you to give them a try.
Finally,
I'll discuss a few of my own projects to give you some ideas of how
you can use your photographs for something else besides Facebook.
I've
already persuaded two DSLR users and a pocket camera user to buy the
same bridge camera as me, as a second camera. It wasn't my powers of
rhetoric that persuaded them, so much as my photographs. With that in
mind, you're going to see a lot of my photos too.
That's
not me saying “Look what I can do”. It's me saying “Look what
you can do”. I have no special training, no special talent and no
special equipment. I'm just a bloke with a cheap camera, some cheap
software and a little bit of knowledge gained the hard way, by trial
and error. I truly believe that anyone can learn to do the few things
I've learned to do.
If
that sounds like I'm getting my apologies in early, well, yes it is.
I apologize to anyone expecting more than a (very) short book about
how to take better pictures than your phone does, with very little
investment of cash or effort.
How
do you get to Carnegie Hall?
The
story goes that, while rushing to rehearsals in New York, Maestro
Jascha Heifetz was stopped by a tourist who asked “How do you get
to Carnegie Hall?” The maestro answered, “Practice.”
Some
variants of the story feature Arthur Rubinstein or Jack Benny, among
others, but the point is always the same. And why am I going on about
it? Because, if you want to take better pictures, the same advice
applies: practice.
Top
tip: Take more photos and you'll take better photos.