Great camera gear doesn't make for good shooting...

Well, it was my daughters first birthday on Saturday, and we had the standard issue 1st birthday party complete with 15 infants tearing the house apart.

Anyway, the time inevitably comes when it is time to do the cake, as it was a family affair, our little girl, my wife and I were all to be in the shot. Eying up the rather nice digital camera (20D) a friend offered to take the photos of the candle blowing and cutting of the cake.

We asked him at several time during this if he was getting it all, he kept replying 'Yes!'

Imagine our disappointment when we downloaded at the end of the day to get only five shots, some with our eyes closed, other peoples heads in the way, or suffering from severe camera shake. An opportunity entirely missed.

Apparently he really enjoyed playing with 'the toy' though. Not making that mistake again, in the future I will pre arrange this, and tell them to 'spray and pray' to increase their chances, it is digital, you can shoot to your hearts content!

Unfortunately I had to console my wife (yes really, no exaggeration), who loves to document our wee ones entire life day by day, and this was a landmark moment, gone now with no good record of the event. It really did put a damper on the day for here. I am seeing what I can salvage from the images in Photoshop, but it doesn’t look good.

BUT poor camera gear will not give great results!



JZ

JZaun wrote:
BUT poor camera gear will not give great results!



JZ

So true.

However one of my best shots I have taken (in my opinion) was on my old Olympus OM1 with a Tokina 135mm F2.8 lens, cheap gear by today’s standards (I actually think it would be worth more now, only paid around $100US for it, and that included the 50mm F1.8 as well!), but I suppose not exactly poor camera gear!

Define poor?


Iv given my mother my camera a few times when we've been blokarting, I set it to "P" set the ISO and white balance, then stick it on high speed drive and tell her to just point and hold down the shutter button.
She's taken some quite acceptable shots of me on the Kart, and one really really good one of me breaking it.


Its a shame to have missed an important even because someone didnt want to admit they didnt know what they were doing though, next time you know to make sure.

ask ur friend for explaination for such poor shots :P

anyway you should have a backup or alternate photographer

I ran in to this same problem. After getting married and going through so many photographs at my wedding in India, I thought when we did the US reception for my friends in the States, that I would get a friend to photograph the event. He had the same basic camera as me, and since I have known him for a long time and seen his gear for even longer, I thought he would be similar to me in photographic style and abilities. In fact, he had almost three times as much other photographic gear as I did and he had some expensive stuff that I could never afford.

Needless to say, when I got the photos back from the printer, I was disappointed. Of the 10 rolls of film he took, only about 20 photos were usable. Most of them had heads cut off, flash off, out of focus, etc., etc.

Disappointed, but I learned my lesson. You get what you pay for, and in this case, I didn't pay him anything, so I guess I get what I deserved.

So now when I am at a party of something, I usually pre-compose the shot, if possible pre-focus, set all the setting to what is correct, and have them hold up the camera and just press the shutter release. But even with that, I've seen people mess up photos.

Lessons learned.

It's amazing how some people just can't take good photos. You need to understand a bit of the technical side of photography, and also the artistic side, and there are few people who do both really well.

agreed...my teacher tells me that every day

I used to know this guy (VERY German) who always had the latest equipment, but always showed me the SAME needle-sharp prints! I liked him a lot 'cause I'd buy his "obsolete" stuff at an excellent price when the new models came out. I could always sell his old stuff I already had for more than I'd paid for the new. Wish he was still around!!!

In fairness some people can't take good shots in every situation. Like me for example.
I am fairly good at model, portrait, and am getting better at stage/runway photography, but put me at an event with milling people and dinner tables and my photos are horrible despite having really nice equipment. 8)

I highly don't recommend me as a wedding photographer. Just as well too much work.

I suspect the problem is because I work better under controlled conditions where I can adjust for the one setting I need, instead of needing to change constantly. So maybe your friend thought he could do well because he has in the past, but not at that style of photography.

As to equipment.
As my equipment has improved, the percentage of good shots I have gotten has also improved, but some of my best/favorite shots were taken with my lesser equipment.

To me the main reason for upgrading equipment is because the equipment is limiting your abilities and an upgrade will remove one or more of those limitations.

I finally got a great canera. Rebel digital. And My neice who was getting married asked me to shoot her wedding "because I knew how to take pictures." Never mind that she had never seen any of my photography..
Conditions: outdoor wedding 100 degress bright sunlight, with shade of course(where the bride and groom stood during the ceremony).
I knew right away I was in trouble trying to get exposures correctly because of the difficulties in keeping up with the action, composition etc.. I set my camera to shoot one picture at the suggested aperature and then one above and one below. I shot 3 pictures of everything and came out better than I could have hoped for simply because that feature allowed me to take time and compose. Weddings move fast.

If I had not used that feature even photoshop probably couldn't have saved me.