Biljana and I are back from our short photographic vacation in the Plitvice Lakes national park.
Postcards from Rivendell
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Category Archives: photography
Luck
You can have equipment, you can have skill, but in order for it all to come together, you sometimes need a dumbass bird to knock itself out cold at your glass door, and then pose for you half conscious. 🙂
Also, sometimes having your subject shit itself in front of the camera actually makes things better:
You just can’t make this up. 🙂
Dissatisfaction
I’ve been thinking about something recently, how “better” isn’t really a simple metric; as mathematicians would say, it isn’t a scalar, where 5 is bigger than 2. For instance, I have a 50mm f/1.8 lens that I like a lot because it’s small and light and it’s something I can take for a walk when I have no expectations to get usable pictures, but it still has good minimum focusing distance, excellent sharpness and so on. It has issues – focusing motor is loud and slow, and it has lots of chromatic aberrations wide open on contrasty areas. Also, it doesn’t have a MF/AF switch to turn AF off quickly when it starts struggling. So, I thought about upgrading it, getting a better 50mm lens.
That’s where we encounter a problem, you see, because optically speaking nothing is that much better. If a lens is ergonomically better, it’s also bigger and heavier, not to say much more expensive, and that removes most of the reasons why I like a 50mm. So, I could get a 50mm lens that’s slightly faster, has better focusing and more mechanical switches and controls on the lens itself, but is half a kilo heavier and costs a really significant chunk of money, and let’s say I bought it. Would I carry that to a walk when I want to carry the lightest possible camera? No, of course; I’d still take the 50mm f/1.8, because it’s light and small, it’s sharp enough, versatile enough, and looks unassuming. I can get a 50mm f/2.5 G, or a similar thing from Sigma, which has better controls and it’s still small and light, but I’m actually losing aperture and therefore photographic versatility. So, basically, something that’s technically not the best lens is actually exceedingly hard to upgrade, because gains and losses don’t come in simple packages; essentially, “better” is not a simple scalar.
This creates a silly situation where my cheapest lens is apparently here to stay because it almost perfectly fits the role I have for it. It needs to be cheap, light, small and good. It’s not something I use for stuff where I need absolute image quality; I just need it to be very good, and still small enough that I still decide to take it when I go out and there doesn’t seem to be much to take pictures of. It also needs to be versatile because I have no plan and no idea what I’ll see, if anything. I want something that’s better than the iPhone, and not much more hassle to carry around. I could get some small compact camera, which is another thing to charge batteries for and with different menus I have to learn, or I could just take my old Sony, which is as small and light as a micro four thirds camera, and put the light 50mm lens on it. The image quality of that setup is honestly stellar. Versatility, with its close focusing distance and aperture, is also pretty amazing. It’s just that it focuses like shit and has no AF/MF switch on the lens, and has strong CA when I shoot into the light, which I tend to do. Slightly annoying, as flaws go, but they are soon forgotten when I open the images in Lightroom.
I already had situations where something like that would annoy me, and then I would “upgrade” to something that solved one problem by introducing five bigger ones; for instance, I upgraded the old 13” Macbook Air to a 15” Macbook Pro somewhere in 2015/2016. It was faster, had more power and memory, had much better screen, but it was bigger and heavier, and actually less usable for writing than the old Air. I actually had to get a second ultralight laptop for that, the Asus Zenbook, because the “better” machine was so much “better” that it was less functional for the main task I actually used it for. I also “upgraded” from a Mondeo to a huge Audi A6 estate once; bigger is better, right, and also the kids were small so I wanted a bigger car to carry their stuff. I got rid of that car as soon as it was practical and got something smaller and more suitable. Also, a bigger house is better until it’s so big it becomes a hassle to maintain and you actually spend time looking for family members around the place because you don’t know where they are.
If your shoes are too small, bigger is better, until they become too big, which is when bigger is worse. When you drive a car that’s a bit too small, bigger is better until you feel like you’re driving a bus.
Recently Biljana and I were buying new laptops; she got a 16” Macbook Pro, and I thought about just getting one of those for myself, and then I remembered how that ended the last time I “upgraded”, and said “fuck no”. What I got for myself is the 15” Macbook Air; I just loaded it with enough RAM and that was it. Why did I get a “worse” computer for myself? I actually didn’t, I got a better computer for what I need it for, and I got her the better computer for what she needs it for. It’s like multiplying two matrices, one of requirements and one of actual hardware specs; what you use it for, how you use it, what matters, and then multiply this with actual hardware properties of mass, size and performance.
It’s not just about equipment. Most things in life require balance, where you think you need more of something until you see what it actually means. All those ideologies that feed on resentment are a good example. Communism wanted “more equality”, and produced universal misery. Feminism wanted power for women, and broke civilization to the point where it would now be easier to burn it all down than to fix it. Inclusivity sounds great until you understand that it destroys criteria.
You see flaws and you think something has to change. Then you change it and see it’s actually worse.
Satan seems to have started this resentment thing first – oh, it’s not right that some souls are so incredibly large while the others like himself are pipsqueaks. Something should be done to make everybody equal. So he made a world that limits everybody to the same playing ground, and that obviously worked great for eliminating inequality. Oh wait…
The answer to his “Some souls are so much larger than everybody else” should have been “Good; that means we have someone to admire and strive towards.”
Women’s answer to “We live in a patriarchy” should have been “Great, we love powerful men.”
The problem with resentment is that it’s a problem that presents itself as a solution. It’s not. You can point at a laptop and say “oh, it’s so small”, as if that’s a problem, and the right answer is “of course it’s small, that’s the point”. The answer to arguments that try to foment dissatisfaction is to think whether something is actually problem, or a set of features you actually prefer. Everything comes with drawbacks. You think you could always use a few inches more of penis size, but your wife might say “please no”. She might think she could do with bigger boobs, until they start jiggling around while she’s running or exercising, at which point she’ll start complaining about that. We seem to be incredibly sensitive to dissatisfaction and inclined to think change must be an improvement, but in reality, it seems that the only thing we actually need to change in most cases is perspective.
Truth of the scene
I’ve been watching some photography videos, and among other things some people seem to be praising the 50mm focal length endlessly; mostly for, supposedly, telling the truth about the situation before you, without either doing the wideangle distortion, or eliminating too much from the scene with telephoto isolation.
I’ve been thinking about that. Their assumption is that a photographer is supposed to show the scene as it is, to present reality without distorting it, to tell a story in ways that make you feel as if you’re a part of it.
That’s such fucking nonsense I don’t even know where to start. But first of all, 50mm doesn’t even feel like a focal length that does that. If anything, I would use an ultrawide to present the scene as I perceive it when I’m there, because I perceive so much with my peripheral vision that it’s almost exactly how I perceive a scene when I’m there, only without the geometric distortions. Something like this:
This is what it feels like to be there, on top of the island, and to look at the horizon. You see everything at once. What the 50mm approximates quite nicely is something else: the area of focused attention.
This is a 50mm frame; different island, different scene, different field of view. Does this look like something you actually see in front of you when you’re there? Or does it look like something you’re looking at when you’re there? The latter, I’d say.
Or should we use another example?
This was also shot with a 50mm lens – same wide open aperture, even. Same evening. You think this is what my eyes saw? Or is it what I focused at and thought about?
Is photography about reporting accurately what was in front of me and telling a story about it, or is it about using bits and pieces of what’s in front of it to create a story about how I feel?
It depends on who you are as a photographer. If you’re a professional, it might be your job to tell other people’s stories, because that’s what you’re getting paid for. If you’re shooting weddings, you need to tell other people’s romantic stories for posterity, and you are merely a paid instrument that serves the purpose of achieving that. If you’re shooting a sports event for an agency, you need to report visually compelling moments from a game, create something that will draw attention to the article to be read. It’s your job to present it as visually interesting, but again, you’re telling other people’s stories, and you are as much an instrument in this as your camera. Basically, it’s paying audience first, motive second, and you and your equipment in service of that.
But I’m not a professional. Nobody is paying me to take pictures of what they want photographed. It’s all about what I want and why I want it. I might want to present the scene I experienced as accurately as possible. Or I might want to present something that drew my attention there, something most people would just walk by.
There’s absolutely nothing about the 50mm lens that I find more compelling, or more honest about presenting a scene than any other focal length. It’s basically a focal length that shows some things and omits others. This makes it no different from anything else, other than being more-less average. Want honest and complete impression of how it felt to be somewhere? Use a wide angle. Or use a telephoto, or use a normal lens, or use a macro. You think it’s not possible to use a macro or a telephoto lens to show what it’s like to be somewhere? I beg to disagree.
This is what it felt like to be there.
Also, this is what this scene felt like.
This, too, was what it felt to be there. The last one was taken with a 50mm lens. I find it no more or less honest than the second image, which was taken with an ultrawide, or the first one, taken with a 35-70mm zoom wide open on macro extenders. They all show some of my impressions, experiences and feelings. They also show something that’s in front of the lens, that may or may not be important.
There are all kinds of pretentious photographers – those with their Leicas and 50mm lenses trying to be HCB, or those with view cameras and f/64 ethos trying to be Ansel Adams, or hipsters shooting through a scratched filter on expired film, thinking that’s art. Whether something is art or not depends mostly on whether the thing you want to express is actually worth showing.
Let me show two scenes that would usually be taken with a 50mm lens, because it’s “honest”:
The first is taken with a 35mm, the second with a 135mm. Both faithfully capture a moment. In essence, if you’re going to do this kind of photography, you’re not bound to 50mm, because it’s not about the focal length or the aperture, it’s about the style and catching the moment. You don’t need a Leica and a 50mm Summicron to imitate HCB, you can be a fake person with any camera and lens. 🙂
Now that sounds like I’m pushing for authenticity, but that’s not really the case. I sometimes find it liberating to imitate someone who made something I liked, without trying to always do my specific thing, because sometimes I don’t actually know what I’m trying to do, and that’s fine. You can’t get new ideas if you always know what you’re doing and why; that’s how you produce more of the same stuff. Sometimes it’s actually fun to go somewhere and be a fake HCB or Ansel Adams. Make a postcard. Imitate something you liked. Get it out of your system. Shoot all the cliche frames first, flush them out, and then you’ll start noticing other things and having actual ideas. Using a 50mm and B&W to fake yourself out is just fine, because after you’re done taking all the fake shots that are in your head, you might actually get it out of your system enough to start doing something else. The way towards originality is often through copying all the stuff you found somewhere and liked. You might fail at copying them just right, but by being a poor copy of someone else you might actually start finding an improved version of yourself.
Intended purpose
I recently took some very nice landscape photos with my new lens:
Before that, I used the same lens to take pictures of some night scenes in the town:
I also took pictures of some nature details with it:
The thing is, the lens I used is FE 135mm f/1.8 GM, a famous portrait lens from Sony. Interestingly, portraits are the only thing I haven’t used it for, so far. My wife did, however:
Wildlife in its natural environment
Using a portrait lens for shooting everything but portraits seems to defeat its purpose, which made me think. Sure, the 135mm GM is a fantastic portrait lens, but why? Because it has excellent bokeh and sharpness-to-softness rolloff, it is incredibly sharp from wide open, corner to corner, and is likely diffraction limited (meaning, it only gets worse as you stop it down). It also has an almost-macro minimum focusing distance. That, however, makes it excellent for details of landscape, and isolating nature details with narrow depth of field, due to its extreme aperture. Sure, there’s one new Sigma that’s even better, at f/1.4, but it’s so much bigger and heavier than the already very heavy Sony, that I decided I’m good at f/1.8, thank you very much.
The fact that a lens is great at something doesn’t mean it should be used for that purpose. Sure, it’s great for portraits. It’s also great at landscapes, at closeups, at nature details, at shooting butterflies against the light, at atmospheric urban scenes at low light, and astrophotography. Saying that it’s a portrait lens because it’s great at portraits is like saying one should become a porn star because they are good at having sex. Yeah, it sounds absurd, but that’s because it is.
There’s something that Catholics do that annoys me, and that’s belief that there’s a “natural way” things should be done, that’s ordained by God, and going against that is a sin. I think they particularly insist on that in matters concerning sex; basically, if you’re having sex for any reason that’s unrelated to reproduction, that’s against the natural order of things and is condemnable. They even had the audacity to cite animals as a good example of how humans should be – sex for reproduction only, pleasure only as a regrettable side effect of reproduction, and if you accidentally feel some form of sexual pleasure that’s unrelated to that, confession time for you, buddy.
At some point later in the process they seem to have figured out the concept of “mutual giving” between people that’s actually an important part of sex that has nothing to do with reproduction, and if you give them long enough, like a zillion years, they might actually catch on. The most ridiculous part of it is that they actually don’t know anything about nature, or how actual animals do sex. For instance, the Bonobo apes (a smaller species of chimpanzee) use sex as some form of ritual bonding and de-stressing; the dolphins practice sex in ways remarkably similar to humans, and so on. Basically, de-coupling sexual pleasure from its reproductive function seems to be a function of evolutionary advancement, similar to self-awareness and abstract thought. Thinking that sex should be used for reproduction only is like thinking that numbers shouldn’t be used as abstract entities, but only related to actual things that are numbered; basically, you can count sheep and trees because that’s how God intended it, but if you start playing with numbers as abstract entities unrelated to anything physical, you need to confess your sins against the Creator. 🙂
Does something have an obvious purpose it’s been designed for? Sure. A FE 85mm f/1.4 GM and FE 135mm f/1.8 GM are designed as portrait lenses. That doesn’t mean you can’t use a 14mm ultrawide as a portrait lens, or that you can’t use a 135mm for landscapes, to great effect. If you use things for what they are designed, in exactly the way they are meant to be used, it’s instinct and programming, not creativity and abstract thought. Sure, if you decouple mind from instinct and introduce creativity, there’s no end to which you can fuck up, and anyone who’s been on the Internet can attest to that. The Catholics use abundant examples of this as evidence that “God’s plan is not to be messed with”.
I, however, submit portraits made with ultrawides and nature shots made with a portrait lens as evidence that God is not a limited idiot some seem to take him for.
Sin against the natural order: portrait with a 15mm fisheye
Every dog has emotions, breath and thoughts. However, humans decoupled those from their intended purpose and designed vipassana, pranayama and yoga. Super unnatural, as all things leading to transcendence necessarily need to be, because to act as a direct function of your design is to be an animal and a slave of Satan.