While we’re at photography, I have to mention that I’m hugely annoyed by the fact that everywhere I look on the forums or the YouTube people are exaggerating things into hysteria. By that I mean the extreme and opposite “cults” – on one side, you have those who think they need to have the most technically sophisticated equipment in order to make anything of value, and on the other hand you have the “lo-fi” groups such as lomography, who intentionally screw things up as much as possible technically, and people in those groups are all supporting each other in the most extreme nonsense.

The truth, of course, is that both sides kind of have a point. On one hand, equipment is important, and I often found myself just staring in awe at the beautiful renderings from a high-end lens or a camera, that manages to get parts of the image completely crisp, just to seamlessly flow into toffee-sparkles of blur. However, it is also the case that photography is much more than merely a formulaic thing where you get the best hardware, apply a correct technical procedure and get everything sharp from corner to corner, and you have the perfect photograph. If I had to describe my personal attitude, I’d say that for someone who sees photography primarily as a way to capture my own thoughts and feelings, and not the things in front of the lens, I’m very technical about it. 🙂 So, let me make a small exhibition of photos that combine things that would make people in dpreview forums have a fit.

Equipment: Canon 5d, EF 35-70mm f/3.5-4.5. That’s the lens that’s almost never seen outside of lo-fi circles, because it’s one of the first EF lenses ever made, dating from 1987, where it was sold as the kit zoom for the EOS 650 film camera, the first in the EOS lineup. It is so lowly rated that it’s not even seen as something that deserves testing and rating at all, and putting it on the 5d would be seen as a ridiculous “lomography” move. Let’s see some more pictures I’ve taken with this combo:

The macro shots are taken using the extension tubes. Nothing fancy, just the cheapest stuff from ebay. The results, however, are very much not lo-fi. In fact, I could make prints from the original raw files that would be as big as anything one could realistically print from the 13MP 5d sensor. B2, no problem. B1, possibly, but I’d have to massage them somewhat, but those are all material that can go between 70-100cm on the longer side. Mind you, I’m more interested in color than resolution and sharpness, but there’s plenty of both. Let’s see the next heretical combo: using Olympus E-PL1 micro 4/3 mirrorless pocket camera with its 14-42mm plasticky kit zoom, that would be universally poorly rated:

How about using Sony A7II with the FE 28-70mm f/3.5-5.6 kit lens, that’s always trashed in the reviews as something you should immediately remove from your camera if you want the pictures to be any good:

Those pictures weren’t taken with said equipment because I wanted them to look like shit, or because I didn’t know any better. The files are all B1-print sharp. There’s a saying “if it’s stupid but it works, it’s not stupid”. In this case, if “inferior” equipment creates results that get a green light from me regarding technical quality, maybe it’s not inferior. Maybe, just maybe, you’re just holding it wrong, to paraphrase Steve Jobs. 🙂 Or maybe people tend to lose perspective when they compare gear. For instance, if a lens renders closeups with glowy spherical aberration and ethereal softness, it’s only an “optical defect” if you’re trying to use it where those effects detract from the image. Also, if it’s “only” tack sharp from f/8 to f/16, and you use it for landscape photography, what’s the problem? Also, colors are either ignored or hard to test, but if a lens renders beautiful, crystal-clear and perfectly neutral colors, should that somehow matter less than resolution in conditions you don’t intend to use it for?

I had the misfortune of being forced to produce results in life using whatever was available and working in conditions that would be immediately dismissed as unfit for anything, and this is not just about photography anymore. If you don’t have a hammer, use a rock. If you don’t have perfect conditions, learn how to turn imperfect ones to your advantage. For instance, I learned to meditate in conditions so terrible, that I could later resist all kinds of interference. If everything tries to kill you and fails, you become indestructible. I was always annoyed by people who keep whining about their tools and conditions – they can’t do anything spiritually because they don’t have a perfect guru, and don’t know the perfect technique of yoga. In reality, that usually means they are more interested at finding imaginary flaws in order to justify their inaction and inertia, than they are at figuring out a way to avoid the obstacles and make things work anyway.

I had an experience at the University in early 1992 that changed my perspective on excuses forever. You see, one of the professors had a rule that you can’t be absent from more than 5 lectures in a year, or he won’t allow you to take the exams, basically failing you by default. Before one lecture a girl approached him and gave him a letter of medical excuse for her absence. He said, “Young lady, you misunderstood me. I do not care whether you were absent with or without a legitimate excuse. If you were absent from more than five lectures, you simply cannot have sufficient knowledge to take the exam. Therefore, the reason for the absence doesn’t matter in the slightest”. This clicked incredibly hard – nobody cares about your excuses for failure. You just have to find ways to succeed, because there’s no other way to avoid disaster. It’s basically like climbing a cliff; you have to find a way to do it perfectly and avoid falling, because if you fall, nobody’s going to give two shits that the cliff was slippery or the rocks were crumbly. If you failed for “valid reasons”, you failed and you’re fucked regardless. So get your shit together and figure out a way to make things work and to attain success. That’s probably the reason why the whiny “demanding” people annoy me. They think excuses matter.