As disappointed as I was in my last post about the Pentax I recently acquired, I managed to make some decent photos on the day. The small backscreens on old cameras aren’t good enough to determine much of anything about sharpness or focus, so I usually make a few photos of the same subject to have some redundancy in case of faults and errors.
I think sometimes we get too used to the idea that every photo should be as sharp as possible. It’s a common criticism in photography groups, of course. But what constitutes sharpness in a photo? Good focus is one primary ingredient – something I struggled with on the Pentax. Contrast is another characteristic that contributes to the perception of sharpness. Aperture size is also important, as this determines depth of field and just how much of a photo is going to be in focus and acceptably sharp. A fast enough shutter speed if a tripod isn’t being used is also key to avoiding blurry photos.
I don’t know about you, but my eyesight isn’t good enough to see the world like the best lenses. I can zoom in on a super sharp photo in Lightroom and see all the details. That’s a wonderful thing and I’m often amazed at how much detail modern lenses and sensors can resolve, but acceptable sharpness is also a range within which a photo looks good to our eyes. There are well-known lenses from every manufacturer that aren’t known to be super sharp, yet I’m sure many excellent photos have been made with them.
Inexpensive kit lenses often receive criticism from people who view the technical quality of gear as primary markers of status and image quality. If you’ve chosen the correct aperture, correct ISO, correct shutter speed, and the correct point of focus for the scene, the rest is down to technique, content, and composition. A lens that’s not super sharp can certainly produce wonderful photos of subjects that are a good fit for the glass. Great content and compostion will always beat out slightly soft photos every time in my books. As I’ve said before, amazing photos were made over a century ago with equipment we’d consider primitive when contrasted to the camera gear of today.
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My first ever foray into digital photography was with a K10D. I got it second hand from a friend and the day after I bought it I took it on an expedition into the mountains. The landscape was stunning and the weather dramatic. I snapped away using a few 1gb cards, perfectly happy with my new camera and I couldn’t wait to get the results on the computer. When I did, almost everyone was out of focus!! It turned out that the focusing point was set at the top left of the screen. I didn’t know what a focussing point was, and all I saw in the viewfinder was a little red light at the top left and thought it was a display to tell me the photo was taken! I think I salvaged a few from the ones that I took, my most were unusable. Not the cameras fault, but mine for not reading the manual. I kept that Pentax for a few months but as it didn’t have live view I found it needing and i sold it on. Still a nice camera though
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Oh, what a pity! One of those photographic mistakes that seem ever so simple in hindsight. I feel that pain. You find some wonderful scenes and snap away, only to find later that you’d made an error that was easily fixable. That’s a definite teaching moment and I’ll bet you didn’t make the same error again. My results from the K10D were variable, but that’s more down to it being a near 20 year old camera with issues. Pentax sure make some nice cameras. I’m kind of knee deep in Nikons these days, so I’m very much used to the Nikon way and the Nikon menu philosophy. Thank you!
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I used Nikon’s for years before I went digital, and got a couple of Nikon DSLRs after I sold the K10D. But I jumped ship 4 years ago and they are heavy and went onto M43.
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Yes, they are heavy. I really like the old D200, but that is a heavy body to luggage around, especially with a long telephoto in the bag. I try and take one smaller camera as a backup. Have been really enjoying the old D40 plus the 35mm 1.8. It’s very compact and quite light. Old, yes, but still capable. I can take it along with the modern Z5 as a bit of fun for certain scenes.
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