Western Railroad Discussion > Something I learned about photography

I happened to spend a few days working with a professional portrait photographer this past week. We were talking about lenses, cameras and studio photography. He mentioned, like most things, lenses are an accumulation of compromises, the sharpest lense would have a fixed aperature and fixed focal length. That said, most are sharpest in the middle of their f-stop range. So I went out with my $100 point and shoot and set the aperature in the middle of its range. I was surprised by the results, some of the sharpest I've ever gotten. Here are a couple examples, the first has a little chunk of the full resolution image. While I'd still like to get a DSLR, it is satisfying to figure out how to get more out of the tools I have.

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Very good shots!

Yeah, they really look good. I didn't know that you could adjust the F-stop on a point nad0 shoot? Then too, there are a lot of things that I don't know.....

Con

What was your camera's middle F-stop?

#1 looks like Carkeet Park in Seattle - you back in town for a visit?

Nice pic, BTW.

-Rick

Rick Selby
Redmond, WA
Pacific Northwest RPM

The camera is a Samsung S850, since replaced by a 10mp version. The f-stop range depends a little on what it is zoomed to but the smallest is 8.5 at 15mm (the lens goes from 7.8 to 39mm) and the largest is 2.8. I used aperature priority and EXIF shows it was set at 19mm, f4.8 and 1/500sec for the first photo and 19mm, f4.4 and 1/740 sec for the second. I wonder if the middle of the zoom range is the sweet spot too. I'll have to try that out next.

Rick, I was in Seattle for a couple days helping out with a 1:96 model of Madison Square Garden. I think it was the first time in 49 years they didn't meet their deadline. I got there on Tuesday and some of the guys had been there since Sunday. It shipped out a day late and arrived in NYC on Thursday. I wonder what the bill for overnighting a 400+lb box from Seattle to NY is? I wanted to go around and visit some of the favorite spots but worked about 40 hours in 3.5 days, 27 in the first two days and had to be back in PDX by 6 on Friday.

The first shot is Carkeek Park, the second in near Puyallup, WA. That spot is an late afternoon/evening spot with Mt Rainier in the background, I was several hours early. Steve Carter and others can illustrate the (much better) view the opposite direction. It looks like he is in a different spot but the first photo in this thread gives a general idea of the shot.
http://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?1,1829965,1830026#msg-1830026

What you learned will be no less true when you spend more money on a DSLR. With most lenses you will have maximum performance somewhere in the midrange of their focal length (if they are a zoom) and aperature range in the case of both zoom and fixed focal length. The more expensive lenses simply reduce this variation. The key point is anytime you use a lens at either end of the limits of its range, you risk some kind of image deterioration. There are exceptions. For example I am told the Nikon 70-200 f2.8 was designed to be about as sharp as it will get wide open at 200 mm. So every rule does have it's exception. I think the goood news is, like you have found with your point and shoot, even with low end equipment you can get great pix if you don't push them to their extremes. Or perhaps put another way, more camera does not necessarily produce better images, it simply gives you more flexibility to get good images in challenging conditions.

JBWX