Blog About Photography

I know that it’s taboo to talk about gear. Focus­ing too much on this stuff misses the point of what mak­ing pho­tographs is all about. Richard Ave­don used to require his stu­dents make their final por­traits for his class in a photo booth, which is a rather extreme way of mak­ing this point and Richard Ave­don, of course, was cor­rect. How­ever, Ave­don didn’t use a photo booth too often to make his por­traits so it’s not alto­gether unim­por­tant either one the sub­stan­tive view is there.

I have some thought I would like to share about about dig­i­tal equip­ment for new com­mer­cial pho­tog­ra­phers, some­thing that’s on my mind because I’ve been think­ing about how to make my com­mer­cial stuff look bet­ter now that I’m doing more of it. But if that’s not your thing, then by all means, no one is going make you read the rest of this entry.

Basi­cally what I have to say is that I have defin­i­tively cond­luded that Canon makes bet­ter dig­i­tal SLRs than Nikon. There are a whole list of rea­sons why this is the case, and if you’re inter­ested I’d be happy to explain it. If you’re buy­ing a low end model (IE a Nikon D50 vs a Canon Dig­i­tal Rebel), it doesn’t mat­ter that much. But, buy­ing a Nikon D200 ($1500) over a Canon EOS 5D ($2500) is not a good idea even though there is a mas­sive dif­fer­ence in price. Hold out. It’s worth it. When I was in LA the week before last, I assisted on two shoots and on both of them, the pho­tog­ra­phers were using 5Ds. On the first, Raquel Olivo also had a Has­sel­blad H1 with a dig­i­tal back (prob­a­bly $20,000 worth of equip­ment I would think), and we were all pretty stunned when the lit­tle Canon was crank­ing out images that looked much, much bet­ter than the ones com­ing out of the Has­sel­blad. And they cer­tainly beat Nikon which, I’m sorry to say as a life-​​long Nikon per­son, sucks in com­par­i­son when it comes to dig­i­tal SLRs.

There’s a whole list of rea­sons why, and since Canon isn’t actu­ally pay­ing me for this I’m not going to bother to list them. How­ever if you want to hash it out with me in the com­ments, that’s fine. I’m happy to explain myself. The rea­son why I’m think­ing about this I feel like hav­ing a decent DSLR is impor­tant to work­ing com­mer­cially, espe­cially when your day rate is as low as mine. Chris­t­ian Pat­ter­son and a lot of other peo­ple of that cal­iber do their com­mer­cial and edi­to­r­ial stuff on film. That’s the ideal. But my day rate is $300 and I want to avoid spend­ing half of it on film and pro­cess­ing since most clients aren’t will­ing to pay for that stuff anymore.

I have a Nikon D70 which was ok when I first got it two years ago, but I’m not almost com­pletely unsat­is­fied with it. One of the main rea­sons I got into my anony­mous party pho­tographs was because work­ing like that was the only way to get attrac­tive images out of my cam­era. And the set­tings had to be so metic­u­lous, I wouldn’t have been so pro­lific if I had done the project on film. But tak­ing blown out pic­tures with a flash at night shouldn’t be the only use for a dig­i­tal SLR. So I hope to one day be able to buy one of Canon’s gor­geous full-​​frame DSLRs, whether it’s the 5D or what­ever comes after the 5D a cou­ple years from now. I don’t know where the money is going to come from. Maybe I’ll rob a bank.

Posted on Monday, March 26th, 2007 at 6:08 pm

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4 Responses to “Commercial gear for beginners”

1. Shane Lavalette Says:
   March 26th, 2007 at 7:29 pm

   I’m con­fused; how did the Canon 5D beat out the Has­sel­blad? No doubt the Canon is more reli­able in pro­duc­ing ‘qual­ity’ images than the Nikon, though. I haven’t so much expe­ri­ence with com­mer­cial work, but I can see the appeal of shoot­ing dig­i­tal on a low bud­get — you shouldn’t have to appol­o­gize for see­ing it, too, Greg. Though, if I was doing an excit­ing edi­to­r­ial job, I think I’d not only be more com­fort­able with my ana­log equip­ment but also be intrin­si­cally hap­pier with the results. Just a thought.

   P.S. Good luck with the robbery!

2. Greg Says:
   March 26th, 2007 at 7:45 pm

   Tech­ni­cally speak­ing, I don’t know “how” the Canon made bet­ter images than the Has­sel­blad, but I can tell you for cer­tain that it did. The Has­sel­blad images were noisy when zoomed in to 100% despite the ISO being set to 200 and the col­ors were far more muted in com­ing out of the Has­sel­blad. It was weird. Who knows what the deal was. Maybe she didn’t have it cal­i­brated right (do you have to cal­i­brate a Phase One back?) or some­thing, but the Canon pretty much blew it out of the water.

3. c Says:
   April 13th, 2007 at 6:35 pm

   guy i work with in miami doing a big shoot for smuck­ers, just copped a new fuji S3.

   i’d say 75 per­cent of the pics weren’t sharp. nat­u­rally he was very dis­tressed. the night after the shoot he decided to retool. intu­itively i told him i thought canon was the way to go. he always lived by the notion that the cam­era wasn’t the photo, the pho­tog­ra­pher was. con­se­quently with film he shot pen­tax vs. hassy. a hell of a lot cheaper and close enuf.

   i would argue when you’re shoot­ing film, the film is the biggest dif­fer­ence, but when your shoot dig­i­tal the cam­era is your film.

   he has a 5D now. loves it. he even likes his 30D bet­ter. that’s what i have, but i have real con­cerns about how any of my images would blow up beyond an 8×10

4. Paul Says:
   April 20th, 2007 at 5:07 am

   Hi,

   Inter­est­ing arti­cle and nice story about the photo booth which I’ve never heard before..

   Please feel free to post to http://​www​.pho​tog​ra​phyvoter​.com.

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