Re: Question about Lenses

For What It's Worth...

I think the first and foremost factor that gets the good picture is good composition. Positioning the subject, leading lines, framing, all make the primary difference. After-the-fact cropping can also help with composition. You can exercise good composition with any camera.

Lighting goes hand-in-hand with composition. Thing is, so much of our shooting occurs where ever the train happens to be, so we don't have too much control over lighting. So, I tend to rely on the time of day, taking my best pictures in early morning and late afternoon, when the tones and angles are the most interesting. I'm also starting to play with Dynamic Range Increase (related to, but not HDR), to get more out of highlights and shadows, the digital version of dodge-and-burn in the darkroom. To effectively do DRI, you need to be able to take multiple exposures "bracketed" around normal; most decent cameras will let you over- and under-expose consecutive frames, but you need to shoot them relatively quickly so they align in the post-processing software. Ironically, your cell phone camera probably has a HDR mode that'll more effectively capture the bracketed exposures than your consumer DSLR...

After that, I think having a range of lens focal lengths helps to get different aspect angles. A wide angle lens does more than help you not back up as much; it renders a different layout of objects at different distances than a telephoto lens. Using the inherent aspect angle of a lens goes with good composition. That in mind, most of my better shots are with the wide-angle lens.

And finally, the quality of the equipment lets you capture more detail and different lighting situations. But a sharp picture poorly composed still doesn't look good.

I use a well-worn Nikon D50 with a 18-200 lens. I shoot all JPEG, because I don't plan to make really large prints. That particular lens lets me adjust from a wide-angle to long telephoto shot without having to change (or carry) multiple lenses. Before I spent the money on that lens, I used the 18-55 that came with the camera, and took many decent pictures with it. A while ago, my wife suggested we look at the newer higher-resolution cameras, as our D50 is only 6MP. I declined, mainly because that resolution is good enough for the size of photograph we tend to print or view. Besides, she tends to 'motor-drive' a couple of dozen grandkid pictures at each sitting, and I'm running out of places to mount hard drives to store it all...

Again, just my perspective, no pun intended... well, maybe.