Post 31

Buying a dSLR and expecting it to make great photos is like buying a paintbrush and expecting the paintbrush to make a great painting.

It seems that there are a lot of people out there buying dSLRs, but being unsatisfied with the photos they get. If you happen to be in this boat, I'm going to do my best to try to explain why you might not be getting the results you want.

First of all, if you're shooting full auto and just letting the camera do everything for you, then you might as well just get a point and shoot. Sure, a dSLR will start up quicker, and focus more quickly, but those are things I'd be willing to give up in order to save $500 or so. The image quality of a dSLR is better because of a bigger sensor, but unless you're shooting manual, the full potential of the camera most likely won't be used. Basically, if you're using your dSLR in "auto" mode, you're basically lugging around an overweight, overpriced point and shoot. DSLRs can make good guesses every now and then, but I don't even know how many times I saw people with dSLRs in Florida trying to take a photo of something in the dark with the built in flash, but the object they were trying to take a photo of was without any sort of doubt too far away for the pop-up flash to even be effective. Had they been shooting manual, they could have incased the ISO, opened up the aperture, and slowed down the shutter speed, which would have made those photos turn out much better. My guess would be they got a nicely exposed foreground and anything else in the photo that was further away than a few feet is just black.

The biggest reason why people can't get the results they want with dSLRs is because they don't do any sort of post processing. If you have a dSLR, you should be using RAW files and editing all of your photos. Besides good glass, post processing is an absolute requirement to get the most out of your dSLR. People are against editing their photos for two reasons, they're either too lazy to learn or do it, or they feel it's somehow unethical.

If your'e one of the people who are too lazy to learn or to edit your photos, then don't get a dSLR. Save your money.

For those of you who feel it's "unethical" to edit your photos, I don't even know where to begin. Let me start with Ansel Adams. Adams was a master in the darkroom, which is how he managed to created such amazing photographs. Adams would spend hours burning and dodging until he was satisfied with the photo. What Adams did in the darkroom is the same as editing your photos with a computer, now.

If you're shooting JPEGs, then your camera is editing your photos for you, anyway, so JPEGs are technically edited photos. The camera guesses how you want the photo to look, and then gets rid of the data that wasn't used. A small amount of editing can be done to a JPEG, but a RAW file will work much better for editing, because all of the data is there to work with. JPEGs are basically like french fries, while RAW files are like having a potato. The potato can be turned into many different things, including a french fry, if that's what you want. I'd like to see someone try to turn a french fry back into a potato.

Even when someone takes a photo with film and then takes the film to be developed somewhere, the film is technically edited, because the way the film is developed can have an effect on how the negatives look. More or less time with the developer, or fixer, or stopper will yield different results. So if you're against editing photos, for some reason, there's really no way to avoid it. Personally, I'd rather have control over the final product than have a camera try to guess what I want.