How has your photography evolved since you started shooting

[Cynthiaa]

Hi, my name is Cynthia, I've been doing photography for 10 years, and I'm new to this forum. How has your photography evolved since you started shooting with a Fuji X camera, and what have you learned from the experience?

[jerryy]

Welcome to the forum!

[Astigmatism]

Welcome to the forum!

I've been thinking about this exact question lately. I did a LOT of amateur photography in about 1978-1985, including my own darkroom with some simple color processes. Much of my attention was on how to do the wet chemistry and using the enlarger. Polycontrast paper, which involved purple and yellow filters on the enlarger, was new, and I tried a lot with that, including burning and dodging with different filters to do local increase or decrease of the contrast. For a while I was on a sepia toning kick. On the camera side of things, I liked macrophotography including a bellows and special bellows lenses, and I worked pretty hard to make depth of field work. Generally I tried to practice better focusing technique, and had about 4 or 5 different focusing screens. I tried to practice better holding technique, too, using tips from archery to control my breath and get less blurry pictures when struggling with long shutter times.

I got into Fuji X cameras within the last couple years. This was my introduction to digital cameras with interchangeable lenses. What evolved the most was that all the wet chemistry went away, including a lot of work that had nothing to do with controlling the images I made. Do I need to improve my temperature control? How fresh are all my batches of chemicals and how fresh do they need to be? Do I need to add a fan because the fumes are bothering me? Can I make a homemade vacuum easel to keep the paper from curling under the enlarger? Can I load some more cartridges today or is it so hot I will sweat inside the changing bag and ruin them all? ALL of that stuff just went away.

Lots more evolved. Autofocus mostly made focusing technique go away, or reduced it to thinking about what part of the image I wanted sharp. Rather than having to decide whether to accept the grain of Tri-X or the speed of Pan-X or compromise on Plus-X, and having to stick with that for the whole session, I get sensitivity that is somewhere between better and way way better. Handheld shots can be so much slower now without shake. And the lenses are faster -- I used to have one lens that went to f/1.4, and now I have several that can do that, and one that incredibly goes to f/1.0. Not only that, I can do focus stacking now, and get what used to be flat out impossible shots.

Long story short, mostly, the hard stuff went away, or at least got several stops better.

I guess the downside is that now I struggle sometimes with software, installations that don't go right, needing to track updates, and camera instructions that are 10 or 100 times more complex. Before automatic exposure and other microprocessor driven stuff came along, there just weren't that many details. My favorite camera, the Canon F-1, did have a battery for the light meter, but other than the meter not functioning it was the same user experience if I left the battery out. Sunny 16 and I was good to go.

[Cynthiaa]

On 5/9/2023 at 4:13 PM, jerryy said:

Welcome to the forum!

Thank you :)

[Cynthiaa]

On 5/10/2023 at 4:54 PM, Astigmatism said:

Welcome to the forum!

I've been thinking about this exact question lately. I did a LOT of amateur photography in about 1978-1985, including my own darkroom with some simple color processes. Much of my attention was on how to do the wet chemistry and using the enlarger. Polycontrast paper, which involved purple and yellow filters on the enlarger, was new, and I tried a lot with that, including burning and dodging with different filters to do local increase or decrease of the contrast. For a while I was on a sepia toning kick. On the camera side of things, I liked macrophotography including a bellows and special bellows lenses, and I worked pretty hard to make depth of field work. Generally I tried to practice better focusing technique, and had about 4 or 5 different focusing screens. I tried to practice better holding technique, too, using tips from archery to control my breath and get less blurry pictures when struggling with long shutter times.

I got into Fuji X cameras within the last couple years. This was my introduction to digital cameras with interchangeable lenses. What evolved the most was that all the wet chemistry went away, including a lot of work that had nothing to do with controlling the images I made. Do I need to improve my temperature control? How fresh are all my batches of chemicals and how fresh do they need to be? Do I need to add a fan because the fumes are bothering me? Can I make a homemade vacuum easel to keep the paper from curling under the enlarger? Can I load some more cartridges today or is it so hot I will sweat inside the changing bag and ruin them all? ALL of that stuff just went away.

Lots more evolved. Autofocus mostly made focusing technique go away, or reduced it to thinking about what part of the image I wanted sharp. Rather than having to decide whether to accept the grain of Tri-X or the speed of Pan-X or compromise on Plus-X, and having to stick with that for the whole session, I get sensitivity that is somewhere between better and way way better. Handheld shots can be so much slower now without shake. And the lenses are faster -- I used to have one lens that went to f/1.4, and now I have several that can do that, and one that incredibly goes to f/1.0. Not only that, I can do focus stacking now, and get what used to be flat out impossible shots.

Long story short, mostly, the hard stuff went away, or at least got several stops better.

I guess the downside is that now I struggle sometimes with software, installations that don't go right, needing to track updates, and camera instructions that are 10 or 100 times more complex. Before automatic exposure and other microprocessor driven stuff came along, there just weren't that many details. My favorite camera, the Canon F-1, did have a battery for the light meter, but other than the meter not functioning it was the same user experience if I left the battery out. Sunny 16 and I was good to go.

Wow, thank you for such a detailed answer, very interesting.

[Astigmatism]

After my lengthy reply, I have still been thinking about this. What I'd most like to add isn't an answer to the question "How has your photography evolved", but instead an answer to the related question "How has your photography stayed the same".

And this is what drew me to Fuji.

What has stayed the same is that apertures change several things, and shutter speeds change several things, and sensitivity or ASA or ISO change several things. For each, the brightness level in the image is one of those things - but brightness is never the ONLY thing that changes! And that is not a problem. That is part of what I like thinking about when taking pictures.

I've always used manual aperture and shutter speed. I also used what I'll call "manual film speed", in the sense that I thought about what film speed would suit my needs when loading the camera, though, sadly, in the past the speed couldn't be chosen for each individual shot.

What made me reluctant about getting seriously into digital photography was that the digital cameras I was aware of were designed to shoot on auto exposure. Some of them had ways to shoot manually instead, but typically this involved extra effort to override the automatic, maybe dig down into menus to get to each manual setting. About as much fun as entering a complicated password using a TV remote with just a few keys (we went through that the other night).

What drew me to Fuji, when somebody pointed it out to me, was that some models put dials for all these things right there in plain view. I love that! It makes digital photography OK! And all the other things I mentioned go on to make it great.

[Blue Zurich]

Hi, I have been shooting for about 44 years. Starting with medium format and E-6. My vision and 'eye' back then was all over the place. When I came into digital in 2000 and then FF Canon in 2006 I developed a style and interest in a set of genres that appealed to me. What mattered to me most was the 'me' part not was others might want to see. These styles and techniques morphed and evolved over the years but the main core of what I shot stayed the same. 

When I switched from Canon full frame to Fuji the biggest impact was being slowed down. This is something I have employed over the years from time to time but in a purely patience minded purpose. With the X-T5 it was due to ergonomics , menus and an adjustment to the system. Still, the result was similar as in previous years. Akin to shooting with a single focal length to strengthen your technique, I have grown again in my 'eye' what with composition and framing. I have always been a BNW shooter (film & digital) and the excellent sims and great 40 MP jpegs sooc give me further enjoyment with that process.

 

I am a very happy switcher!

 

https://www.flickr.com/photos/197762654@N07/