One of the basic questions a photographer faces is: what is the right camera for a particular project? In photo blogs and forums, photographers are forever debating which is the 'best' camera, and while they raise many interesting points, there is, of course, no 'best' camera, only the 'right' camera for a project. I recently had the chance to photograph the beautiful Valeria, a nail-artist and belly-dancer who also models sometimes. She's full of character and energy, and very creative in her posing - a dream for a photographer to work with. Since this was a personal project, I had no worries about file size, and thus could shoot with any camera I chose to. I started with my trusty Canon 5D (now replaced by my new Canon 5D Mark II), but found that I needed something more spontaneous - as if I was a painter who laid down my brushes in order to sketch freely. So I used my iphone camera to get some warm-up shots, getting a sense of the light, of her posing, of the possibilities for visualizing this woman. The results are the above image and the two below. Although the iphone camera has been decried for its poor quality, I actually like the painterly effect it delivers - very grainy and dream-like, similar to early color photographic processes, like the autochrome (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autochrome_Lumi%C3%A8re).
Next, I switched to my Canon 5D. I wanted more detail, more dynamic range, and something sharper, richer and with a more fully-defined feeling, something less like a dream and more like a real, live woman standing in front of you.
Finally, I took an image with my Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX3, a terrifically sharp compact camera with a Leica lens. This camera allows shooting in a 16:9 format, which results in a rather 'cinematic' feeling. This camera falls between the iphone and 5D - a compact camera without as much control and creative possibilities as a DSLR, but still producing great images.
So, in conclusion: there is no 'best' camera, only 'right' cameras. In this case, I found that working with three cameras really allowed me to see and relate to my subject in different ways.
One of the basic questions a photographer faces is: what is the right camera for a particular project? In photo blogs and forums, photographers are forever debating which is the 'best' camera, and while they raise many interesting points, there is, of course, no 'best' camera, only the 'right' camera for a project. I recently had the chance to photograph the beautiful Valeria, a nail-artist and belly-dancer who also models sometimes. She's full of character and energy, and very creative in her posing - a dream for a photographer to work with. Since this was a personal project, I had no worries about file size, and thus could shoot with any camera I chose to. I started with my trusty Canon 5D (now replaced by my new Canon 5D Mark II), but found that I needed something more spontaneous - as if I was a painter who laid down my brushes in order to sketch freely. So I used my iphone camera to get some warm-up shots, getting a sense of the light, of her posing, of the possibilities for visualizing this woman. The results are the above image and the two below. Although the iphone camera has been decried for its poor quality, I actually like the painterly effect it delivers - very grainy and dream-like, similar to early color photographic processes, like the autochrome (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autochrome_Lumi%C3%A8re).
Next, I switched to my Canon 5D. I wanted more detail, more dynamic range, and something sharper, richer and with a more fully-defined feeling, something less like a dream and more like a real, live woman standing in front of you.
Finally, I took an image with my Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX3, a terrifically sharp compact camera with a Leica lens. This camera allows shooting in a 16:9 format, which results in a rather 'cinematic' feeling. This camera falls between the iphone and 5D - a compact camera without as much control and creative possibilities as a DSLR, but still producing great images.
So, in conclusion: there is no 'best' camera, only 'right' cameras. In this case, I found that working with three cameras really allowed me to see and relate to my subject in different ways.
