Reply To: Equipment and education… yes they matter!

[cameraclicker]

It’s more of a statement than an experiment.  The ELPH has a 5 mm – 20 mm – F/2.8-5.9 lens attached.   At 5 mm hyperfocal distance is a foot.  Even at 20 mm and f/2.8 the hyperfocal distance is 15.5 feet.  You could get a blurry background by having your subject at perhaps 6 feet and the background at 200 feet, if you opened the lens to f/2.8 and zoomed it to 20 mm, but I’m not sure if you can get f/2.8 at 20 mm or if it would only give f/5.9, which would bring the hyperfocal distance to around 7 feet, so everything will be in some degree of focus.

The 18-55 kit lens seems to shows up a lot for the photos linked here.  There is more capability than with a point & shoot, but changing lenses is where the creative control comes from and while they might spring for the 50 mm f/1.8, the likelihood of them seeing the value in a collection of lenses that each cost more than the body, is small.  The APS-C sensor causes a tendency to shoot from further back, so there is not as much benefit of the big aperture as you see with the same lens on a full frame body that lets you get that little bit closer.

It’s been demonstrated by many people that if the object is to take some cheap camera and turn in a good creative photo of something, anything, it is possible.  If conditions are added, certain distances, certain subjects, bad ambient light, and so on, then it gets harder to deliver with cheap gear.  The point here seems more that the cheap camera fits the value system of the owner, as does the entry level dSLR and also the better gear.  Those shelling out thousands for body and lenses appreciate why they are spending the money.

The same applies to work flow and editing.  If the ELPH owner only has an ELPH, they probably have no idea what a raw file is and Lightroom at twice the camera’s cost or Photoshop at five times the camera’s cost is going to be out of the question as well.  I think even the ELPH comes with Canon’s editing software, but you have to install the software and it is not the most intuitive to use.

Finally, there is posing, but if you are not going to bother with the details of photography or editing, why bother with posing?  Or, composition?

Previously the family of a subject in a photo we were criticizing  jumped on here and essentially said, they did not care about the quality of the image, they were helping out the photographer, who was a nice person.  So, perhaps it is about the relationship and expectation instead of about the quality of the photo?