Sometimes, it is the camera’s fault

March 26, 2009

A common trait among photographers is the tendency towards being a complete gear whore. I stole that term from a friend who does electronic music and uses it to describe people who tend to accumulate a bunch of expensive gizmos which they may or may not need with the excuse that they can do wonderful things with their new toys.

I think we’re all guilty of thinking that we could get a little something extra out of our photography with a new lens or the latest body.   If we had the professional body we’d have faster autofocus and could shoot at a higher ISO so we would have caught that beautiful, perfect moment we saw in the viewfinder instead of looking at an out of focus motion blurred shot worthy of the delete function.   To a certain extent its true, especially for digital.  A better body will give you the option to shoot at higher ISO with acceptable levels of noise, faster autofocus, and better metering.   It gives you more control but it won’t make you take a good picture.

Even worse is the tendency to blame your equipment for those missed shots.  I’m reminded of my childhood where my brother constantly accused the Nintendo of cheating when he lost a life at whatever game we  were playing.   Naturally the gizmo was incapable of cheating.  It does exactly what it was told to do.   Sometimes the instructions are badly written but it will do as its told and cannot cheat.

Recently I was faced with a series of negatives which I used my new Voigtlander Bessa to shoot.  They were low light shots with the lens full open at f/1.4 and the shutter speed around 1/15 or 1/30 of a second.  Every single frame was blurry.  The entire roll was a loss.  Then the next few rolls to come out of the tank were similarly blurry.   Shots I was sure I nailed.  The only things which came out were ones in bright daylight where I had stopped the lens down.

This could be due to several factors.   Moving subject with low shutter speed.  Camera shake.  Bad focusing.  Failing eyesight.  Diopter wasn’t set properly.  Finger in front of the rangefinder throwing things off.

Or just maybe the camera was cheating.

I was pretty sure that I had focused properly.  Perhaps I was still getting used to the split image focusing.  Maybe I wasn’t holding the camera steady enough.  I wasn’t doing something right.  Or just maybe the the rangefinder was slightly out of alignment and an element in the lens was quite badly out of alignment.

Which turned out to be the case.

A few tests involving a meter stick and a $200 trip to Nipon Camera Clinic confirmed that it wasn’t me, it was actually the camera.

It may be a low thing to blame your gear but in the end you’ve got to have a little faith in yourself.

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