Equipment
(Or, more than you wanted to know about cameras!)
Cameras: 35mm SLR* Cameras: Digital * Cameras: Other * Other Equipment * Self-photography
When I say "good photographs," I'm not talking about a snapshot with an
instant or disposable camera -- I'm talking about something you can enlarge,
at least to 8 x 10, and proudly show. This takes a good camera. While there
are a wide variety of good cameras, there are two broad categories that you're
likely to have, or have access to, that can give you very good results.
For many years the standard camera of mobile photographers -- as opposed to studio photographers -- has been the 35mm Single Lens Reflex, or SLR. This simply means it uses film 35mm wide, and the photographer sees, in the viewfinder, what the film will "see" through the same lens.
Without going into the technical details, the 35mm SLR is one of the most highly developed and best-engineered tools of photography ever built. It's good enough for the vast majority of professional photography to be done with it, but, with autofocus and auto exposure, it's also easy enough for a talented beginner to get good results.
Don't ask me which 35mm camera is best. All of the major brands are quite good after over 50 years of development. Nikon, Canon, Olympus, Minolta, Leica, Pentax, Fujica, Yashica, Contax, Sigma -- any of them can give outstanding results. What matters much more is the knowledge and skill of the person behind the viewfinder.
The film "frame," or exposed area, of a 35mm SLR is generally 24 x 36 mm. When this is measured diagonally, corner to corner, the measure is approximately 50mm (it's actually about 43.25). For optical reasons too complex to go into here, this means that 50mm is the focal length considered "normal" for 35mm SLRs. That is, if you look through a 50mm lens with one eye, and open your other eye, the image and perspective seen by both eyes will be approximately the same.
Lenses of less than 50mm are called wide-angle lenses, and they make things look farther away -- like looking through the wrong end of binoculars. Common sizes are 35, 28, and 24mm. These are especially good in tight, indoor spaces, where you can make a room look bigger, or get all of a wide group of people in the frame. Really extreme wide-angle lenses -- less than about 16mm -- tend to have a great deal of distortion, and they're called fisheye lenses. Because of the distortion, fisheye lenses aren't usually used for much more than a special effect.
Lenses of more than 50mm are called telephoto lenses, and they make distant things look closer. They're not all giant telescopes with little cameras hanging off the end -- one of the commonest "short" telephoto lenses is 135mm, which can be very good for both portraiture and sports photography.
"What about zoom lenses?" you say. I'm glad you asked. Zoom lenses allow you to change the focal length, usually by sliding a part of the lens barrel. Some are telephotos -- 85-210 is a common range. Others cross the 50mm mark into the wide-angle range, like the 35-85mm I usually keep on my 35mm camera. Recent advances in optics in the last twenty years have resulted in some lenses of astonishing range, like 28-200mm! In the past, most 35mm cameras were originally sold with a 50mm lens of high quality, by the camera's maker. Zoom optics were considered inferior in resolution and prone to distortion. Modern zoom lenses are much better, good enough that today a wide-range zoom is often the only lens sold with a camera. (The fixed-focal-length lenses are still technically better, but they can't match the versatility of a zoom.)
Besides its focal length, the other main characteristic of a lens is its "speed," as expressed as an "f-stop." A bit of quick digression is in order here: When actually "taking" the picture, the shutter button is pressed. This opens the shutter, exposing the film inside to the light from the lens. Films are rated in ISO numbers, referring to a film's sensitivity to light -- the higher the number, the more sensitive. (25 is slow, 100 is medium, 400 is fast, 1200 is real fast. But slower films have finer grain, and the pictures can be enlarged more -- there's always a tradeoff.) When the film has "seen" enough light for a good exposure, the shutter closes again, and the film is advanced to the next frame.
When you hear a photographer talking of "speed," he might be talking about a number of things. A "fast" film, a sensitive film, doesn't need to be exposed for long, so it allows a fast shutter speed (with some cameras, that can range up to 1/4000 of a second!). Fast shutter speeds are useful primarily for freezing fast action -- race horses, speeding motorcycles, speeding bullets, etc. (On the other hand, sometimes a bit of "motion blur" is nice, because it dramatically conveys the speed of the action.) In photographing costumes, you shouldn't usually need a fast shutter speed -- 1/30 of a second is plenty quick, and even 1/15 or 1/8 will usually work.
On the other hand, the "speed" of a lens refers to how much light it gathers and transmits to the film -- the more light the film gets, the sooner it gets a good exposure, the faster the shutter can close -- hence a lens that gathers a lot of light is called a "fast" lens. To keep things confusing, "fast" lenses are denoted by having low f-stop numbers.
Confused? That's OK -- it confuses everyone at first. It gets more complicated, so I'll try to take this in small bits.
Most camera lenses (but not all) have a diaphragm somewhere near where they mount on the camera, which opens or closes more to regulate the light coming in (not to be confused with the shutter, which is in the camera and protects the film from light until exposure is desired). It looks like an polygon made up of "blades" sliding toward the center, opening or closing the aperture in different sizes. These aperture sizes are measured in f-stops, and the largest size to which it can open determines the "speed" of the lens. When the diaphragm is open to its widest setting, it's completely out of the light path, and the f-stop will be that of the lens -- usually about f1.4 to 1.8 for a 50mm lens, or anywhere up to f2.8, 3.5, 4, or even 5.6 for a wide-angle or telephoto lens. The "faster" lenses, with the lower f-stop numbers, let you take pictures with less light, but they also reqire a large objective lens -- the element facing the subject -- and they tend to cost a lot more. There's also a matter of focus and depth of field, which we'll come back to in a bit.
So, a quick recap: a 50mm f1.4 lens is a classified as a fast normal lens, good for general photography. A 28mm f2.8 is an average wide-angle lens, and an 85mm f4 is a short telephoto, somewhat slower. Got it?
Before we get to specific recommendations, there's one other aspect you should understand: focus and depth of field. Everyone knows what focus looks like -- it's when the lines are sharp. Technically, an object is in focus when the light rays from it converge precisely on the film plane. (With most modern cameras, you won't need to worry much about focus, because autofocus systems have become both quite common and quite good.) "Depth of field" refers to an aspect of focus less understood among non-photographers.
I'll use an example: imagine a person standing next to a painting on a wall, with a flower in the foreground, close to the camera. Generally, if you focus on the flower close to the camera, the person and the painting in the background will be out of focus. If you focus on the person, the painting is likely to be in focus as well, but the flower will be a colorful blur.
What's happening is this: the lens, at a certain aperture setting (or f-stop), has a given depth of field. This means from, say, ten feet to infinity, everything is in the "field" of sharp focus. As you focus closer, the zone of sharp focus moves away from infinity, and gets correspondingly smaller. You might have everything from six to ten feet in focus, then from four to six feet, and so on.
What if you want everything in focus? You control the depth of field by making the aperture smaller -- say, changing it from f2.8 to f.11, or f.16 (because bigger f-stop numbers mean smaller apertures). Now you can have everything in focus, but there's a lot less light getting to the film -- so the shutter needs to stay open longer.
That's the tradeoff -- smaller apertures give better depth of field, but slower shutter speeds. Fortunately, you rarely need to freeze fast action with tremendous depth of field (and if you did, you can do so by shining a lot more light on the subject, allowing fast shutter speeds again).
The other facet of depth of field is when you're photographing close up. Close focusing, or "macro," lenses aren't hard to find -- but as you get close, the field of sharp focus gets very narrow. In an extreme closeup, you'll see your fingerprint in sharp focus, but your fingernail will fade into a blur. So closeup photography is usually done with a lot of light, allowing a small aperture setting to maximize the depth of field.
Is your head spinning yet? If it is, here's the least you need to know to photograph costumes with a 35mm SLR:
You might notice I haven't mentioned using a flash at all. I'll get into the reasons why in the section on lighting.
In the last few years a revolution has quietly taken place in photography. The first digital cameras were expensive, and had low resolution compared with even snapshot film cameras. But digital cameras quickly followed the path of all things electronic: faster, better, cheaper. The second-generation cameras reached resolutions of approximately one million pixels, or one megapixel. It wasn't long before two- and three- megapixel cameras were coming from Nikon, Canon, Olympus, and the others, with zoom lenses and prices under $1000. At this writing (November 2002) Nikon, Minolta, and Olympus (and probably others) are offering 5-megapixel cameras with zoom ranges as high as 10:1 -- equal to a 35mm-350mm zoom. Meanwhile, Nikon, and Fuji are selling 5- and 6-megapixel cameras to the pros built on bodies similar to the 35mm Nikon F series, with mounts for the complete range of Nikkor (Nikon's brand) professional lenses. Canon is selling similar cameras that mount the Canon range of lenses. Kodak has recently trumped them all with a Nikon-based camera offering a staggering 14 megapixels of resolution.
How does this compare to film photography? By now, quite well. It's been estimated that the resolution of a typical 35mm frame of film is roughly equal to six megapixels -- so while the higher-end cameras are knocking on its door, the new Kodak simply kicks it in. Others are sure to follow in short order.
Where does this leave you -- not a pro photographer, but simply someone who wants good costume pictures? In a very happy place, actually. We now have far more choices than ever before, and the cost of digital keeps dropping with every new generation.
Most consumer-level -- that is, under $1000 -- digital cameras don't work like 35mm SLRs. They generally have a fixed lens and a small LCD screen at the back that doubles as an electronic viewfinder. For at least reasonably serious photography, a digital camera should have a few things. A zoom lens, with close focusing capability, is one of the most important. Another is reasonably high resolution -- these days, that means at least two megapixels. You can actually produce decent pictures with a one-megapixel camera, but most of them don't have zoom lenses.
Naturally, digital cameras don't use film. The really cheap ones store some pictures internally, which then have to be downloaded or deleted before you can shoot any more. (You don't want that kind!) Most digitals use one of two memory media: CompactFlash or SmartMedia, which are roughly comparable. Sony, not surprisingly, is pushing its own types: either the Mavica, which stores pictures on disks (floppy, or Zip, or, in some, mini-CDs); or a proprietary Sony memory device called a Memory Stick. My recommendation would be to avoid the disk-based Mavicas (slow), and only buy the Memory Stick type if you have other Sony devices that use Memory Sticks.
Of course, digitals do require something else: batteries. Don't bother with Duracells or Energizers -- a digital camera can chew up and spit out four AA alkalines in an afternoon. You want rechargable batteries, not NiCads but NiMH -- Nickel Metal Hydride. These charge quickly, hold a tremendous amount of juice, and don't cost too much. They're by far the best way to go, short of a belt-mounted battery pack.
Digital cameras have a number of significant benefits, not the least of which is cost. A roll of 36 exposures of 35mm film will generally cost you (I'm guessing here, because it's been a while!) about $5-7, and you'll probably pay more than that again for developing and printing. So 36 pictures wind up costing (let's guess low) around $12 or more. By contrast, once you own your digital camera and a set or two of rechargable batteries, the total cost of shooting is: zero. OK, there's the cost of the electricity to charge the batteries, but I'm not going to calculate it.
There are other significant benefits to shooting digital. One of the great advantages professional photographers have always enjoyed is shooting roll after roll of film looking for that one great shot. The customer pays for the film, so they don't care. Well, I have two 128MB CompactFlash modules for my digital Nikon, and each can hold about 260 high-resolution pictures -- or up to 1600 low-resolution ones! It's nice, when you're planning a shoot, to know you can just keep shooting until you get something really good.
And there's instant feedback -- with the screen on the back, there's no guesswork about the lighting or composition. If the lighting isn't working, or the exposure is bad, you can change it on the spot, instead of trying to set up the shoot again after getting the pictures back from the film processor. (Believe me, that's a real consideration!) In addition, I like to keep my camera set up for spot metering (reading exposure from a spot at the center). With this, I can aim the camera at a dark area and watch it lighten up to adjust, or aim at a light area to see it darken. (Try that with a 35mm SLR!)
There is still a significant drawback to digital cameras, though technology is eroding this one as well: response time. When you press the "shutter button" on a digital camera, most of them have a momentary lag before the picture is actually "taken." This might be a tenth of a second, or, on some, as much as a quarter second. One tenth of a second might not sound like much, but it's significant when you're taking pictures. If you're photographing action -- the dog leaping to catch the frisbee -- it's a little tiny eternity, and you learn to anticipate and shoot early. This adds an element of guesswork in that critical moment before the shot. The picture is then saved to the memory system -- which, on the disc-based Sony Mavicas, is another significant lag. Those of us who learned on 35mm SLRs might enjoy the free shooting that digital offers, but we were also spoiled by the effectively instantaneous response of the SLR.
In essence, a digital camera can offer a few features that can make a good photographer better -- but 35mm still has a few advantages over all but the most expensive digitals. Let's recap:
My recommendation: If you have, or have access to, a good digital camera, use it. The freedom to take all the pictures you want regardless of cost will make you a better photographer. If you don't, but you have or can borrow a good 35mm SLR, use that. It'll cost a little more, but less than buying a good digital, and your pictures can still be excellent.
Yes, there are other film formats. The old 110 cameras made negatives too small to be taken seriously, and they were pretty much put out of business by the APS (Advanced Photo System) film developed in the 90's. APS makes a decent-sized negative, but most of the cameras are still basically snapshooters. Some of the high-end APS cameras are really quite good, but the cost of entry there is close to that of 35mm or digital.
There are always the 35mm disposables. These obviously produce the same 35mm negative as the SLRs, but cost is negligible -- nice, right? The problem is that they're little better than toys -- plastic lenses have their limits. There's no point in engineering a zoom lens and sophisticated exposure control into something that'll be thrown away after one use.
On the other hand, there are bigger cameras than 35mm: the medium-format cameras like Mamiya, Bronica, and the exquisitely expensive Hasselblad, with its German-built Zeiss lenses. These cameras are pro equipment, rivaling 35mm for flexibility, but the cost is geometrically increased over that of 35mm.
Beyond the medium format cameras come the view cameras. This is the old-timey-looking box, with a lens board at one end, a bellows (like an accordion) in the middle, and a photographer with a cloth over his head at the other, composing an upside-down picture on a large ground glass. Why would anybody shoot that way these days? Because the negative it produces is the same size as that large ground glass --often 4 x 5 inches or even bigger -- and as such, the picture can be enlarged to about the size of your garage door, and it'll still look good. Don't laugh -- this is serious equipment, folks, the kind used by Ansel Adams and his like -- but you don't need it to shoot costumes. In fact, digital backs are now being sold for view cameras, replacing the film, but you don't want to know the prices these command.
I hope that covers cameras well enough. There's a little more equipment that you don't really need, but it would be nice to have:
1) A tripod. Especially if you're using a telephoto lens, which magnifies every wobble and jitter; or shooting in low light, which requires slow shutter speeds. A tripod sets up anywhere and provides a stable camera platform. If you're photographing yourself, using the self-timer (which I don't recommend!), it's required.
Some photographers find it more convienient to carry and use the tripod's little brother, the monopod. This is just one tripod leg, with the same mounting head. It stabilizes the camera, and it's lighter, but it's not a real substitute, because it can't stand by itself.
2) A flash, if used carefully. See the section on LIGHTING, below, for details. Most cameras these days have some form of built-in flash, which is controlled by the camera's light meter. Most 35mm cameras, and some digital cameras, have a "hot shoe" on top for mounting an auxiliary flash. Even if the camera has a built-in flash, it's a good bet that the flash on the hot shoe will be stronger. Besides, most of them can swivel to the side, or pivot upward, allowing you to use "bounce flash." Again, see the section on LIGHTING.
3) An assistant. Even if the person wearing the costume isn't doing the photography, it's good to have another person around. This person can adjust garments, brush off dust, touch up makeup, and, when photographing outdoors, hold the...
4) ...White board. This is a piece of white foamcore board, the bigger the better. In outdoor photography it's used as a reflector to angle more light onto the subject. Cost for this high-tech bit of equipment is under five dollars. See LIGHTING below.
This seems like as good a place as any to address this issue, so here I go (it falls under "Equipment," I guess, because it involves the self-timer):
I remember going to visit my grandparents on holidays when I was a kid. My grandfather had a 35mm rangefinder camera, probably a pretty good one for the time, and he loved taking photos of the family members in various groups: all the boys, all the girls, everyone with glasses, everyone who's left-handed, that sort of thing. Usually arranged by height.
I also remember being impressed that he was able to get into his own family pictures. He'd put the camera on a tripod, set the self-timer, and then trot around to join the family group in front of the lens, usually in the center of the picture. It seemed like amazing technology. We'd all smile rigidly (the word "rictus" comes to mind), shift our weight from foot to foot, decide we'd heard it click, and start to break the group up. Then the shutter would go off, and we'd have to do it all over again.
So self-timers are nothing new, and they're not amazing any more. Most cameras have them, and it's easy to use them to take bad pictures of oneself. Some cameras have little remote controls, which allow you much more time to set up in place -- this is marginally better.
The problem is, it's very difficult to use them to take good pictures of oneself. Not through any lack of skill, but simply that you can't see through the viewfinder while you're shooting. It's tough enough to get good costume pictures with a model, a photographer, and an assistant -- for one person to try doing all three roles at once is a little crazy. If there's nobody to wear the costume for you, or nobody to snap the shutter for you, I'd first recommend putting the costume on a dress form and taking pictures of that.
I'd only recommend doing the self-timer thing if you're alone on a desert island with nothing but your camera, your computer, and your sewing workroom. If you happen to be in that unhappy situation, and you absolutely must photograph yourself, here's what I suggest:
1) Put the costume on a dress form, put it in front of the camera, and compose the picture carefully. Use artificial light, because while you're setting it up and messing with it, the sun will move, and any natural lighting you're using will have changed. (See the "Studio Settings" section on the SETTINGS page.) Mark the location of the dress form on the floor with an X of masking tape, with a long leg to indicate which direction the body is facing. Then snap the picture of the dress form and give up the idea of photographing yourself. (Just kidding.)
2) Get a full-length mirror and stand it up carefully behind the camera. This will give you some idea of how your costume is draping, how the light is hitting you, and what your facial expression and body pose look like.
3) Get ready to waste a lot of photos, because this is a really inefficient process. Most self-timers give ten to twenty seconds, and if you think you can arrange your skirt to look its best in twenty seconds, after running back from the camera, you're -- well -- ambitious.
4) Give up on the idea and call a friend to help you. Really.