Pixiq

If you dream to be creative in photography, get away from the modern intelligent compact cameras. They will stop you from doing what your mind tells you.

The title for this article might seem a bit too harsh, but having just finished another workshop with compact camera users, I just feel I have to share my feelings with all those people out there that might be about to buy their first camera, and think a compact will do.

Don’t get me wrong. I love compacts. So much, in fact, that some of the pictures of my recent eBook about flower photography are taken with compact cameras. And I’ve been testing/photographing with compacts since the early days of film, so they’re nothing strange to me… although I find myself lost nowadays, with some of the modern intelligent models camera makers are selling.

My problem with some of these new generation cameras is that they’re anything but tools for creative photography, because in fact they hinder the photographer to express his feelings, being so automated that don’t leave the user much choice.

Yes, they might have some dozens of automatic programs that do everything from sunset pictures with the perfect tone to photographs of documents, as if they’re a photocopy machine. And they have even more programs, to take pictures of food, flowers, underwater and whatever you may think of. And even things you would never imagine…

My problem with all this is that the photographer ends being just a button pusher, a camera operator, and not a creative mind using a tool. Now, I do believe that these auto-everything cameras might be just the right choice for doing family snapshots and not much else, but my problem is that many people when buying a compact want to have a camera that does that… and a little bit more. Many of them want to be able to evolve. They hardly will with some of the modern compact models. And they might even just give up on photography. What is a shame, really!

What happens is that when people go out and try to buy a camera they don’t know enough of photography to know what to look for, and sometimes to tell exactly what they dream their camera shall be. So instead of going back home with a compact camera that gives them enough free space to try things, they end with a model that is an absolute negation of creative freedom in photography.

I sometimes wonder why we need so many programs… when most of them just do basically the same thing… But I guess the marketing department of camera makers just needs to have something to say when they sell new models… some six months after they launched their last new models…

On my recent workshops, a lot of people showed up with models from a specific brand that has different versions which are examples of this problem. It does not matter how much you try, you will not attain the results you want, simply because the intelligent system onboard the camera decides otherwise. In fact, even to get results near of those you want, you need to understand very well how the predefined programs work… and how you can “force” them to do what you want. And that is something that beginners do not know.

If you look at the information about some of these models you will soon understand that they’re made for snapshooters and nothing else. The information about one of the recent models I tried to tame states this:

“Don’t worry about the right settings

It can be hard judging the best camera settings to use in tricky situations like twilight portraits and sun-drenched backlit beach scenes. Intelligent Scene Recognition automatically adjusts exposure and other settings, helping you achieve better-looking results with less effort.”

Yes, it will, but at the cost of your freedom as a photographer. If you’re willing to let the camera decide everything for you, then go and buy this camera, but if you think that sometime in the future you might want to do more than snapshots, then do yourself a favour and look elsewhere.

During a recent field lesson about depth of field I wanted my students to explore it just closing the aperture between two shots, to understand the effect. While we could do it with some of the compact models used, either directly or using one predefined program as landscape for one shot and a portrait program on the second image, with this super smart camera we could not get the right results. Not even using the different predefined programs included, because the camera always defined the speed as the changing value. Intelligent or blatantly stupid?

Since watching 2001 Space Odyssey in the sixties that I love the concept of Man over Machine, but on the fight with this camera I just had to give in. What is irritating in the very end is that photography should be a simple thing and is becoming more and more complex with some of these intelligent cameras.

I do agree that preset programs are somehow interesting, and can help people to get results, but when someone tells me: “look at my camera, it has 22 fantastic programs”,  I tend to tell them that on my camera I’ve much less and in fact I just use three: aperture and speed priority and manual. The problem with modern technology and computers is that sometimes, while they’re meant to make life easier for us humans, they’re just making things more complex.

I’ve a friend complaining to me that he now takes more time to answer and make calls, with a new Android (is that the right name?) smartphone than he did with an old days telephone…

In the field of photography what camera makers are doing is something similar and at the same time taking away from people the joy of doing their own photographs. Everything is “press the button we do the rest”, something that was fun in the old Kodak days but it’s not anymore. And I don’t understand why it has to be that way.

I accept we can depend on automatic exposure metering, automatic flash, compensation a.s.o. but it would be nice for camera makers to understand that photography is a creative art, and include in every single camera an option to let the user control the essential aspects of picture taking: aperture, speed and ISO setting. It would be a kind of “sandbox” where people could practice their photography taking, being aware that if they failed it would be entirely their responsibility, but if victorious they could claim their merits. I think it would make for more people happy with their photography. Because we love what we learn.

This “sandbox” should be a norm for the industry.  And I bet it’s not hard to implement. But until that happens, please be aware when you go out to buy a compact camera: some of them will not let you do more than press a button. Shy away from those all intelligent models that promise to take the burden of picture taking from your shoulders. Because photography is no burden, and the challenge of choosing your own aperture and speed… and live with the consequences, is what makes the hobby fun.