M43 Musings

woof woof wrote:

Fri13 wrote:

Jim Salvas wrote:

The very idea of shooting small and fast BIFs was unheard of until just a few years ago. Almost nobody could do this with anything other than the grainiest film and early DSLRs were incompetent at the task. But, better sensors came along, with longer, faster AF lenses

Not so. For decades there has been excellent wildlife photographers who have photographed birds in deep dark forests and so. The thing just is that majority of the people didn't hear about those photographers as they made the bird books and education books and even had own special meetings and were more like a war photographers who gathered together once a year to pick best photographers among them.

Now it is like people believe cameras does the tricks and every camera should do it just with push of a button.

While it is a fact that AF is radically improved, but there is huge difference when you give the same camera with same settings to photographer who have been working 30-40 years photographing birds and then for photographer who has been photographing people.

If all this is true what cameras were people using decades ago to get these results?

All kind SLR, like Olympus OM-1 and OM-2.  And of course sometimes motor back, dozens of roll (if not running filmbacks) and just making sure you got the perfect moment as you had no way to review things. And focal lengths at 200-600mm range.

Personally I find my best MFT camera (GX7) better at higher ISO's than any 35mm film I ever used and quite possibly better than the early APS-C DSLR's I had... 300D, 10D, 20D.

ISO 50-800 were typical ones but 800 could be pushed to 1600-3200 if being careful. And yes, digital cameras passed films long time ago, only about ASA 25 or so holded against digital at 5-8Mpix era. But the low noise isn't really requirement for great photographs, actually you want some noise.

Better photographers may get better pictures but there comes a point when the technology is a limiting factor and high ISO ability must be a limit when shooting in low light and wanting to capture fine details such as feathers?

You got the fine details but not like today that you can count everything. But that is just more about pixel peeping than photography as when you example are photographing a owl gliding in sunrise times in deep forest, you didn't care if you could see feathers but not count those.

No matter how good a photographer you are you're going to be tied to an aperture, shutter speed and ISO and the technical results the hardware gets you at these settings and no matter how good you are at stalking the bird and framing it you must be limited by the kit be it film or a digital sensor or even the limits of the processing software.

Sure those are the limiting factors, but those are just rules that can be bended but not broken. Like if your shutter speed isn't fast enough to freeze action in any situations, then wait and track the subject to position where the subject motion on image plane is minimal and you get higher change for a success.

Today things are just far more easier to get right.