I went to a one day seminar on nature photography with Rod Planck in
Hartford CT. There were 200+ people at this one day seminar. Rod
endeavored to give as much information as possible, with a very
extensive handout that covers a lot. His approach is to do
unmanipulated photography that gets everything right in the field,
proper exposure, composition, sharpness, proper technique, etc. How to
select lenses for various situations, macro, landscape, wildlife and
composition control. Rod uses manual exposure about 600f the time. He
likes using technology were it works, and for shooting wildlife with
telephotos, tracking auto-focus really works. For everything else,
except for those whose eyesight is not good, manual focus should be
used. Like exposure, only the photographer knows what point should be
focused on and what elements need to have the right exposure. He
started out his career using a lot of flash, but now rarely uses flash,
and only in the case where there is no other alternative (bad light).
And if the light is bad, pick another day or time, unless it is the
only chance you have. You can not reproduce natural light in the field
like nature can. Flash tends to remove the mood of the photograph, and
mood is now one of his main photographic passions. 20 years ago,
getting some wildlife shots would be considered world class, but with
today's equipment, such photos are a lot easier to get. Today,
composition, form, tension, light, etc. all become more important in
order to get that top photo.
There was a Nikon representative there with some of the latest Nikon
gear. I handled a Nikon F100 with the new 70-200 VR lens. The autofocus
was very fast and the VR was impressive. If wildlife, action or
handheld telephoto work was one of my main forms of photography, I
could not live without this technology. However, for everything else
(in nature photography), manual focus and exposure control still rules.
One thing I noticed was, with the Nikon 70-200 lens set on 70mm, the
display look the same through the viewfinder as the actual scene, while
a 50mm on the OM would be the same. Clearly to get the higher eye
relief the Nikon viewfinder has less magnification than an OM. If one
is doing manual focus, I think the OM has the advantage for critical
focus control. And for macro work, where even f32 has a narrow depth of
field, focus selection is part of the compositional art.
Wayne
|