Tuesday, February 01, 2022

Barriers to Talent

This is about cats. Cats and cameras. Cats and cameras and, yes, guns.

Yesterday, Bobbi noticed Holden all snuggled up on the window seat in a patch of winter sunlight and called out "You might want to grab a camera!"

Nikon D3

He looked cute... to the human eye. To a camera, he was a very dark object that was strongly backlit. There was a light-colored cushion off to the right that was bouncing a little bit of fill onto him, but it's not like you can get natural-looking pictures of a dozing cat by dragging in a reflector or using fill flash. Well, you might get one, but it would be terribly rude to the cat.

Fuji X-T2

Anyway, he did look cute, but it was a tricky shot. I wound up attempting it with a couple cameras, as much to see how the different sensors and metering systems would deal with the tricky conditions as anything else. I grabbed the old D3 and tried the Fuji X-T2 (itself not state of the art, but one of the newest cameras I own.)

I tried with an Oly also and quickly realized that, as much as I love playing with the Olympus E-3 and as dreamy as the Zuiko 14-35mm f/2 zoom lens that lives on it is, I had no idea how to quickly switch the metering on it from evaluative ("ESP" in Olympus-speak, what Nikon calls "Matrix" and Canon calls "Multi") to center-weighted.

Fuji X-E1 & XF 23mm f/2

The experience was one of those reminders that I like cameras too much to ever be a really good photographer.

I’m the photography equivalent of that shooter who brings a big case full of half a dozen guns to the range and cheerfully blasts a box of ammo through each just for the joy of messing with them, rather than grinding through a dedicated practice regimen with that one gun they’re trying to master…

…and I’m okay with that.

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