“Just a film box.”
That’s what Bobby Potter (aka Flabby) told me cameras were years ago when I was learning how to take pictures at Skydive Texas. He showed me how it more important to have good glass (lens), and the knowledge and understanding of how to make the image in your mind appear on the film. The camera, he said, was just a film box. Just something that held the film (CMOS or CCD these days) in place and let you expose the light onto it. The bells and buzzers of more expensive cameras are nice….but in the end it’s just a film box. Good glass and know-how will take you much further in the quest for a good photo than a $2000 camera ever will. That memory came back to me last night when I was doing another photo shoot with Ally David at Bend Studio. Maybe it was the $40 Home Depot lights I borrowed from Rob. Maybe it was the $75 prime lens (great glass doesn’t always mean expensive glass) that I took the majority of the pictures with. Maybe it was one of the dozens of people who name every whiz-bang professional grade camera when they try to guess what camera I’m shooting with. Maybe it was that I was happy with the pics I was getting with a simple set up. It was probably a combination of all of these things that made me remember Flabby’s advice to a 19 year old kid with a parachute, a camera helmet and a used RebelXS 35mm camera that he bought on E-bay for $100.
That was a long time ago. I guess that is neither here nor there. I’m not a great photographer by any means, but I’ve learned a lot since I started at the dropzone. I guess what I’m trying to get at is this simple advice to anyone out there who wants to take pictures they enjoy. The basics of photography haven’t changed in over 100 years. Ansel Adams didn’t have a fully automated digital SLR with all the buzzers and bells with him when he did his work; but he understood how to make the film box make the image he needed. The basics of how his camera created his images is the same as modern cameras. Learn about exposure, the effects that different lenses, shutter speeds, apertures and all that kind of fun stuff. Take lots of pictures. Make lots of mistakes and learn how to prevent them in the future. Put your efforts into learning photography first, and then worry about if you want to spend your Christmas bonus on the latest and greatest camera. Don’t be one of the people I see all the time with top of the line cameras who can’t figure out why they are not getting the pictures they want because they don’t have the basics of photography down.
