Five great developments

Photography is ever evolving and I’ve gotten to experience over 50 years of that evolution!  In the past half decade I’ve seen some amazing developments that have, at least for me, changed photography forever!  Here are 5 things that I think have made photography better than ever!

1.  Image stabilization:  While I still believe that a tripod is the best way to get sharpness in your images and to slow you down to make better decisions, I love being able to handhold a camera, when I feel like it or can’t use a tripod!  In addition to that as we get older we get less steady so this new feature is game changer! The image below was shot handheld at 1/8th of a second!
2. 2.    Better performing lenses:   Modern lens design aided by computers and special low dispersion glasses have made imaging better than ever! The image below was made with the 16-80 zoom lens, a zoom lens!
   

3.  Noise Reduction Software:  In the film days we shot Tri-X at 1,200 and developed it in Accufine developer and we got grain the size of baseballs, but that as just the way it was back then, now in the digital age, noise which appears much like grain , is less of a problem – until you go up to 3,200 and  higher on most modern cameras, but now we have noise reduction software!   I’ve been using Topaz DeNoise and it is miraculous, I can now shoot at the every highest ISO settings and reduce the noise down to very minor levels and without affecting sharpness very much!

4.   AI equipped sharpening software:  From time to time we all suffer from camera movement during the exposure or missed focus, and now AI powered software can fix those problems or at least lessen the effects of them! Below is an image that was unsharp from camera movement before I applied Topaz Sharpen AI!

5.   Vastly improved frame rates & auto focus performance:  Almost all high end cameras now can shoot at very high fame rates most well over 10 Frames Per Second and Autofocus its vastly improved!   Photo below by Bill Pekala!

I hope you are enjoying all these new improvements to our craft!

Blessings,

the pilgrim