Photojournalist and Camera Equipment

There’s a very good reason why Photojournalist needs a quality gear or what people called it as a professional photography equipment for their work. Take for an example of this event, a welcoming ceremony for Chinese Premier Wen Jiabo at Putrajaya. The top picture were taken with UWA 10-20mm Lens on D700 body and it was taken at 18mm length, it is suitable for an establish shot but newspaper or website rarely use this picture because you can hardly see the two Prime Minister under the blue canopy there.

If I use 10-20 mm during guard of honor inspection by the Chinese Premier, the subject will be too small to be recognized, that’s why I need to use 300mm lens to get a tight shot, just to let you know that some photographers especially from foreign media agency use 500mm to get the shot, the tighter the better, so that you don’t need to crop it later in Photoshop.

Some people have asked me about the best setting to cover for this kind of event or any event or official function. The answer is there is no standard or universal setting, each situation is different. In this case I can use ISO 200 and shoot with fast shutter speed at 1/2000 because it was clear sunny days. If it was overcast day, then for sure I will bump up the ISO to 400 or maybe up to ISO 1000, my main concern here is the shutter speed, I don’t have a monopod with me, so to be safe handholding the 300mm lens, I need to use fast shutter speed to prevent camera shake. Maybe I need to open up the aperture to its widest setting which is f2.8. Personally for me which is will be different for everybody, I need at least 1/500 to be safe handholding the 300mm lens to prevent camera shake.

To answer a question about which is the best setting? Whatever setting is good, in term of a combination of ISO, the choice of shutter speed and the aperture that you use as long as it can produce a good, sharp or decent picture for your client, which is usually a sharp and well exposed picture plus good composition for aesthetics factor is good setting for you. Just be remember, there is no universal or standard settings for all kind of situation, all are vary depending on your needs and also depending on the environment where you do your job.

So how about indoor Photography, what type of setting or equipment that photojournalist normally use? For most of the times Photojournalist have two standard camera body with different lens attached, if they don’t have two camera body, definitely they will have two sets of lens to use which is usually 70-200 mm f2.8 and 24-70 mm f2.8 if they use Full Frame body like Nikon D3s or Canon IDs Mark III; but most photojournalist here does not use Full Frame 1Ds Mark III, instead they have 1D Mark III attached with either 16-35mm or 17-40mm lens. For Nikon shooter with Full Frame body, 24-70mm is good and wide enough for most situation.

Nikon D3s and Canon Mark III can perform well in low light situation, we can use High ISO with any of these two camera without worried so much about the visibility of noise or grain that usually can be found on most entry level DSLR. Our camera must perform well in every situation and we must be able to get a decent or usable picture from any lighting condition. There was a time that we are not allowed to use flash especially if we shoot indoor sports event like badminton or gymnastic competition, so in this situation the ability for the camera to perform well at high ISO is mandatory, we need to use fast shutter speeds to freeze the actions and there is no way to get around that without pushing out the ISO.

Why I didn’t mention 5D Mark II, 7d or even Nikon D7000, they can perform well under low lighting situation, yes they can perform well, but they are not FAST enough. They are not good enough in term of shutter lag time and frame rate where you can shoot a lot of frames at the press of a shutter button, about the shutter lag time ; Shutter lag time is the time it takes for the camera from when you push the shutter button to when it actually takes the image, usually entry level camera take more time to really captured the image after the shutter is pressed and in Photojournalism depending on certain situation speed is everything, we can loose a great moment within a split second gap, so having super fast frame rate is essential or help a lot.

Have you ever wondered why sometimes you miss a picture of a “firm” handshake when you think you have press the shutter button at the exact moment but fail to get the firm handshake, it is because if we shoot with an entry level DSLR camera, they will take a little more time than their Big Brother to really captured it in the sensor, that is what we called as “Shutter Lag Time”.

But then again, having the professional or great quality camera gear is really not a necessity if you want to get involved in this line of photojournalism, it is about story telling, it is about content, but for certain event or situation, having a great camera gear does help a lot and in fact, for certain situation, it is a mandatory especially in Sports photography where usually you need super fast camera with long lens to capture the moment perfectly like Formula F1 or football.

If you have been following Zoriah Photojournalist blog, he have mention that half of his portfolio was shot on a camera that you can buy for about USD$150. “YOU and your SUBJECT are far more important than the camera” Zoriah said in his blog, but he also mention that there are benefits to having quality gear when you are able to afford it.

Have you seen a great work of photojournalist from the past like the famous Henry Cartier Bresson “Magnum Founder”, Cartier-Bresson exclusively used Leica 35 mm rangefinder cameras which look like a “compact camera”equipped with normal 50 mm lenses for most of his work. He really don’t need super fast or super long Telephoto lens light 300mm f2.8 for his work and be remember also that in those film days we can’t simply change the ISO Film inside our camera depending on the lighting situation, we need to take out the film in the camera and put inside a new roll of film if we need a fast Film or Slow Speed film, we can’t change the Film ISO half way.

To end my post, I like to share with you a quote from Zoriah :

“Whatever camera you have is good enough for photojournalism. Please don’t use having an inexpensive or “bad” camera as an excuse for not shooting or not shooting well.”. “That being said, there are benefits to having quality gear when you are able to afford it.”

– Zoriah –

Photojournalist and Camera Equipment

Wazari Wazir

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