Hello everyone...
Here where I live people have some strange standards. I am a musician, and I am no longer performing because no one wants to listen to me playing music. It is strange because I played all around the world, and everyone was happy. It is not like I am some great musician, but if at number 1 is some is kid learning music, and 10 is Chick Corea, or Jordan Rudess for example, I am somewhere at 5. Of course, when it comes to producing, arranging and studio work, that number may come closer to 10, but that is not important in live performance.
At the same time people make good money with music, they are very successful, and everyone talks about them all the time, but the true is that they are somewhere at number 2 or 3, and as a matter of fact, they never get any better, they are the same as their fathers and grandfathers, and that is their best quality, they are the same as anyone else.
Everyone who wants to go further, to advance, and learn some new, and better things is doomed.
Two days a go a friend called me and asked for help in photographing a baptism. I never did anything similar, but I agreed to help him as much as I can.
Then the whole hells breaks lose...
I read a lot about wedding photography, and learned so many things about the gear, techniques, but here everything is just upside down, almost the same as with my music. Most of photographers have D70, D80, D90, and just some of them D7000, but they are minority. Everyone is shooting with P mode, and with a flash directly at the subjects face. There is no aesthetics at all, there is nothing more than sharp faces, and all everyone is satisfied with that kind of work, everything else will be unsatisfactory. Shallow depth of field, some artistic photos are all like from another planet. Everyone shoots JPGs, they do not have time to shoot RAW and edit because they sell their photos the same night they finish shooting.
I am shooting RAW and many options are turned off in my camera, but while I needed to give them my SD card right after we finish the shooting, I turned all options on in the menu, noise reduction, Active D-Lighting, lens distortion control, picture control to neutral, just to be sure not to make any mistake during that shooting.
But after all was finished, my friend called me and told me that he and all other people was not satisfied with my photos. This is not the first time that D7000 performs worse than D70 he says, which is the holy grail in this business, it works flawlessly in P mode.
Here you have 3 photos, first one is D70, second one is my D7000 with settings mentioned above, and the third one is D7000 but made with standard picture control, and without Active D-Lighting.
For me all 3 are unusable, but as I already said, people here have some strange standards, and they want that kind of photography.
So finally, I have 3 questions:
1: Active D-Lighting, why highlights are burned when using that option in the photo number 2? Does this option take care of the shadows and highlights, so this can never happen?
2: How is the situation in your area in relation to my first few sentences? Does people there allow you to go further and do your job better every day, or is there still some forces that wants things to stay the same always?
3: What do you think about D70 vs D7000 comparison in this case, and the (meaningless) story about it being the holly grail in this business here, and better than D7000?
I am sorry for this long post, but I am really confused, how can people be that static and unwilling to progress, and be better than they are...
Here where I live people have some strange standards. I am a musician, and I am no longer performing because no one wants to listen to me playing music. It is strange because I played all around the world, and everyone was happy. It is not like I am some great musician, but if at number 1 is some is kid learning music, and 10 is Chick Corea, or Jordan Rudess for example, I am somewhere at 5. Of course, when it comes to producing, arranging and studio work, that number may come closer to 10, but that is not important in live performance.
At the same time people make good money with music, they are very successful, and everyone talks about them all the time, but the true is that they are somewhere at number 2 or 3, and as a matter of fact, they never get any better, they are the same as their fathers and grandfathers, and that is their best quality, they are the same as anyone else.
Everyone who wants to go further, to advance, and learn some new, and better things is doomed.
Two days a go a friend called me and asked for help in photographing a baptism. I never did anything similar, but I agreed to help him as much as I can.
Then the whole hells breaks lose...
I read a lot about wedding photography, and learned so many things about the gear, techniques, but here everything is just upside down, almost the same as with my music. Most of photographers have D70, D80, D90, and just some of them D7000, but they are minority. Everyone is shooting with P mode, and with a flash directly at the subjects face. There is no aesthetics at all, there is nothing more than sharp faces, and all everyone is satisfied with that kind of work, everything else will be unsatisfactory. Shallow depth of field, some artistic photos are all like from another planet. Everyone shoots JPGs, they do not have time to shoot RAW and edit because they sell their photos the same night they finish shooting.
I am shooting RAW and many options are turned off in my camera, but while I needed to give them my SD card right after we finish the shooting, I turned all options on in the menu, noise reduction, Active D-Lighting, lens distortion control, picture control to neutral, just to be sure not to make any mistake during that shooting.
But after all was finished, my friend called me and told me that he and all other people was not satisfied with my photos. This is not the first time that D7000 performs worse than D70 he says, which is the holy grail in this business, it works flawlessly in P mode.
Here you have 3 photos, first one is D70, second one is my D7000 with settings mentioned above, and the third one is D7000 but made with standard picture control, and without Active D-Lighting.
For me all 3 are unusable, but as I already said, people here have some strange standards, and they want that kind of photography.
So finally, I have 3 questions:
1: Active D-Lighting, why highlights are burned when using that option in the photo number 2? Does this option take care of the shadows and highlights, so this can never happen?
2: How is the situation in your area in relation to my first few sentences? Does people there allow you to go further and do your job better every day, or is there still some forces that wants things to stay the same always?
3: What do you think about D70 vs D7000 comparison in this case, and the (meaningless) story about it being the holly grail in this business here, and better than D7000?
I am sorry for this long post, but I am really confused, how can people be that static and unwilling to progress, and be better than they are...
