Digital, Film, and Chimping

bentcountershaft · Dec 30, 2012

I chimp with reckless abandon.

Quick related story:

One very cold day after I got my 70-200 I went to the park to shoot ducks, because it was my first telephoto and you can always count on some ducks being there. It was cold enough that I was the only one in our county's largest park. A few minutes later another photographer shows up, looking for something to shoot. He walks over towards me and says he shoots for the Courier-Journal (the largest paper in the Louisville area) and that he''s supposed to get some shots of people enjoying New Albany parks. Being that I'm the only one there he asks if he can do some candids of me shooting and asks my name. I say sure and go on shooting the ducks while he shoots me. He leaves after a few and I think nothing of it.

Well, sure enough it was a very slow news week so there on the front page of the Sunday Edition was a pic of yours truly, chimping like there was no tomorrow.

The_Traveler · Dec 30, 2012

Those who shoot in controlled, steady state conditions can easily chimp at the beginning and then go on.
Those of us who shoot in ever changing situations have a different challenge. If I want to be certain I got the right exposure for a situation I can't duplicate, I look.
Sometimes I just routinely shoot in 3 shot brackets so I will have the shot for sure.

nycphotography · Dec 30, 2012

I "chimp" a lot in the studio... less so with natural light.

In the studio, with multiple lights, I tend to use the camera as a light meter test out the lighting. Once I get it dialed in, I'll shoot several in a series. Then I'll probably "take a break" for a half minute to scroll back through and make sure we didn't have any equipment failures or other issues.

Outdoors, not much need to look at every shot.

Shooting low light, I'll look... it's hard to tell if the camera is going to pick out what I'm seeing, if it's going to be clear or blurred, and if I should try again.

10+ years into the digital revolution, I think the term has outlived it's usefulness. At this point, a pro who would disdain it is more curious than a pro who would do it.

invisible · Dec 30, 2012

The_Traveler said:
Those who shoot in controlled, steady state conditions can easily chimp at the beginning and then go on.
Those of us who shoot in ever changing situations have a different challenge. If I want to be certain I got the right exposure for a situation I can't duplicate, I look.

Same here. I never shoot in a controlled environment I shoot outside 98% of the time with natural light only, the other 2% being indoors using only window light. The clouds are constantly moving, and even the side of a cloud partially covering the sun will change my exposure. My eye is not trained to detect changes in lighting so subtle, so yeah I check the "blinkies" and the histogram all the time. I suck at post-processing (what is a layer, anyway?), so I need to make sure I get it right in camera every time, otherwise I won't be able to fix it.

I can't believe that there's still people out there who think "chimping" is a bad thing.

480sparky · Dec 30, 2012

invisible said:
...........I can't believe that there's still people out there who think "chimping" is a bad thing.

It's an age-old tradition..... disdain new stuff. If everyone felt like that, we'd all still be taking cyanotypes with flash powder.

bentcountershaft · Dec 30, 2012

I think it's kind of like when they introduced power steering on cars. I'm sure some Popeye armed guy was saying he didn't need no new fangled gadgets to park his car, as he takes forty acres to turn around in.

Derrel · Dec 31, 2012

Quite a few different ways of working are described in this thread. Different lighting scenarios (studio flash, continuous incandescent, daylight, bright daylight, low-level lighting,etc.,etc..), different degrees of experience, different ways of arriving at exposure,and so on. People who use a light meter to determine the exposure. People who use the LCD as a guide. People who use the histogram as a guide. Combinations of the above. Working slow. Working fast. Shooting very few frames. Shooting hundreds of frames. Using the LCD as a compositional guide. Using the viewfinder as the sole compositional aid. Using Live View. Shooting tethered. Shooting FAST and furious. And so on and so on. It doesn't make ANY sense to expect that one way of working would be used by "everybody". And the idea that simply because the digital camera "can" show an image must automatically change the way a person shoots is a feeble argument. A person can shoot a d-slr just as if it was a 35mm Canon or Nikon with slide film, and shoot all day and never once look at the images to "see what was captured"...reviewing images is an option, but in no way a necessity.

For example, today me and a friend went out and shot a bunch of images. I'm in the middle of my download right now...I shot two 8-gig cards full, and got well into a second pair of 4-gig cards later...I have not seen 95% of the shots....there wasn't time to review even a fraction of the photos...there wasn't much need either...the weather was blue-sky and bright, and quite steady, all day. I'm pretty sure I got some good shots...I saw quite a few nice scenes and pressed the shutter release, and after having shot a million or so images over about forty years, I "think" I managed to come home with quite a few nifty shots...'cause I know what I saw thru the camera...and I presed the trigger when chit looked decent...