voidshatter
Member
Assault rifles exist as the main combat weapon for a reason - otherwise one would only need sniper rifles / shotguns / pistols or other slow weapons. The American way of war is to shoot as many bullets as possible to hit the enemy.I suppose we could go on for a month of Sundays debating this ...
The term is "decisive moment" not decisive moments ... which is a matter of timing rather than hosing off shots hoping to get the right emotion. That was proven long ago when film cameras could be motor-driven up to 10FPS. Didn't work then, and still doesn't.
It is about observing human nature and anticipating, and paying attention to one's surroundings ... not machining gunning off shots like a movie camera hoping to get a keeper. Decisive moment photography was born and reached its height when none of these wonder cameras was even a dream of photographers.
When I had my own wedding (a very short one), my friends brought their gear and were equipped with two Phase One IQ260s, one Nikon D4S, one Nikon D800, one Sony A7S, one Sony A7, one Leica M240, one Panasonic GH4. I received 6000 pictures (RAW files). The main photographer did not need to decide which decisive moment to capture. He just captured all moments, because the Nikon D4S with the 400MB/s XQD card is insane in terms of stamina when you do continuous shooting. These were all invaluable memories for us and our parents enjoy picking the best pictures out of these many.
Of course, when you shoot professionally for your clients, very few photographers dump such effort like this unless they use an automated software to pick the pictures. If you haven't seen how Tang shoots wedding sessions with his Nikon D4 then you would only laugh about this "madness".
Since you only need a single exposure per decisive moment, why not show us some examples with your rangefinder? I would be interested to see the sharpness of the eye at pixel peeping level (for snapshots, not formals or portraits). As far as I am aware of, continuous shooting is the only reliable way to maximize the chance of getting a focused image with razor-sharp details on the eye, because I am fairly clear about the hit rate of the current AF/MF when the lens is wide open. Why not teach me how your skills rule over our gear performance?I do a lot of shots without lighting ... rarely need more than ISO 1600/3200 which almost any modern camera can do just fine ... If you expose correctly.
I will refrain from commenting on your "photoshop save", and not reply to the cell phone comment since the answer is remedial.
My whole point is that digital photography gear reach a very usable level some time ago, and all the rest is subtile improvements that aren't all that critical to shooting something like a wedding. The exception perhaps is the advent of very small cameras with super high resolution FF sensors ... which has nothing to do with MFD.
Personally, even IF a MFD camera could do it all at a wedding, who the hell wants to lug around a big-assed camera/lenses for 8 hours? I use mine for formals and portraits and then put it away.
Plus, I use a little rangefinder for "decisive moment" work ... not some giant camera with huge lenses.
- Marc