Opinion

I used to believe that the Auto setting on a camera was something to be avoided the way a tired waitress avoids eye contact when you’re signaling for a coffee refill—she can’t deny that you’re there, but she can ignore the hell out of you. I still feel that way about fully auto exposure, but my maniacally stubborn attitude toward Auto ISO is softening like marshmallow Peeps in a microwave.  

The desire to show and share work is common to most photographers. Taking the work out of the drawer or hard drive and putting it onto paper can be a key phase in the development of a photographer. It is both a challenge and a way to build confidence, as it forces the artist to face the concept and underlying principle of his or her work. And, it can be fun.

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: another one of Nikon’s new full-frame digital SLRs has a problem. In this case, a small number of Nikon D750s have been producing a dark, shadowy band in the frame when capturing images with lens flare. While the issue was first reported by D750 owners who took to YouTube to demonstrate the problem, Nikon eventually acknowledged that the lens flare flaw was real and said it would offer free repairs. Last week, the company issued an official service advisory for the D750, saying that Nikon service centers needed to a adjust the camera’s autofocus sensor “to resolve the occurrence of unnaturally shaped flare.”

If your eyes have glazed over by the countless videos out there comparing the latest smartphone cameras to real cameras, you’re not alone. The tipping point for photographer Evan Ranft was a video he saw comparing a Google Pixel smarthphone’s camera to a Hasselblad medium format camera.

If you followed the controversy over the World Press Photo (WPP) awards in March and care anything about the state of photojournalism these days, you might be a little sick to your stomach by now. In the latest debacle involving the WPP contest – and there have been a few in recent years – the organization revoked the first-place prize it had given to Italian photographer Giovanni Trolio for a photo story he had submitted called “The Dark Heart of Europe.”

Imagine a camera you could plunk down in front of the Taj Mahal or anywhere else and snap photos that were indistinguishable from reality. A camera producing images that, when properly displayed, would be pictorially the same as being there.

Here’s another photography list for you. Like any list of the best of anything, this list is subjective. Even if it were the “most useful,” “most thoughtful” or “funniest” quotes about photography, it would still be subjective.