[EarlVonTapia]

This past weekend I went on a three night hiking trip. The first night (Friday) we stayed in a cabin. It's a popular cabin because it's fairly easy to get to, and it serves as a good base camp to explore the surrounding area (which is what we intended to do the next two days), so there are always lots of people there, especially during weekends.

We came in late so we got settled in, ate some food, and started mingling with other people who were there already. One of them brought his camera with him. He was just an amateur like me, but he had his tripod with him and he knew how to use his camera (a Canon Rebel) so as the night wore one we went to the cabin patio and setup our cameras to take some shots of the night sky. We weren't being that serious about it, we just wanted to play around and try and capture a shooting star or two in our pictures. There was some camera talk, but we mostly talked about other things.

Later in the night we were still on the patio when a boy and his friend started coming into the cabin from the tenting area nearby. He was young, maybe still in high school or just graduated from high school. As he was coming up the steps into the cabin he saw me and the other person with our cameras and tripods all set up. He asked what we were doing, and we told him that we were just playing around, trying to take some shots of the night sky and shooting stars. He said he was trying to do the same, but that his camera "wasn't powerful enough". I asked him what he was using, he said a Nikon D5200. I asked him what lens he was using, and he said just the kit lens. Then I told him that his camera was more than capable of taking some excellent night shots, and that he should bring it over so I can show him how.

The boy ran back to the tent area to collect his camera and came back to us on the patio. I took a look at what settings he was using, and he was just on AUTO mode and shooting in JPEG. Now, this is my first time ever interacting with a Nikon menu, and maybe I'm just not used to it, but the Nikon menu seemed AWFUL and non-intuitive. But after some fiddling around, I managed to show him what settings he should use for taking pictures of the night sky. He didn't have a tripod, so I lent him mine. We pointed his camera into the sky, took a picture with the new settings, and had a look at the result.

When he saw the picture that was taken with his camera his eyes immediately lit up, and he excitedly called his friend over to take a look at it. He was so amazed at the result, and I just felt really good about it because I remember the first time I managed to take an amazing shot and how awesome I felt about it.

The boy and his Nikon then joined me with my Pentax K30 and the other guy with his Canon Rebel on the balcony, and we spent the next hour or so taking more pictures of the night sky. He asked questions about taking pictures at night, making star trails appear, and shooting time lapses. I told him about how a tripod will help him take awesome night photos, the benefits of shooting in RAW format, and how programs like Lightroom and Photoshop can bring his photos to a whole other level.

There are a few amazing things about this experience. For one, I've been doing photography with a serious camera for less than a year, yet I knew enough to guide a beginner using a different camera into taking great photos. This counts as some sort of milestone in my own photographic journey. More importantly though, the three of us each had different cameras (Nikon, Pentax, Canon), but we spent the night just taking photos and helping each other out, and just talking about photography in a general sense. There was no talk about which brand was better than the other brand. No one cared about full frame cameras. No one talked about which lenses are the best or the worst (I had my DA 15, the Canon guy had a Sigma 18-50). No one speculated about the outlook of each company's future trajectory, or whether they would be around in 10 years, or whether someone was investing in "the wrong brand". The three of us just wanted to take photos, period. And it was awesome. And while it's fun to talk and argue about the gear side of photography every now and then, I think Pentaxforums (and other photography forums) would be a little bit of a better place if people didn't care so much about that stuff.

So the next day me and my friend woke up early and continued on to camp out near a lake, and on our return on Sunday everyone had already left, and I didn't get another chance to say bye to those two people. But I hope that boy goes home, gets a tripod, starts shooting in RAW and playing around with his photos in Lightroom and Photoshop, and maybe even starts experimenting with time lapses and other advanced techniques. He might even become a pro shooter one day! And then he can look back at this past weekend as the moment when he learned to really use his camera.

(attached is a picture from this weekend. I decided to go super-lite for this trip and only brought the DA 15 and DA 35 2.4 with me. It worked out well. This is a picture from the DA 35 2.4, as we walked towards the cabin as the sun was setting. It's just a JPG straight from the camera, but I intend to work on this picture to see what I can do with it)

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[bluenose]

"More importantly though, the three of us each had different cameras (Nikon, Pentax, Canon), but we spent the night just taking photos and helping each other out, and just talking about photography in a general sense. There was no talk about which brand was better than the other brand. No one cared about full frame cameras. No one talked about which lenses are the best or the worst (I had my DA 15, the Canon guy had a Sigma 18-50). No one speculated about the outlook of each company's future trajectory, or whether they would be around in 10 years, or whether someone was investing in "the wrong brand". The three of us just wanted to take photos, period."

That's really what it's all about. Great story and the accompanying image reinforces my desire to get the DA 35 2.4.

Regards

[EarlVonTapia]

That's really what it's all about. Great story and the accompanying image reinforces my desire to get the DA 35 2.4.

Thanks!

Regarding the DA 35 2.4, it was a bit of an impulse buy for me. I wanted a "normal", and I was thinking of going for another option, but a sale at a local store made me tip my hand and I jumped. I was a little hesitant at first because the field of view is a little more narrow than what I'm used to, but after this weekend I've come to realize what a bang-for-buck all-star it is. I say go for it.

E

[LaurenOE]

Cool!

[Kozlok]

It would have been better if you had all fought over which full frame was best. That's what it's all about. Who cares if you had a nice time, learned something, and had a great person to person experience. It should have been all about the full frame. And the fighting.

Seriously, your story is really nice. Reminds me why we really do all this, it's to communicate with one another.

[southlander]

Nice story. I was on the roadside taking pro cycling shots one hot summer's day in a climbing section that was part shaded by trees. So managing dynamic range was a real pest. I live or die by checking the review histogram regularly and adjusting exposure accordingly, in this case to avoid burnt out sections of the images. There was a bloke nearby with Canon kit and we got chatting in a quiet moment. I commented on the dynamic range challenge of where we were taking images. He was aware of the problem but not sure what to do about it. I had a quick rummage in the Canon menu and found how to activate his histogram display, gave a quick tutorial on where the graph needed to be and to use exposure compensation as needed, and left him to it. Hopefully, he is taking better shots because of that brief discussion.

Similarly, a couple of years back I bumped into a Pentax user in the local Botanic Gardens who had a seriously large lens on his camera. At the time I was still using the kit lens but had my old M50/1.7 in the bag. He encouraged me to get the 50mm out and have a go. You can see from my signature where that led! I'm still trying to figure out if that person was Digitalis who posts here.

[TER-OR]

You purt'near brought a tear to my eye.

I have fun comparing features with my semi-pro nephew. Watching him run around the house using the CIF feature and my old M50 f2 was entertaining - and he took some outstanding images of common household items. I'll say his full-frame (can't remember which model right now) is huge, but he does have a couple great lenses for capturing action - using it when the kids were chasing each other around was pretty eye-opening. It's interesting - we are interested in very different aspects of photography, he's portraits, events, concerts, sports, and I'm outdoors taking pictures of insects, birds and critters - and the dogs...and in often inclement weather....