Why an 85mm Lens Still Belongs on a Full-Frame Camera

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The 85mm Lens: Standing Back, Getting Closer :

Old Photographer Series.

There are lenses that show you the world, and there are lenses that ask you to choose something from it.

The 85mm belongs to the second group.

Put one on a full-frame Nikon or Canon and the street immediately becomes a little quieter. The frame tightens, unnecessary clutter falls away and people begin to take precedence over their surroundings. It is not a lens for collecting everything in front of you. It is a lens for deciding what matters.

That is probably why I have always liked it.

A photographer capturing an image of a woman sitting on a stool beside a fruit stand in a bustling street market during golden hour.

The 85mm is usually described as a portrait lens. That is true, but it is only part of the story. On a full-frame camera, it offers a particularly useful balance between intimacy and distance. It lets me photograph somebody closely without having to put the camera inches from their face.

A 35mm lens asks me to step into the scene. A 50mm puts me somewhere near its edge. The 85mm lets me stand back, watch and wait.

That extra distance can make all the difference.

People behave differently when a photographer is almost on top of them. They become conscious of the camera. Faces change, bodies stiffen and natural expressions are replaced by the smile people believe they are supposed to produce for a photograph.

An 85mm gives the subject breathing room. It does not make the photographer invisible, nor should it, but it makes the encounter less physically intrusive. I remain close enough to acknowledge the person, yet far enough away to allow the moment to unfold.

Oddly, standing farther away can sometimes produce a photograph that feels much closer.

An 85mm also renders faces naturally. Used from a sensible distance, it avoids the exaggeration that comes from moving too close with a wider lens. Noses remain noses rather than becoming architectural features. Ears do not retreat around the back of the head. The proportions of the face appear comfortable and believable.

That is why generations of portrait photographers have trusted this focal length. It does not manufacture beauty, but it gives a face a fair chance.

For street portraiture, its narrow angle of view is just as important. Phnom Penh is a wonderfully untidy city. There are signs, wires, motorbikes, market stalls, plastic chairs, delivery carts and people moving through every available gap. A wider lens collects all of it, whether I want it or not.

The 85mm helps me impose some order.

A woman smiling while preparing fresh vegetables at a local market, surrounded by various goods and shoppers in the background.

It allows me to find one face in the confusion, one pair of hands at work or one fleeting expression in a crowded street. By showing less, it often says more.

That does not mean the background must disappear completely. The obsession with blurred backgrounds has become one of modern photography’s more tiresome habits. Open an 85mm lens to f/1.8 or f/1.4 and almost anything behind the subject can be turned into expensive-looking mush.

It can be beautiful, but beauty is not always the same thing as meaning.

The background may tell us where the person works, how they live or what sort of world surrounds them. A market trader without the market can become merely a pleasant face. Sometimes I want that separation; sometimes I want the vegetables, battered shopfront and passing motorbike to remain recognisable.

I do not automatically use an 85mm wide open. At f/2.8 or f/4, it still separates the subject while retaining enough of the surroundings to give the photograph context. At f/5.6, the street may become an active part of the story.

The aperture should serve the photograph. The photograph should not exist merely to demonstrate the aperture.

The lens changes the way I look as well.

With a 35mm, I tend to see complete scenes. With an 85mm, I notice fragments: a glance across a market, a tired hand resting on a counter, the texture of an old face or the moment somebody stops pretending to ignore me.

A man in a blue shirt and mask sitting on a chair, holding a hose that sprays water into a bucket and a red basket filled with plastic bottles, in front of a makeshift shop with various items and a red wall in the background.

It encourages patience and selection. I cannot simply point it towards a busy street and hope that everything will somehow arrange itself. I have to identify the picture before I make it.

That is a valuable discipline, particularly after many years of photography. Experience can sharpen the eye, but it can also make us lazy. We begin to rely upon familiar habits. The 85mm demands a decision. It asks a simple question every time I raise the camera:

What exactly are you looking at?

On a Nikon D700, D810 or D850, an 85mm feels wonderfully purposeful. The older D700 produces files with a character I still enjoy, while the resolution of the D810 and D850 records almost frightening amounts of detail. Canon full-frame cameras—from the original 5D and 5D Mark II to the newer mirrorless bodies—give the lens the same natural field of view and portrait-friendly perspective.

A father helps his daughter with a toy on a scooter while a woman looks on, all in a bustling market filled with fresh fruits.

The badge on the camera matters far less than the relationship between focal length, photographer and subject.

Nikon’s 85mm f/1.8G is a sensiblely—[Correction: deservedly]—popular because it is sharp, reasonably light and does not require selling a kidney. Canon’s EF 85mm f/1.8 USM has performed the same honest service for generations of Canon photographers. The newer mirrorless versions may focus faster and test better, while the expensive f/1.4 and f/1.2 lenses offer more light and smoother backgrounds.

They are all capable of excellent work.

I have reached an age when carrying a heavy lens all afternoon is no longer evidence of professional commitment. It is simply a good way of acquiring a sore shoulder. The lighter f/1.8 lenses make sense. They are quick, discreet and good enough to expose every weakness in my own technique.

And the 85mm will expose those weaknesses.

It magnifies camera movement more readily than a 35mm or 50mm. On a high-resolution body, the old rule of using a shutter speed close to the focal length is often insufficient. I prefer at least 1/250 second for people, and frequently 1/320 or faster if they are moving.

I would rather increase the ISO than return home with a perfectly clean but slightly blurred photograph.

Image stabilisation can help with my movement, but it cannot stop the person in front of me from blinking, turning or lifting a hand. For street work, shutter speed remains one of the best forms of insurance.

At close distances and wide apertures, depth of field becomes thin. Focus must be deliberate. I concentrate on the nearest eye when the face is the centre of the picture, and I use continuous autofocus if the subject is moving. There is nothing romantic about missing focus. A soft photograph may possess atmosphere, but an accidentally soft eye is usually just an accidentally soft eye.

The lens has its limitations. It can be too tight inside buildings and frustrating in narrow streets. A full-length portrait may require so much backing up that I find myself against a wall, in somebody’s shop or dangerously close to moving traffic.

It is not the lens I would choose when the whole environment carries the story. Sometimes a 28mm or 35mm is the honest choice because the surroundings matter as much as the person.

A DSLR camera placed on a wooden table next to a small cup of coffee and glasses, with a street view including vehicles and pedestrians in the background.

Nor does using an 85mm absolve the photographer of responsibility. Distance is not permission. Photographing from several metres away does not turn a human being into public property. The same judgement, respect and decency apply regardless of focal length.

For me, the 85mm occupies a useful middle ground. It is not a wide-angle lens pushed aggressively into somebody’s personal space, and it is not a huge telephoto used from the safety of the opposite side of the road.

It keeps me involved without making me overpowering.

After decades of buying, selling and carrying cameras, I no longer believe that equipment creates a photographer’s voice. But certain lenses encourage certain ways of seeing. The 85mm makes me slow down, simplify the frame and pay attention to individuals.

Bright arcade game featuring a large spinning wheel labeled 'Boardwalk Big Spin' in a lively gaming environment.

It reminds me that street photography does not always have to be wide, frantic and packed with visual cleverness. Sometimes it can be one person, standing in decent light, giving away something of themselves for a fraction of a second.

The photographer’s job is to notice it.

That is why I use an 85mm on a full-frame Nikon or Canon. Not because it creates fashionable bokeh. Not because somebody on the internet has measured its sharpness. Not because portrait photographers say that I should.

I use it because it gives people space.

It allows me to stand back without becoming detached—and, every now and then, to make a photograph that feels remarkably close.

Pixel Peeping: When the Photograph Gets Lost in the Pixels

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Old Photographer Series

There was a time when we looked at photographs rather than inspected them.

We made a print, held it in our hands and stood back far enough to see the whole picture. We looked at the light, the composition, the expression and the moment. If the photograph moved us, informed us or held our attention, it had done its job.

Today, we can enlarge an image until a human eye fills the computer screen. We examine individual eyelashes, count skin pores and search the darkest shadows for traces of noise. We inspect the corners for softness and worry about details that nobody would ever notice in a print.

An older man with glasses thoughtfully gazes at a large computer monitor displaying a pixelated image of an eye, while sitting at a wooden desk cluttered with photography equipment and prints.

This is pixel peeping, and most photographers have done it.

I certainly have.

There are sensible reasons for looking closely at an image. If I want to know whether I nailed the focus, whether camera shake has crept in or whether a particular lens is behaving properly, viewing the file at 100% can be useful. It can expose poor technique rather quickly.

Modern high-resolution cameras can be unforgiving. Cameras such as the Nikon D810 and D850 record an extraordinary amount of detail, but they also reveal every small mistake. A shutter speed that would once have appeared perfectly adequate may leave the image looking slightly soft when enlarged on a large monitor. Poor handling, careless focusing and excessive noise reduction become much easier to see.

A close-up of a printed black and white photograph of a man with a beard and hat, accompanied by a magnifying glass placed over the eye in the image, resting on a wooden surface.

Pixel peeping can therefore teach us something.

If an entire set of photographs is soft, there is probably a reason. Perhaps the shutter speed was too low. Perhaps the autofocus point landed on the ear instead of the eye. Maybe the lens needs adjustment, or perhaps I was simply tired and failed to hold the camera steadily.

That is not obsessive inspection. It is diagnosis.

Close-up of a person's eye on a computer screen during photo editing, with a photographer at work, surrounded by a camera, notes, and coffee.

The problem begins when we stop using magnification as a tool and start using it as the final judge of a photograph.

Photography is not a laboratory test. A photograph does not become important because every hair is sharply resolved. Nor does it automatically fail because the shadows contain a little noise or because the far corner is not clinically sharp.

Some of the most memorable photographs ever made are technically imperfect. They contain grain, blur, missed focus and blocked shadows. Yet nobody cares because the photographs have life. They show something worth seeing.

The history of photography was not made at 200% magnification.

It was made in streets, homes, factories, demonstrations and war zones. It was made by photographers responding to the world in front of them. Many worked with slow film, manual focus and lenses that would probably receive rather ordinary scores in today’s technical reviews.

Their photographs survive because they possess meaning, not because the bricks in the background are sharp from edge to edge.

Street photography makes this especially clear. A gesture can disappear in a fraction of a second. A face changes, two people briefly connect, or a shaft of light falls across somebody passing through the frame. There is rarely time for technical perfection.

If I capture the expression but miss absolute focus by a whisker, I may still have a worthwhile photograph. If I wait until every setting is perfect, the moment will probably be gone.

I would rather have a slightly imperfect photograph of something than a perfectly sharp photograph of nothing.

Sharpness matters, of course. I am not suggesting that we should become careless. Good technique gives us a better chance of bringing home the picture we intended to make. The eyes in a portrait should usually be sharp, and camera shake is rarely attractive unless it contributes something to the image.

But “sharp enough” is not the same as technically flawless.

A person sitting at a desk, gazing at a computer screen displaying two black-and-white photos of a man wearing a hat, with an old camera and notebook to the side.

A photograph is normally seen as a complete object. It might appear on a website, in a book, on a wall or as a print held in the hand. Nobody studies a normal-sized photograph with their nose pressed against it, searching the corners for optical weakness.

Viewing a 36- or 45-megapixel image at 100% on a monitor is rather like examining an enormous print from a few inches away. It is not a natural viewing distance. Small faults appear enormous simply because we have enlarged them beyond any reasonable use.

This can become damaging. Photographers begin rejecting perfectly good images because of tiny technical imperfections. They start blaming their cameras and lenses. Before long, they are searching for sharper glass, more megapixels and better autofocus when there was nothing seriously wrong with the equipment they already owned.

The manufacturers must love pixel peeping. It keeps us dissatisfied.

There will always be a newer camera promising more resolution, less noise and smarter focusing. There will always be a lens that measures slightly sharper in the corners. We can spend a small fortune pursuing technical perfection and still fail to make an interesting photograph.

No camera can supply curiosity. No lens can recognise a meaningful moment. No amount of resolution can rescue an empty picture.

An elderly woman laughing and playing with a young child in a bustling market, captured in black and white. The scene has various baskets of fresh produce in the foreground and other market-goers in the background.

After many years of making photographs, I have learned to look at the complete image first. Before enlarging anything, I ask the important questions.

Does the photograph hold my attention? Is the composition working? Is there emotion, atmosphere or information? Does it show something beyond the simple fact that my camera and lens function correctly?

Only then do I look more closely.

If critical focus is slightly off, I decide whether it genuinely harms the photograph. Sometimes it does, and the image has to go. At other times, the moment is strong enough to carry a little imperfection. That is a judgement, not something software can decide for me.

Printing remains one of the best cures for pixel peeping. A print brings the photograph back into the physical world. It gives the image boundaries, scale and a proper viewing distance. Details that seemed troublesome on the monitor often disappear, while weaknesses in composition become much more obvious.

An elderly person holding a black and white photograph of a young child running on a rainy street, surrounded by pigeons and historical buildings in the background.

A technically perfect file does not always make a satisfying print. A slightly rough file sometimes makes a wonderful one.

That is because photographs are meant to be experienced, not dissected.

Pixel peeping has its place. Use it to check focus, examine technique, test equipment or prepare a photograph for a large print. Let it help you understand what went wrong and how to improve next time.

Then zoom back out.

Look at the people. Look at the light. Look at the moment you were trying to preserve.

Pixel peeping can tell us whether a lens is sharp. It can tell us whether the autofocus landed in the correct place and whether we selected a sensible shutter speed. What it cannot tell us is whether the photograph has a soul.

After all these years, that remains the part that matters most.

The Travelling Photographer’s Essentials: Old Photographer Series.

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There was a time when I travelled with enough photographic equipment to open a small camera shop. Two camera bodies, several lenses, flashguns, filters, chargers, spare batteries, cleaning equipment and a tripod heavy enough to support a railway bridge.

Age—and several decades of sore shoulders—has taught me differently. The travelling photographer does not need to carry everything. He needs to carry the right things and, more importantly, understand how to use them.

My first essential is a dependable camera. It does not have to be the latest model, possess the most megapixels or arrive with artificial intelligence hiding behind every button. It must simply be a camera I know and trust.

For me, that might be an old Nikon D700, a D3S or the magnificent D850 when I want every last piece of detail. The important thing is familiarity. When something happens in front of me, I do not want to search through menus or wonder which button controls the focus mode. The camera should feel like an old friend—slightly battered perhaps, but always ready.

Then there is the lens.

One good lens is often enough. A 35mm or 50mm prime makes a wonderfully simple travelling companion. A practical zoom such as a 24–70mm or 24–120mm gives greater flexibility without requiring a bag full of glass. If I know that people will be my principal subject, an 85mm may earn its place.

The temptation is to pack a lens for every possibility. Resist it. Too many choices slow the photographer down. You begin changing lenses instead of making pictures.

A spare battery is essential. Two are better if the day will be long. Batteries have a wicked sense of humour and usually expire just as the light becomes beautiful or something interesting begins to happen.

Memory cards should be reliable, sensibly sized and carried somewhere safe. I would rather use several moderate-capacity cards than trust an entire journey to one enormous card. Cards can fail, disappear or be accidentally formatted. Spreading the work across more than one is a small form of insurance.

Every evening, whenever possible, I copy the day’s photographs onto a laptop or portable drive. Ideally, I keep two copies in separate places. A camera can be replaced. The photographs from a journey cannot.

A comfortable camera strap matters more than most people realise. The strap supplied with the camera may be adequate for an afternoon, but after eight hours in the heat it can begin to feel like a cheese wire. A good shoulder or wrist strap keeps the camera secure without advertising its value to everybody in the street.

The camera bag should be small, strong and ordinary-looking. I do not need something that resembles military luggage and announces that expensive equipment is inside. It must protect the camera, provide quick access and leave enough room for the unglamorous necessities: water, tissues, a notebook and perhaps something to eat.

Good footwear may be the most important photographic equipment I own. Travelling photography is done with the feet. Interesting pictures are rarely made while sitting in an air-conditioned hotel room complaining about the midday light.

Comfortable, broken-in shoes allow me to keep walking, turn down another street and stay out for another hour. That extra hour is often when the best photograph appears.

Clothing should suit the place rather than the photographer’s imagined appearance. Lightweight, loose clothing works in the Cambodian heat. A hat offers protection from the sun, while a light waterproof layer can save both photographer and camera when the sky suddenly opens.

Water is not optional. Neither is sun protection. An exhausted, dehydrated photographer stops seeing properly and begins making foolish decisions. Travel photography requires enough energy to remain observant, patient and respectful.

A small cleaning cloth and blower are useful, especially in dusty streets or humid conditions. There is no need to carry a laboratory. Most cleaning can wait until the evening. Changing lenses in wind, dust or heavy rain should be avoided whenever possible.

I also carry a notebook. A mobile phone can record names and details, but a notebook never runs out of power and does not distract me with messages. If I photograph somebody and speak with them, I can write down their name, the location and a few details about the encounter. Those notes may later give the photograph its proper meaning.

The phone remains valuable. It provides maps, weather information, translation, emergency communication and a perfectly capable backup camera. I may be an old photographer, but I am not foolish enough to ignore a useful tool simply because it does not have a Nikon badge.

Documents, money and emergency information need careful thought. I keep copies of my passport, insurance details and important telephone numbers separately from the originals. A little local currency should be kept somewhere accessible, with the remainder divided between safer locations.

Respect is another essential, although it weighs nothing.

Learn something about the country. Understand local customs. Notice when a camera is welcome and when it is not. A photograph is never worth humiliating somebody, entering a sacred place improperly or creating trouble for a person who has allowed you into their life.

Finally, carry curiosity.

Equipment may help us record what we find, but curiosity is what leads us towards it. Walk slowly. Look behind you, look up. Leave the obvious tourist route. Sit somewhere and allow life to continue without chasing it. Talk to people without immediately raising the camera.

The travelling photographer’s essentials are not really about preparing for every possible picture. They are about remaining light enough—physically and mentally—to recognise the picture that is actually there.

After all these years, my packing list has become shorter. One trusted camera. One useful lens. Batteries, cards, water, good shoes and somewhere safe to store the photographs.

Everything else is negotiable.

The eyes are not.

Mastering Camera Technique for Sharp Photos

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Old Photographer Series.

There is an uncomfortable truth about sharp photographs that photographers don’t always want to hear.

Sometimes it isn’t the lens.

It isn’t the autofocus.

It isn’t Nikon.

It’s us.

More specifically, it’s the person holding the bloody camera.

I’ve found this particularly noticeable with two cameras I know well: the Nikon D810 and Nikon D850. The D810 gives you 36.3 megapixels and the D850 raises that to 45.7 megapixels, both without an optical low-pass filter. These are cameras designed to record an enormous amount of fine detail.

That’s wonderful.

It also means they are very good at recording your mistakes.

When I first started examining files from these high-resolution Nikons, there was an obvious temptation when something wasn’t quite sharp.

Was the autofocus slightly out? Was the lens soft? Did the AF need fine-tuning? Perhaps I needed a better lens. Perhaps the shutter was causing vibration.

All of those things are possible.

But increasingly I’ve found that the main culprit is considerably simpler.

Camera shake.

And the more resolution you have, the easier it becomes to see.

High resolution demands something from the photographer

This is one of the peculiarities of modern digital photography. The fundamentals haven’t changed. We still have aperture, shutter speed and sensitivity. We still have to focus the lens.

And if we’re hand-holding the camera, we still have to hold it steady while the exposure is being made.

What has changed is our ability to examine the result.

Take a 45.7-megapixel D850 file and display it at 100% on a large monitor and you’re examining the photograph at a scale we rarely contemplated in the film days. Suddenly tiny movements become visible. A photograph can look perfectly respectable on the back of the camera and then appear slightly disappointing when opened on the computer.

Not horribly blurred. That’s easy to diagnose.

I’m talking about that irritating sort of softness where you think: That should be sharper.

That’s when I start looking at shutter speed and technique before blaming the equipment.

Forget blindly following the old reciprocal rule

For generations we’ve been told about the old hand-holding rule.

With a 50mm lens, use roughly 1/50 or 1/60 second.

With an 85mm, use around 1/80 or 1/100.

With a 200mm, use 1/200.

It was useful advice. It still provides a reasonable reference point. But I don’t regard it as a guarantee with the D810 or D850. Certainly not with the D850.

If I’m walking around with my D850 and Nikkor 85mm f/1.8G, I’d much rather have something around 1/200 or 1/250 second as my normal minimum for photographing people. And if I can get 1/320 or 1/500 without paying too much of a price elsewhere, I’m perfectly happy to take it.

Why gamble?

ISO performance is good enough that I’d rather increase ISO than sacrifice the photograph because I was determined to keep the camera at ISO 64 or 100. A sharp photograph at ISO 800 beats a blurred photograph at ISO 100 every time. We sometimes become so frightened of noise that we forget blur is usually far more destructive.

Noise can be reduced.

A photograph ruined by movement generally stays ruined.

There are two things moving

This becomes particularly important when photographing people.

There’s the camera. And there’s the person.

You can hold the D850 perfectly still at 1/60 second and still end up with a soft photograph because the person moved.

A head turns. A hand moves. Somebody takes a step. An expression changes.

That’s why I like a little shutter-speed insurance.

Street photography isn’t landscape photography. People don’t stand still simply because we’ve decided to photograph them. With the 85mm, especially, I want enough shutter speed to control my movement and theirs.

How you hold the camera matters

This sounds ridiculously basic. Good. Basic things matter.

The left hand belongs underneath the lens, supporting the weight. Not hanging off the side of it. The right hand grips the camera firmly but doesn’t strangle it. Elbows come towards the body rather than sticking out like wings. The camera comes gently against the face.

And your stance matters.

Feet reasonably apart. Balanced. Not leaning forward on one leg while twisting yourself into some impossible position and expecting 45 megapixels of perfection.

We’re photographers, not bloody contortionists.

If there’s a wall nearby, I’ll use it. Lamp post? Use it. Railing? Use it. Tree?

Perfect.

Anything solid that removes a little movement from the equation is useful. There’s no prize for making life unnecessarily difficult.

Then there’s the shutter finger

This one makes me smile. I’ve watched photographers spend ages carefully composing a photograph, steadying the camera, holding their breath… …and then stab the shutter button as though they’re trying to start a lawnmower.

The shutter should be squeezed. Smooth pressure. Nothing dramatic. That tiny downward jab with the index finger can move the camera just when everything else is perfectly positioned.

At fast shutter speeds it may make no difference. At marginal shutter speeds it certainly can.

The same applies to breathing. I’m not talking about turning photography into sniper training, but there’s a reason good shooting technique has traditionally involved breathing.

Get comfortable.

Compose.

Breathe normally. Let the breath out. Settle. Squeeze.

Click.

After enough years, it becomes automatic.

The D810 and D850 themselves can produce vibration

There is another complication worth mentioning because not every slightly soft photograph is caused by the photographer.

DSLRs contain moving mechanical parts. There’s a mirror and a shutter.

Nikon itself provided both the D810 and D850 with electronic front-curtain shutter options specifically to reduce blur caused by shutter movement. Nikon also recommends techniques such as mirror-up and exposure delay when maximum stability is required.

That’s significant. Even on a tripod, tiny internal vibrations can matter when you’re chasing maximum resolution.

For ordinary handheld street photography I’m not going to wander around using mirror-up and waiting two seconds for every exposure. The person I’m photographing would probably have gone home by then.

But it’s useful to understand what’s happening.

For landscapes, architecture, copying work or anything static where absolute sharpness matters, these features are worth using.

For hand-held people photography, my solution is generally simpler:

Give me more shutter speed.

Don’t be frightened of ISO

This is probably where my thinking has changed most over the years.

I used to protect low ISO. Many of us did. With film, choosing the film speed was a decision you made before taking the photograph. Put ISO 100 film in the camera and, barring some creative processing, you had ISO 100 until you finished the roll.

Digital changed that completely. Yet sometimes we still behave as though changing ISO is somehow admitting defeat. It isn’t.

ISO is a tool.

If I’m walking around and the light changes constantly, Auto ISO can be enormously useful. I’ll choose the aperture I want. I’ll establish a shutter speed below which I don’t want the camera falling. And I’ll let ISO move around within sensible limits.

With the D850 and 85mm f/1.8G, I’d rather see the ISO climb than watch the shutter speed quietly fall from 1/250 to 1/125 to 1/60 while I’m concentrating on what’s happening in front of me.

The D850 is capable of a standard sensitivity range from ISO 64 to 25,600. We have plenty of room to work with. Use it.

Sharpness isn’t everything

Now, having spent all this time talking about sharpness, I’ll contradict myself.

A photograph doesn’t have to be perfectly sharp to be a good photograph.

Some of the greatest photographs ever made wouldn’t survive five minutes in an online camera forum. There’d be somebody enlarging an eye to 400% and announcing that the photographer had missed critical focus.

Who cares?

If the photograph works, it works.

Emotion matters.

Timing matters.

Composition matters.

Light matters.

Gesture matters.

What the photograph says matters.

Technical perfection with nothing to say is still a boring photograph.

But there’s a difference between deliberately accepting movement because the photograph matters and accidentally ruining a photograph through sloppy technique.

That’s the distinction I’m interested in.

If the photograph is soft because somebody moved at exactly the right moment and that movement gives the picture life—wonderful.

If it’s soft because I couldn’t be bothered to hold the camera properly?

That’s on me.

Stop blaming the lens

Modern photographers have become slightly obsessed with lens sharpness. We read MTF charts. We watch people photograph brick walls. We worry about corner sharpness at f/1.8.

Then we go outside, shoot an 85mm lens at 1/60 second while standing badly, jab the shutter button and wonder why the £500 lens isn’t tack sharp. The lens never stood a chance.

Before deciding a lens is soft, I’d check some very ordinary things. Was the shutter speed high enough? Was the focus actually where I intended it to be? Was the subject moving? Was I moving? Was I balanced properly? Did I squeeze the shutter? Was depth of field sufficient?

Only after eliminating those would I start accusing the equipment.

The D850 teaches discipline

Perhaps this is one of the things I like about the D850. It rewards good technique. But it doesn’t hide bad technique.

The resolution is unforgiving enough to remind me that all the technological progress in the world hasn’t abolished the basic responsibilities of the photographer.

I still have to look. I still have to compose. I still have to focus.

And I still have to hold the bloody camera still.

After more than forty years of making photographs, I find something rather reassuring about that. We spend thousands on cameras capable of extraordinary resolution. We buy beautifully sharp lenses. We have autofocus systems that can follow moving subjects around the frame. We have RAW processors capable of extracting extraordinary detail.

And yet one of the most effective improvements we can make costs absolutely nothing.

Stand properly. Support the lens. Tuck the elbows in. Watch the shutter speed. Control your breathing. Squeeze rather than stab. And if the light isn’t sufficient, raise the bloody ISO.

That’s it.

No firmware update required. No new lens. No new camera. Just better technique.

The Nikon D810 and D850 are extraordinary photographic machines. But neither can repeal the laws of physics.

Forty-five megapixels don’t make the photographer steadier.

They simply make it easier to see when he wasn’t.

And perhaps that’s one of the best things a camera can do.

Make us improve.

Old Photographer Series

The Nikon D2Hs: Four Megapixels and Not a Damn Thing to Prove

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Old Photographer Series

There is something wonderfully absurd about using a Nikon D2Hs in 2026.

Four megapixels.

Not forty-four. Not twenty-four. Not even twelve.

Four.

In an age when photographers discuss resolution as though megapixels were ammunition, the Nikon D2Hs turns up carrying its little 4.1-megapixel LBCAST sensor and couldn’t give a damn.

And neither do I.

I have used enough cameras over the years to understand that specifications and photographs are not the same thing. They never were. Cameras have become astonishingly capable, but somewhere along the road we started confusing the ability to record more information with the ability to make better pictures.

The D2Hs is a useful reminder of the difference.

Nikon introduced the D2Hs in 2005 as an evolution of the D2H, aimed squarely at working professionals — particularly sports photographers and photojournalists.

Everything about it says professional camera. Pick one up and the first thing you notice is the weight. This isn’t some little mirrorless thing hanging politely from two fingers. The D2Hs weighs roughly a kilogram before you’ve attached a lens. Add a decent piece of Nikon glass and you’ve got something substantial hanging around your neck.

Personally, I rather like that. A camera should feel like a camera.

The D2Hs has a built-in vertical grip, proper controls and buttons you can operate without digging through menus. There is a solidity to it that modern cameras sometimes lack. It feels less like a consumer electronic device and more like a piece of equipment.

The sort of thing designed to be thrown into a press photographer’s bag, knocked against a doorway, dragged through miserable weather and expected to work when somebody presses the button.

And it does. That’s the thing about these old Nikon professional bodies. They inspire confidence.

The shutter has that wonderful mechanical authority older professional Nikons possess. Press it and the camera responds immediately.

No ceremony. No discussion. No asking whether you’d perhaps like the camera’s artificial intelligence to identify a human, animal, bird, vehicle, aeroplane or possibly a particularly photogenic garden shed.

You focus. You frame. You press the shutter. Photograph taken.

What a revolutionary idea.

The D2Hs can shoot at eight frames per second, which was seriously quick when it appeared and remains quick enough for almost anything most photographers are likely to encounter.

But I’m not particularly interested in spraying eight frames every second. Street photography isn’t machine-gunning people. I’m more interested in the responsiveness that accompanies that speed. There is very little sensation of delay between seeing something and recording it.

That matters enormously when photographing people.

Expressions disappear. Hands move. Eyes change direction. Somebody steps into the light and then steps out again. The photograph exists for perhaps half a second. You either recognise it or you don’t.

The D2Hs gets out of the way.

And then we arrive at the elephant sitting in the room.

4.1 megapixels.

By today’s standards that’s laughable.

Your telephone probably has considerably more resolution.

A modern Nikon D850 gives you 45.7 megapixels. You could fit the resolution of the D2Hs into the D850 more than eleven times over.

But here’s the question that matters: How many megapixels does a good photograph require? Nobody has ever given me a convincing answer. Because there isn’t one.

A photograph succeeds because of light, timing, composition, gesture, expression, atmosphere and subject.

Resolution comes considerably further down the list.

Give me four megapixels of something worth looking at over forty-five megapixels of absolutely nothing.

Every time.

There is another advantage to having only four megapixels.

You have to compose the bloody picture.

Modern high-resolution cameras provide enormous cropping freedom. With a D850 I can make a photograph fairly loose and discover another photograph hiding somewhere inside it afterwards.

That’s useful.

I’ve never subscribed completely to the purist nonsense that cropping is somehow cheating. If removing something from the edge makes the photograph better, I’ll remove it. The finished picture matters more than obeying somebody else’s rules.

But enormous resolution can make us lazy.

With the D2Hs, there simply isn’t much room for heroic cropping.

Four megapixels doesn’t leave enough meat on the bone.

So you move. You look. You decide what belongs inside the frame before pressing the shutter.

That is rather refreshing.

It encourages the photographer to work instead of expecting Lightroom to rescue the composition later.

And perhaps that’s why I still enjoy cameras like this.

They demand something from you.

Modern cameras are increasingly designed to remove difficulties. Autofocus finds the eye. Exposure finds the face. Stabilisation compensates for movement. Enormous dynamic range rescues exposure errors. Huge files allow drastic cropping.

All extremely useful.

But photography isn’t improved simply by removing every possibility of failure.

Sometimes difficulty teaches you something.

Sometimes limitations make you pay attention.

The D2Hs certainly has limitations.

High ISO performance isn’t remotely comparable with a modern camera. Dynamic range is limited. The rear LCD is tiny. Autofocus technology has moved several generations beyond it. CompactFlash cards now feel like archaeological objects.

And four megapixels means exactly what it says.

You cannot pretend this camera competes technically with modern equipment. It doesn’t.

But that’s precisely why comparing it purely through specifications misses the point.

A twenty-one-year-old professional camera doesn’t have to outperform a 2026 camera to remain useful. It merely has to make photographs. And the D2Hs does.

Beautifully.

There is also something about the files that I like.

I’m cautious about describing old sensors as having some mystical “film-like” quality because photographers have a terrible habit of romanticising old equipment.

But older digital sensors do have characteristics of their own.

The D2Hs files aren’t clinically enormous. They don’t invite endless pixel inspection. Used properly, particularly in decent light, they can produce colour and tonality that are extremely pleasant.

And for pictures of people, that’s enough.

More than enough.

I don’t need to count somebody’s pores.

I want the face. I want the expression. I want the relationship between the person and their surroundings. I want the moment.

That is photography.

For street work I’d happily put a modest prime on the D2Hs and walk for several hours.

A 35mm makes sense if I want something approaching the traditional normal perspective on its DX sensor.

A 50mm becomes roughly a 75mm-equivalent field of view and gives me something I have always enjoyed: a little distance without becoming completely detached from the person I’m photographing.

Nothing fancy. Camera. Lens. Feet. Eyes. That’s enough equipment.

After decades of photography, I increasingly find myself returning to that simplicity.

When you’re younger, equipment can become terribly important. You imagine the next camera might somehow unlock something.

A faster lens. A better sensor. More autofocus points. More resolution. Another body. Another upgrade.

Then, if you’re fortunate, somewhere along the road you realise something rather liberating.

The camera was never the difficult part.

Seeing is difficult.

Recognising a photograph among all the visual rubbish surrounding us is difficult.

Understanding people is difficult.

Knowing when to approach and when to leave somebody alone is difficult.

Learning how light changes a face is difficult.

Knowing when not to press the shutter is difficult.

Those things take years.

A camera can be mastered in an afternoon. Photography can take a lifetime.

That is why an old professional DSLR like the D2Hs still makes sense to me.

It doesn’t promise to make me a better photographer.

It simply asks me to be one.

Would I recommend somebody spend serious money on a D2Hs today?

No.

There are too many newer cameras available cheaply that are technically superior in virtually every measurable way.

But if you find a good D2Hs for sensible money? That’s different. Put a lens on it. Charge the enormous battery. Find a CompactFlash card. Ignore the megapixel count.

Then go outside. Because something interesting happens when you’re walking around with an old camera.

After twenty minutes you stop thinking about how old it is. After an hour you stop thinking about specifications. Eventually you’re simply looking.

And once that happens, the camera has done its job.

I have always believed that old cameras possess a certain character. Perhaps that’s sentimental. After all, they’re machines: metal, glass, plastic, electronics and rubber.

But photographers develop relationships with their equipment. We remember where cameras have been. The people photographed with them. The journeys. The failures. The pictures that worked.

A battered old professional Nikon carries something modern equipment cannot manufacture.

History.

Some D2Hs bodies will have spent their lives photographing football matches. Others covered elections, demonstrations, weddings, fires, accidents, wars or ordinary newspaper assignments that nobody remembers anymore.

Thousands upon thousands of shutter releases. Then eventually they became obsolete. The agencies upgraded. The professionals moved on. The cameras appeared in secondhand shops and online auctions for a fraction of what they once cost.

And twenty years later some old photographer picks one up. Charges the battery.Looks through the viewfinder. Presses the shutter.

CLACK.

Still works.

There is something rather satisfying about that.

Photography has spent the past two decades racing forward. More pixels. More dynamic range. Better autofocus. Electronic shutters. Computational photography. Artificial intelligence.

And I’m not against any of it.

Technology moves forward. It should.

But photographers don’t have to throw away everything that came before simply because something ‘better’ has arrived.

Sometimes yesterday’s camera remains perfectly capable of making today’s photograph.

The Nikon D2Hs is one of those cameras. Four megapixels. Twenty-one years old. Heavy. Noisy. Technically obsolete.

And still capable of producing a photograph that can stop somebody in their tracks.

Because the important component was never inside the camera.

It was standing behind it.

The Nikon D2Hs has four megapixels and not a damn thing to prove.

Neither does the old photographer carrying it.

The Nikon D850 Is Better. So Why Do I Still Prefer My D700 for Street Photography ?

cameras, Lenses, nikon, opinons, thoughts, photography, pictures, street

The Old Photographer Series

There shouldn’t really be much of an argument.

Put a Nikon D700 beside a Nikon D850 and start comparing specifications and the D850 wins almost everywhere.

It has 45.7 megapixels against the D700’s 12.1. It has vastly greater resolution, considerably more cropping room, a more sophisticated autofocus system, better high-ISO performance, better dynamic range, faster processing, video, live view that is actually useful, and files capable of making enormous prints.

The D850 is quite simply one of the finest DSLRs Nikon ever made.

I own one. I like it enormously.The pictures it produces can be bloody magnificent.

And yet, when I’m going out specifically to photograph people on the street, there is another camera I still find myself wanting to pick up.

The Nikon D700.

That doesn’t make much sense on paper. Fortunately, I don’t take photographs on paper.

A young child in a green and blue shirt sits on a motorcycle, looking curious while traffic moves around them. Several people on motorcycles are visible in the background.

The D850 is a camera I can admire. When I open one of its files on the computer, particularly a properly exposed RAW file made with a good lens, there is an extraordinary amount of information sitting there. You can go into the photograph. And then go further. And further still.

Details appear that I barely noticed when I pressed the shutter. Skin, hair, fabric, signs in the distance, little elements within the scene — they’re all there.

If I’ve composed slightly loose, I can crop. Sometimes I can crop brutally. There’s enough resolution available to effectively discover another composition inside the original photograph.

A young girl sitting on a motorcycle, concentrating on playing with her fingers, wearing a light blue tank top and shorts, with a purple hair clip. A market setting is visible in the background.

For printing, the D850 is wonderful. There is a richness to a good D850 file that reminds you just how far digital photography developed during the DSLR era. This isn’t an old camera that is merely “still good enough.” It is an exceptionally capable camera. Full stop.

But there is another side to photography that specifications don’t measure very well. What does the camera feel like when you’re actually making the picture? That’s where the D700 comes back into the argument.

A golden pagoda peeks through lush green trees under a cloudy blue sky.

The D700 arrived in 2008.

By modern standards, 12.1 megapixels sounds almost comical. Phones advertise more. Modern full-frame cameras routinely offer 24, 33, 45, 60 megapixels and beyond. But here’s the awkward question. How many megapixels does a good photograph need?

A lineup of vintage motorcycles, including Honda Super Cub models, parked closely together with various colors and styles visible in the background.

Twelve megapixels didn’t suddenly become worse because 45 megapixels arrived. A properly exposed D700 file is still capable of producing a lovely print. It is more than adequate for the web, social media, magazines, photo essays and most of the ways photographs are actually viewed.

And for street photography, I’ve never found myself walking home thinking: If only that moment had another thirty-three million pixels. I have certainly walked home wishing I’d reacted half a second faster.

That’s different.

Two children playing on a metal cart in a street setting. One child squats on the cart, wearing a blue outfit and sandals, while the other stands beside, dressed in a plaid jacket and denim shorts with a playful gesture.

The D700 feels like a street camera to me. Not because Nikon designed it specifically for street photography. They didn’t. It is big. It is heavy. It is conspicuous. Nobody is going to mistake somebody carrying a D700 for an invisible photographer.

But invisibility has never been the whole point of street photography anyway. The important thing is familiarity. Pick up a camera often enough and eventually your hands know it better than your conscious mind does. That’s when a camera becomes useful. I don’t want to look at the controls. I don’t want to wander through menus. I don’t want to think about which clever autofocus mode the camera has decided I should use. I want to see something, raise the camera, frame it and press the shutter.

The D700 encourages that kind of photography.

There is something wonderfully uncomplicated about it.

Perhaps the 12-megapixel sensor is actually part of the attraction.

The D850 makes me aware of precision.

Forty-five megapixels notices everything.

Slightly missed focus?

There it is.

A little camera movement?

There it is.

A lens that isn’t quite as sharp in the corner?

There it is.

The D850 is capable of enormous quality, but it also invites inspection. And inspection can become a disease.

We enlarge photographs to 100% and start examining eyelashes. We compare corners. We worry about microcontrast. We discuss whether one lens resolves slightly more detail than another.

Meanwhile the photograph itself is sitting there asking:

Is anybody actually going to look at me?

The D700 takes some of that nonsense away. Twelve megapixels. That’s what you’ve got.

Now make a photograph. I rather like that bargain.

And then there are the files themselves.

I am wary of romanticising old digital cameras. There’s an increasing tendency to talk about early DSLRs as though their sensors contained some mystical ingredient that modern manufacturers have forgotten how to produce.

They didn’t.

A D850 file gives me far more information to work with than a D700 file.

But information and character aren’t necessarily the same thing.

There is something about the D700 files that I continue to enjoy.

Particularly photographs of people.

Particularly monochrome.

A young boy wearing a wide-brimmed hat and a red plaid shirt holds a metal cup in a setting with colorful plastic containers and a concrete wall.

The files aren’t enormous. They don’t encourage endless manipulation. I can work them, certainly, but I don’t feel compelled to excavate every last piece of information from the shadows and highlights.

Sometimes a photograph benefits from having limits.

Street photography certainly does. The street isn’t a studio. Things aren’t perfect. People move. Light changes. Backgrounds are messy. Somebody walks into the frame. Someone else walks out. The expression disappears. The decisive moment turns out to be indecisive.

That’s precisely why I love it.

Street photography is imperfect because life is imperfect.

The D700 somehow feels comfortable in that world.

A woman in a patterned shirt and wide-brimmed hat sits amidst market goods, looking directly at the camera in a black and white setting.

A young woman wearing a helmet and glasses, sitting on a motorcycle, with a casual blue striped shirt. In the background, an older woman sits at a stall, surrounded by various items and motorcycle helmets.

The D850, meanwhile, is the camera I would choose when image quality becomes the overriding consideration.

If I know I’m going somewhere specifically to make photographs that I may want to print large, the D850 makes enormous sense.

If I’m photographing portraits where I have some control over the situation, D850.

If I’m working carefully with good light and want every scrap of detail available, D850.

If I suspect I’ll need serious cropping room, definitely D850.

It is an extraordinary photographic instrument.

But street photography asks something slightly different of me. It asks me to react. To anticipate. To watch. To become interested in people rather than equipment. And strangely, the older D700 helps me do that.

There is also something else that becomes important after you’ve been taking photographs for decades.

Confidence.

Not confidence in the sense of believing every photograph you take is brilliant. Most aren’t.

I mean confidence in the equipment. The feeling that when something happens, the camera will respond in exactly the way you expect. That matters enormously.

New cameras are impressive.

Familiar cameras are fast.

Not necessarily fast in frames per second.

Fast between the eye and the finger. That’s the speed that matters on the street.

When I know where everything is without thinking, the camera effectively disappears.

The D700 can do that for me.

And once the camera disappears, I can concentrate on the photograph.

A smiling clown wearing a colorful wig and face paint, holding a balloon animal while surrounded by a festive crowd.

Would I claim the D700 is a better camera than the D850?

No. That would be silly.

The D850 is objectively superior in almost every measurable photographic specification.

But I think photographers sometimes confuse better camera with better camera for me, for this particular job.

Those aren’t the same thing.

A Formula One car is considerably faster than an old Land Rover.

I’d still rather have the Land Rover if the road disappears.

Tools have purposes. And photographers have preferences.

After enough years, those preferences become more important than specifications.

There is a tendency in photography to assume that buying something newer automatically means abandoning what came before.

I have never really understood that.

My D700 didn’t stop working when the D800 appeared.

The D800 didn’t suddenly become incapable when the D810 arrived.

And none of them became useless when Nikon produced the D850.

Cameras don’t deteriorate because another camera receives a better review.

They remain exactly as capable as they were the day before.

What changes is expectation.

And expectation is largely manufactured for us.

Every few years we’re told that the camera we’ve been happily using has somehow become inadequate.

Not enough resolution. Not enough dynamic range. Not enough autofocus points. Not enough frames per second. Not enough technology.

Perhaps.

But enough for what?

That’s the question an old photographer eventually learns to ask.

For me, the D850 and D700 don’t really compete.

They complement one another.

The D850 is the camera that reminds me just how extraordinary digital image quality has become.

The D700 reminds me that extraordinary image quality isn’t the same thing as an extraordinary photograph.

One gives me enormous files.

The other gives me enough.

And enough is one of the most underrated words in photography.

Enough resolution.

Enough autofocus.

Enough dynamic range.

Enough camera.

Once you’ve got enough, everything beyond that becomes optional.

Then the responsibility comes back to the photographer.

Where it belongs.

So tomorrow, if I were walking out specifically to photograph the streets, which one would I take?

The D700.

Not because it’s better. Not because I’m nostalgic. And certainly not because I believe 2008 technology possesses some magical quality that Nikon subsequently lost.

I’d take it because I know it.

Because I trust it.

Because 12 megapixels is enough for what I’m trying to do.

Because I like what comes out of it.

And because when I’m carrying it, I tend to think less about the camera and more about the people in front of me.

The D850 makes photographs of astonishing technical quality.

I wouldn’t willingly give mine up.

But the D700 still has something the specification sheet cannot quantify.

It feels right.

And after more than four decades of making pictures, I’ve learned not to dismiss that feeling.

There is a difference between the camera you admire and the camera you reach for.

The D850 is the camera I admire when I look at the photograph.

The D700 is the camera I love while I’m making it.

A smiling elderly monk in traditional orange robes, holding a colorful flag, with a young monk partially visible in the background.

Perhaps that’s why the old Nikon keeps finding its way back into my hands.

The D850 may be the better camera.

For the street, the D700 is still my camera.

— The Old Photographer Series

JPEG vs RAW: Finding Balance in Photography: Old Photographer Series.

cameras, opinons, thoughts, photography, pictures, street, Travel

After more than four decades of making photographs, I have come to the conclusion that photographers can turn almost anything into an argument.

Nikon against Canon. DSLR against mirrorless. Prime against zoom. Manual against autofocus. Film against digital. And somewhere among all this noise sits one of the old favourites:

JPEG or RAW?

Mention JPEG in certain photographic circles and somebody will look at you as though you have just admitted to putting ketchup on a Michelin-starred dinner.

“You shoot JPEG?” Yes. Sometimes I do.

And the world continues to turn.

I have shot RAW for years. I understand exactly why it exists and what it gives me. A RAW file contains considerably more information than a JPEG. It gives me greater latitude with exposure, white balance, highlights and shadows. If I have slightly cocked things up when I pressed the shutter, RAW gives me a better chance of rescuing the photograph afterwards.

That is useful.

But somewhere along the road, photographers began confusing useful with essential.

It isn’t.

The question isn’t whether RAW is technically superior. It is. The question is whether that technical superiority matters for the photograph you are making. Those are two very different things.

When I started taking pictures there was no RAW file waiting patiently for me to change my mind. You chose your film. You chose your exposure. You made decisions before pressing the shutter because those decisions mattered.

Kodachrome was Kodachrome. Tri-X was Tri-X.

If you got the exposure badly wrong, you didn’t pull a little slider marked “Highlights” and congratulate yourself on recovering two stops. You had a badly exposed photograph.

That taught discipline.

Digital photography has given us extraordinary freedom, and I wouldn’t willingly surrender it. But freedom can make us lazy. RAW files can encourage the idea that exposure is merely a rough suggestion to be sorted out later.

I’ll fix it in post.

Possibly the most expensive five words in modern photography.

JPEG asks something slightly different of the photographer. It asks you to make more decisions at the time of exposure. White balance matters. Picture settings matter. Exposure matters. You are allowing the camera to take the information coming from the sensor and produce something close to a finished photograph.

There is something rather refreshing about that.

You take the picture. You look at it. You like it. Finished.

No enormous file. No twenty minutes staring at Lightroom wondering whether the shadows should be +17 or +23. No making six versions and eventually deciding that the first one was better.

Just a photograph.

And perhaps that is why I have become more sympathetic towards JPEG as I’ve become older.

I don’t need every photograph to be a technical excavation.

Sometimes I simply want to make pictures.

Walking around Phnom Penh with a camera, I am far more interested in the man crossing the road, the expression on someone’s face, the shaft of afternoon light falling through a doorway or the brief collision of people and background that lasts perhaps half a second.

That is photography to me. Nobody looking at the finished picture is going to lean forward and whisper: “Magnificent. I can really see the 14-bit colour depth.” They either respond to the photograph or they don’t.

That doesn’t mean RAW is pointless. Far from it.

If I am photographing something important, working in difficult or rapidly changing light, dealing with extreme contrast, or simply know that I am going to want maximum control over the finished image, I will shoot RAW without hesitation.

RAW is insurance.

And sometimes insurance is bloody useful.

A slightly underexposed face can be recovered beautifully. White balance can be corrected without destroying the file. Highlights that appear gone may still contain information. A difficult image can be worked carefully until it resembles what I saw—or, perhaps more accurately, what I remember seeing.

For serious printing, particularly large prints, I like having that information available. But there is another side to it. RAW creates work.

Big files. More storage. More backups. More processing. More decisions. More time sitting in front of a computer instead of walking around with a camera.

After 45 years, I know which side of that equation interests me most. It isn’t the computer.

Photography has gradually become extraordinarily good at persuading us that everything must be maximised.

Maximum dynamic range. Maximum resolution. Maximum bit depth. Maximum sharpness. Maximum editing latitude. Maximum everything.

Except, occasionally, enjoyment.

And that is where JPEG deserves another hearing.

A properly exposed JPEG from a good camera can be astonishingly good. Modern cameras are remarkably sophisticated at processing their own files. Even some of my older cameras produce JPEGs that need very little attention.

Get the exposure right. Get the light right. Get the moment right.

There isn’t necessarily much left to do.

And here’s the uncomfortable part.

If a photograph only becomes interesting because I spent forty minutes dragging sliders around, perhaps the problem wasn’t the file format.

Perhaps the photograph wasn’t very interesting.

RAW cannot rescue a boring picture.

It cannot put expression into a blank face. It cannot improve timing. It cannot move your feet three steps to the left. It cannot clean up a dreadful background. It cannot make you notice what you failed to notice. And it certainly cannot give a photograph soul.

Those things still belong to the photographer.

There is also something to be said for limitations. Photographers often regard limitations as problems to overcome, but I’ve increasingly come to think they can be useful. Limitations force decisions.

One camera. One lens. One focal length. One file format.

Suddenly you stop thinking about possibilities and start looking at what is actually in front of you.

JPEG can be part of that.

Set the camera properly. Trust your meter. Watch your highlights. Pay attention to the light. Press the shutter when something happens.

Move on.

There is a lovely simplicity to it.

Of course, there is an obvious compromise, and I have used it plenty of times:

RAW + JPEG.

It gives you the finished JPEG immediately and keeps the RAW file in reserve.

Perfect, surely?

Well, almost.

Except now you have two files for every photograph, twice the clutter and another excuse never to delete anything.

Photographers are already terrible hoarders. Give us a 4TB hard drive and we will somehow convince ourselves that the 17 nearly identical photographs of a bloke waiting for a bus are historically important.

So these days I prefer to make the decision according to the job.

If the light is difficult, the photograph matters particularly to me, or I expect serious editing or printing, RAW makes sense.

If I am wandering the streets making pictures for pleasure and the light isn’t causing problems, JPEG can be more than enough.

Neither choice makes me a better photographer.

And neither makes anybody else one.

That’s the bit that tends to disappear from these arguments.

A photographer shooting JPEG who understands light, timing and composition will make better pictures than somebody shooting enormous RAW files who understands none of them.

Every time.

The file is not the photograph.

It is simply the container in which the photograph arrives.

After all these years, I have become increasingly suspicious of anything in photography that demands allegiance. I don’t want to join Team RAW or Team JPEG. I don’t particularly want to join Team Nikon, Team Canon, Team Fuji, Team DSLR or Team Mirrorless either.

I want to make photographs.

If RAW helps me make the photograph I want, I’ll use RAW.

If JPEG does the job, I’ll happily use JPEG.

And if somebody tells me that a “serious photographer” must always shoot RAW, I’ll probably smile, nod politely and carry on doing exactly what I’ve been doing for the last 45 years.

Because one of the privileges of becoming an old photographer is discovering how many rules weren’t really rules at all.

They were just opinions repeated loudly enough.

So JPEG or RAW?

Use the one that gets out of your way.

RAW gives you more information.

JPEG gives you more immediacy.

Both can produce wonderful photographs.

Both can produce rubbish.

And when a photograph really works—when the light, moment, expression and instinct all come together—nobody worth worrying about will ask which one you used.

They’ll just look at the picture.

And that, after all, was the whole bloody point.

— Notes from an Old Photographer

Photography as Life: Lessons from 45 Years Behind the Camera: Old Photographer Series

cambodia, cameras, fujifilm, homelessness, Lenses, nikon, opinons, thoughts, philanthropy, photography, pictures, street, Travel, voluntary, war

I have been making pictures for around forty-five years. Put like that, it sounds faintly ridiculous. Forty-five years of carrying cameras, buying cameras, selling cameras, regretting selling cameras, walking miles with cameras that were too heavy, and occasionally wondering why on earth I was still doing it.

And yet I am.

Photography has changed beyond recognition during those years. I started in a world where every press of the shutter cost money. Film had to be bought, processed and printed. You couldn’t look at the back of the camera to see whether you’d got the picture because there was nothing there to look at. You learned to trust the meter, the camera and, eventually, yourself.

Today I can put a memory card into a Nikon D850 and make more photographs in an afternoon than I might once have made in a month.

But strangely, the reason I make pictures hasn’t changed very much at all. I make pictures because I notice things. That may be the simplest explanation I can give.

Photography has trained me to look at the world differently. I notice the old man sitting alone outside a café. I notice the expression on somebody’s face when they think nobody is watching. I notice two people talking across a market stall, a shaft of afternoon light falling across a wall, a child staring curiously at a stranger, the hands of an elderly woman, the tired face of somebody finishing a day’s work.

Most people walk past these things. I stop.

Not always physically. Sometimes the stopping happens entirely inside my head. Something catches my attention and that little photographic instinct, developed over decades, whispers: There’s something there. After forty-five years, that instinct is almost impossible to switch off. I don’t think I would want to.

Photography has become less about cameras as I have grown older. That might sound strange coming from somebody who still enjoys old cameras enormously. I love them. I love the solid lump of a Nikon D700, the wonderful excess of a professional DSLR, the simplicity of a fifty millimeter lens and the satisfying clunk of a proper mechanical shutter.

Old cameras have character. But I know perfectly well that the camera isn’t the reason I go out. The camera gives me an excuse. It gives me permission to wander.

That is one of photography’s great gifts, and perhaps one we don’t talk about enough.

Give an old photographer a camera and suddenly walking around without any particular destination becomes perfectly reasonable. I can disappear down a side street simply because the light looks interesting. I can stand beside a market for twenty minutes watching people come and go. I can sit somewhere with a coffee and watch the theatre of ordinary life unfolding in front of me.

Without the camera, perhaps I would feel I should be going somewhere. With the camera, I already am. And after forty-five years, I have realised that these apparently insignificant wanderings have formed a considerable part of my life.

Thousands upon thousands of little journeys. Some produced photographs I still care about. Many produced absolutely nothing. That doesn’t mean they were wasted.

Because photography has never really been about collecting successful pictures. It is about being present while life is happening. That matters more to me now than it did when I was younger.

When you’re young, photography can become competitive. You want sharper lenses, better cameras, stronger pictures, publication, recognition, compliments. You compare yourself with other photographers. You worry about whether your photographs are good enough.

Age has a useful way of knocking some of that nonsense out of you. I still want to make good pictures. Of course I do. There would be little point otherwise. But I no longer need every photograph to prove something.

That is enormously liberating.

A photograph can simply say: I was here. I saw this. This person existed. This moment mattered to me. That is enough.

Perhaps that is also why pictures of people have always mattered so much to me.

Buildings change. Streets disappear. Shops close. Cars become old-fashioned. Entire neighbourhoods can be transformed almost beyond recognition.

But people make photographs breathe. A face gives a picture its humanity.

When I look through older photographs, it is rarely the technical perfection that interests me. I don’t sit there thinking, Wonderful corner sharpness.

I look at the people. Who were they? What happened to them? Where are they now?

Sometimes I remember everything about making the photograph. The weather. The conversation. The camera I was carrying. The walk home afterwards.

Other times I remember almost nothing. And that is when photography becomes slightly magical. Because the photograph remembers for me. That small rectangle of paper or collection of pixels has preserved something my own memory has lost.

After forty-five years, I increasingly understand that I have not simply been making photographs. I have been building an archive of a life. Not deliberately. Nobody begins photography at twenty or thirty thinking, I shall now document the next forty-five years of my existence. You simply keep taking pictures. One year becomes five. Five becomes twenty.

Then one day you look behind you and realise that the photographs have become breadcrumbs scattered along the road you travelled.

Cameras I once carried. Places where I once stood. People I once knew. People I loved. People I met for thirty seconds and never saw again. Cities before they changed. Streets before they disappeared. And versions of myself that no longer exist.

That is powerful stuff.

It also explains why printing photographs still matters to me. A photograph on a screen exists, certainly, but a print has presence. You can hold it. Put it on a table. Stick it on a wall. Find it unexpectedly twenty years later.

A print becomes an object. And objects survive us in peculiar ways. I sometimes wonder what will happen to all these photographs eventually. Every photographer who has worked long enough probably thinks about it. Will anybody care?

Perhaps. Perhaps not. I’ve become surprisingly comfortable with that.

I didn’t make most of these pictures for an imaginary audience fifty years in the future. I made them because something in front of me made me raise the camera.

That’s enough. Photography has given me something far more valuable than a collection of images. It has given me curiosity.

Even after forty-five years I can walk down a street I have walked down a hundred times and still wonder whether today there might be a photograph there.

That possibility gets me out of the door. And some days, particularly as we get older, getting out of the door is no small thing. The camera provides purpose. Not some grand artistic purpose. Nothing quite so pompous. Just a reason to walk another street. Look around another corner. Talk to another stranger. Wait another five minutes because the light might change. Photography keeps me engaged with the world.

And the world, for all its madness, cruelty, stupidity and noise, remains endlessly interesting when viewed through a camera.

There are still faces I haven’t photographed. Still streets I haven’t walked. Still moments I haven’t seen. And perhaps somewhere tomorrow afternoon there will be one of those tiny combinations of person, expression, gesture and light that lasts for half a second and then disappears forever.

I’ll raise the camera.

Click. Gone. Except it isn’t. I caught a little piece of it.

After forty-five years, I think that is why making pictures remains so important to me.

Photography has been a companion for most of my adult life. Cameras have come and gone. Film became digital. Darkrooms became computers. Thirty-six exposures became memory cards holding thousands. Autofocus became astonishing. Cameras became capable of things we couldn’t have imagined when I started.

None of that is really important. The important part happens before the shutter is pressed. You notice. You care. You decide that this tiny fragment of ordinary life deserves to be remembered.

Then you make the picture.

Forty-five years later, I’m still looking. And I’m still curious about what might be around the next corner. As long as that curiosity remains, I’ll keep carrying a camera. Because somewhere along the way photography stopped being something I did. It became part of the way I live.

And perhaps that is the real privilege of being an old photographer.

You eventually understand that all those years you thought you were making pictures of the world. But quietly, picture by picture, the world was making a photographer out of you.

Old Photographer Series: The Fujifilm X-E2 Reminds Me What Matters

cambodia, cameras, fujifilm, Lenses, opinons, thoughts, photography, pictures, street

Every few years the camera industry tells us that everything has changed.

More megapixels. Faster autofocus. Better tracking. Artificial intelligence. More video features than most of us will ever use. The message is always the same: if you want to make better photographs, you need the latest camera.

Then I pick up something like the Fujifilm X-E2.

Suddenly all of that noise fades into the background.

The X-E2 is not a modern camera by today’s standards. It doesn’t have image stabilisation. It won’t recognise birds, trains, aeroplanes or your neighbour’s cat. It isn’t built for shooting thirty frames a second. It certainly won’t impress anyone who measures cameras by specification sheets.

Yet somehow it reminds me why I picked up a camera in the first place.

As an old photographer, I have reached the point where I no longer confuse technology with photography.

That sounds obvious, but it took me years to understand.

When I was younger, every new camera felt like the answer. If only I owned that body. If only I had that lens. If only autofocus was a little quicker or the sensor a little cleaner at high ISO. I convinced myself that the next purchase would somehow improve my vision.

It never did. Experience did. Failure did. Walking the streets for thousands of hours did. Meeting strangers did. Getting things wrong over and over again did.

The Fujifilm X-E2 fits beautifully into that way of thinking. It asks very little of you, except that you pay attention.

Its sixteen-megapixel sensor is still capable of producing wonderful photographs. The colours are rich without being exaggerated. Skin tones have warmth. Black and white conversions possess a gentle tonality that reminds me why I fell in love with monochrome in the first place.

Most importantly, the files simply look like photographs rather than digital demonstrations. There is a softness to the experience that modern cameras often lack. The autofocus isn’t lightning fast, but then neither am I. Perhaps that is why we get along.

Instead of spraying hundreds of frames, I find myself waiting. Watching. Anticipating. Pressing the shutter when something actually happens rather than hoping one frame in fifty will rescue me later.

Funny enough, that is exactly how I learned photography.

There is another thing I appreciate about the X-E2. It disappears. The camera is small enough that people stop noticing it after a few moments. I stop thinking about it too. That matters more than many photographers realise. Every ounce of attention you spend worrying about equipment is attention taken away from the person standing in front of you.

Street photography has never really been about cameras. It has always been about people. Their faces. Their gestures. Their loneliness. Their laughter. The split second when something ordinary becomes unforgettable.

The X-E2 understands this. It never tries to dominate the experience. It quietly gets out of the way.

Older photographers eventually discover that this is one of the finest qualities any camera can possess.

Could I buy something newer? Of course.

Would it autofocus faster? Without question.

Would it make me notice that elderly couple holding hands on a Phnom Penh street? Would it encourage a nervous stranger to smile back at me? Would it teach me patience? No. Those lessons cannot be purchased. They have to be lived.

Photography has given me many cameras over the years. Nikon workhorses that survived impossible conditions. Heavy professional DSLRs that felt like extensions of my hands. Tiny mirrorless bodies that slipped unnoticed through crowded markets. Every one of them taught me something.

The Fujifilm X-E2 belongs comfortably in that company. Not because it is the best camera ever made. Because it reminds me that “best” was never really the point.

As photographers grow older, our priorities begin to change. We stop chasing perfection and start searching for meaning. We care less about clinical sharpness and more about emotional honesty. We become less interested in proving ourselves and more interested in understanding the world around us.

That is the gift age can bring. It slows us down. It teaches us to see before we shoot. It reminds us that a photograph is not an exercise in technical achievement. It is a conversation between ourselves and the world.

The X-E2 is old enough now that many photographers dismiss it without a second thought.

That’s their loss.

There is something quietly rebellious about carrying yesterday’s camera through today’s streets. It says that you have confidence in your own eye rather than confidence in the latest marketing campaign.

And perhaps that is what being an old photographer is really about. Not resisting change. Not pretending the past was better. Simply understanding that good photography has never depended on owning the newest machine. It has always depended on curiosity. On patience. On kindness.

On being willing to walk one more street, wait one more minute, and speak to one more stranger.

The Fujifilm X-E2 cannot give you those things. But every time I pick one up, it gently reminds me not to lose them.

The Heartbeat of Street Photography: Capturing Human Stories: an Old Mans thoughts.

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People are the heartbeat of street photography. Strip them away and you are left with architecture, light, geometry, and atmosphere—interesting in their own right, but missing the pulse that turns a photograph into a human story.

Every face carries a lifetime. Every gesture hints at an unseen narrative. A glance between strangers, a tired worker waiting for a bus, a child chasing pigeons through a square, an elderly couple walking hand in hand—these fleeting moments remind us that the ordinary is often extraordinary when we stop long enough to notice it. Street photography is less about places than it is about the lives unfolding within them.

To photograph people well is to acknowledge that every person passing your lens has a history you will never fully know. The camera captures only a fraction of a second, but that fraction can speak about loneliness, joy, determination, humour, resilience, love, or loss. The photograph becomes less about identifying an individual and more about recognising something universal within them.

That is why people matter. They transform a street from a backdrop into a stage where life reveals itself without rehearsal. They provide scale, emotion, tension, and meaning. A perfectly composed street corner is simply a location until someone steps into the frame. In that instant it becomes a story.

Photographing people also demands something from the photographer. It requires patience to wait for the decisive moment, curiosity to notice what others overlook, and courage to stand close enough for life to reveal itself. It asks for empathy rather than judgment. The best street photographers are rarely hunters looking for trophies; they are observers trying to understand the world around them.

Working with people inevitably raises questions of ethics. We photograph strangers without knowing their circumstances, and with that privilege comes responsibility. Respect should always outweigh ego. Every time we press the shutter we should ask ourselves not only Can I make this photograph? but also Why am I making it? A compelling image should never come at the cost of another person’s dignity.

Perhaps that is why street photography remains endlessly fascinating. It is as much an exploration of ourselves as it is of others. The people we choose to photograph reveal what catches our attention, what moves us, what we fear, and what we value. Our portfolios become quiet self-portraits, assembled from the lives of strangers.

After decades of photographing people, I have come to believe that cameras are merely tools for paying attention. The real skill lies in seeing humanity where others see only crowds. Every stranger has the potential to become part of a visual conversation that stretches across countries, cultures, and generations.

The streets will always change. Buildings rise and fall, fashions evolve, cities expand, and technology reshapes the world. Yet people remain the constant. They laugh, argue, wait, dream, work, embrace, mourn, and celebrate. Those timeless human moments are what give street photography its enduring power.

That is why I continue to point my camera towards people. Not because they are subjects to be collected, but because they remind me that photography, at its very best, is an act of witness. Every frame is a small acknowledgement that someone was here, living an ordinary life that, for one brief moment, became worth remembering.

Without people there are streets. With people there are stories. And stories are the reason street photography continues to matter.

The 85mm Lens: Standing Back, Getting Closer :

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High resolution demands something from the photographer

Forget blindly following the old reciprocal rule

There are two things moving

How you hold the camera matters

Then there’s the shutter finger

The D810 and D850 themselves can produce vibration

Don’t be frightened of ISO

Sharpness isn’t everything

Stop blaming the lens

The D850 teaches discipline

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The Old Photographer Series

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