02/18/2016
"Why should I pay a professional, when my uncle has a fairly nice camera, and he likes to take pictures; in fact, some of them look really nice."
Well for starters, how much does your uncle really know about photography? Is it just a "nice" camera, or is it part of a professional quality investment. A typical consumer camera uses plastic lens elements. They are not as sharp as the professional glass lenses used on the pro's cameras. The sensor in consumer cameras is only about as big as a man's thumbnail, or even smaller. A pro's camera uses a full frame sensor. That makes a big difference on the size of each pixel, the light that hits it, and electronic noise that can degrade the image. A professional shoots in RAW format. It is a lossless format. What the image sensor captures, is what gets saved. All of it. Consumer cameras use JPEG format. JPEG images are compressed, with a resulting loss in quality every time the images are saved. So your images loses quality just by your camera saving it to your memory card. How about composition and lighting? A pro understands these things so well, that they are second nature. Posing? Do you know improperly posed subjects can have hands that look like claws, or look many pounds heavier, or have their chin or nose exaggerated? All part of a day's work for the pro. Try a simple demonstration with your camera, even your phone camera. Have a person sit on the ground, about 5 feet away from you, and place their legs to one side turned away from you. Get down to the same level to take a picture of them. Now compare that image to one you get if they extend their legs toward you. Wow, what big feet they suddenly have. The picture should be about them, not their feet. You really do get what you pay for. Snapshots are great. I shoot them all of the time, when I want to grab a quick memento. For images that have meaning, I prefer to use my best stuff, so my image will truly reflect what I see. Unfortunately, that level of quality does not come easily, or cheap.