This morning I visited Lake Conestee Nature Preserve again. I left home a little later than I usually do, had a different agenda, and made a little progress toward dealing with a photography issue that has recently captured my interest.
The first camera I ever owned got lost while I was in Vietnam, along with all the photos I took there. After that, my interest in photography waned for many years. I bought a Polaroid camera; rarely used it. I bought a 35mm film camera; could not get interested in using it, because of how hard it was to figure out. I bought a digital point-and-shoot camera around 12 years ago, after noticing some interesting scenes that I wanted to be able to remember someday, when my hiking days were over. I began to see the limits of that camera and bought a crop sensor DSLR camera, used it for a while, then upgraded to a full frame DSLR camera. And now, my interest is in moving from DSLRs to a mirrorless system.
At some point, I decided to share some of my photographs online. I immediately noticed that a lot of other folks like me were getting better results. That spurred me on toward learning more about photography and eventually recognizing some of the limitations of my gear.
Around 10 years ago, I heard of a focusing method called back-button focus. Although it sounded intriguing, at the time I was doing almost no wildlife photography, only landscapes. Back-button focus could be helpful with landscapes, but most useful with capturing quick moving objects. I never learned how to use it, and promptly forgot about it, occasionally hearing the phrase, but ignoring it.
I also ignored mirrorless camera systems for a number of years, thinking they were not the future. Nikon had not yet entered that market, and I was aware of a patent that Nikon had which appeared to let a camera be a DSLR or a mirrorless camera, depending upon the needs of the photographer. If that patent made its way to a new camera system, it would likely stall the march toward mirrorless systems taking over the market.
Nikon had some financial difficulties, as Sony and Canon mirrorless systems took market share. The expected Nikon hybrid camera was never developed. Nikon bit the bullet and joined the unstoppable move to mirrorless cameras. I’ve been watching the new Nikon system since then, waiting for the camera that was interesting enough to make me want to give up on my current gear and moved to mirrorless.
The new Nikon Z9 camera did it for me. It is expensive, in short supply, and back-ordered for months. It will be hard for me to justify buying that camera, but since it will be the last camera I will ever buy, given the fact that I keep cameras a long time, and I’m 73 years old, I believe I will be able to justify that purchase at some point.
Therefore, I have been watching videos of the pros using their Nikon Z9 cameras, learning all I can about it, trying to be as ready as possible, if and when I make that purchase. In several of those videos, the pros would mention, or discuss at length, back-button focus. Now I understand its value more clearly than I did in the past, especially since I am finding wildlife photography to be quite interesting, and back-button focus could mean I might get more keepers when my subject is moving.
The whole point of today’s trip to the park was to practice back-button focus. For clarification, back-button focus just means you take focusing responsibility off of the shutter button and move it to a button at the back of your camera, allowing you to depress another button for focus, keeping it depressed if the subject is moving, and then taking the photo with the shutter button.
I immediately learned a couple of things. The first thing I learned was that using my thumb to depress the back button and using my index finger to click the shutter button was going to take a little getting used to. A few times this morning I was trying to do that, but nothing happened. Then I realized that my thumb was on the wrong button.
The other thing I realized was that I was going to have to stop using my left eye for looking through the viewfinder. There is not enough room for my thumb when the rest of my face is squished against the back of the camera. That means I have to start using my right eye for focusing, another thing that is going to be hard to get used to.
Here are odd facts about the left-ness and right-ness of my body. I am analytical and methodical, but I can also be creative or artistic, with little effort switching between the left brain and right brain functions.
I am right-handed, although my right hand was partially disabled in an industrial accident, causing me to use my left hand for most things I used to do with my right hand. I still write with my right hand, although quite illegibly.
I am left-footed. I learned that in grammar school, playing kickball on the playground.
I am left-eye dominant; always feel as though I’m seeing things through my left eye, and always use my left eye to look through the viewfinder or into a telescope. But my right eye is much stronger than my left.
Getting back to photography, I believe I learned today that it’s possible for me to change the way I look through the viewfinder and the focusing method I use. I will keep working at it, primarily because, if I am able to move to a mirrorless camera system, I want to be able to use that system proficiently enough to justify the expense.
Getting back to today’s photography, I was reminded of one of the things that makes photography interesting to me, even though I am severely limited to the number of places I can visit to take photographs. I spent about an hour at the West Bay observation deck, using the back-button focus technique. Then I headed back to the car on the same trail route that I had used on day two of my Rented Lens Photo Shoot.
This time it was a little earlier in the morning, the sun wasn’t quite as high in the sky, and there were no deer present. Although I walked the same trail, through the same forest, along the same river … it could have well been a completely different place, given how it looked and how it made me feel.
The fact that the sun was less present changed my perception of what I saw. Before, everything felt warm and friendly, including the deer that I got a little too close to. But on this day the sun’s warmth was not present. The sun was up there. The sky was mostly clear. But the colors in front of me, all around me, were colder, less inviting.
Countless times I have visited a particular place on different days, with different weather, different skies, with the sun in a different position … and on those days the things I saw that interested me would also be quite different. A little spot that I didn’t notice the day before, now stood out, beckoning me to take a photograph.
“Nature lover” is apropos. My time in nature is precious. For those of us with minds and hearts receptive enough, willing enough, inquisitive enough … something as simple as a new morning in an otherwise-familiar natural setting will reveal reasons to feel blessed and appreciative of those constantly changing natural things that can capture our attention, lift our spirits, and keep life interesting.