Do I take good photos?

[Biomech]

The reason I'm asking, is that I feel that my photo booth takes better (technically) photos than I do freehand with my camera.

As I built and setup the photo booth, and manually adjust all the settings. (focus is on auto, shutter via timer/touchscreen). Do *I* take good photos or is it not me but the gear? :P

I'm slowly coming to the conclusion that I fail epically with focus.

Example:

myPhotobooth.co.uk by C-17, on Flickr

[BuddhaPi]

You of all people should know by now, after being here at DPS for so long, that it's your camera that takes good photos!

I'm really not qualified to answer your question, because I'm a hack myself, but just felt compelled to interject...by no means do I want to hijack your thread

[Biomech]

heh you know what I mean, those ones are so much sharper than mine :P - thus, I suck at something.
But it's interesting, don't you think? at what point am I no longer taking the photo?

[faeriegodess612]

Idk about your photo taking abilities, as I'd need something to compare it to, then even as such, its all subjective.

BUT,.. .I do know, that the guy in the zoomed version has pepper or something in his teeth. lol

Don't know about your photo booth, but mine will occasionally take a photo where the focus is quite a bit off. Usually has to do with how dark the room is, and whether the auto-focus can find the subject or not. It's rare, but it happens.

However, I don't seem to have that problem in my new booth (using the Canon S5 instead of the older booth which used the S2). Must have better autofocus.

But, yes, I have found sometimes that photos that my booth takes are just as good and interesting as the photos I take without it. But then again, my booth is set to take photos at 640x480 (capable of 8MP, but not necessary for photo strips), so the quality isn't quite as good as my 5DII.

[SwissJon]

Let me see.. Stick the camera on a rock steady platform, put it in full auto, then ask why the photos are technically better than someone who is sentient. It's because in the situation where you are limiting the feild of view, forcing the subjects into a situation where they are plying to the cameras will, of course they're going to be better.

But that's not the point. You're a photographer, not a photobooth. People will arrange themselves for a machine, they expect the photographer to be more adptable. So your hit rate will be lower, but your flexibility and ability to interact, recognise and record magic moment makes you more flexible and more valuable than an automated booth.

Compare yourself to a robot at doing a robots job, you will lose. Compare yourself to a robot in a human world, you'll probably win.

[nickbedford]

You might want to post some actual examples...

[Biomech]

Who me? Of my stuff? I generally don't upload the really crap ones :P

Here's a few hundred:

Red Curtain Photo Booth Web Gallery | All Photographs

The actual image quality isn't that great because of a software bug (which I fixed last night). When saving a JPEG, Visual Basic automatically sets the compression pretty low, creating artifacts in the JPEG. I changed it save it with a 90% quality.

Also, the camera takes photos at 640x480 to save on memory space, download times, and processing times. It takes about 4-5 seconds for a 5MP JPEG to download, and I like my photo booth to be a little faster than that. I also have to protect the lens with a sheet of plexiglass (I once had cake frosting smeared on the lens) which also diminishes the quality.

[sk66]

Originally Posted by Biomech

heh you know what I mean, those ones are so much sharper than mine :P - thus, I suck at something.
But it's interesting, don't you think? at what point am I no longer taking the photo?

Yeah, you suck.

It is interesting.... If you set up your camera on a tripod in full auto and set it to take pictures automatically via timer or such, then almost everyone would agree that "you" took the pictures. However, do almost the same thing with a photobooth and it becomes questionable...
In the second case you are setting up your equipment for someone else to use... it almost becomes a question of who caused the camera to fire, regardless of how.

In both cases I don't think you are acting as a "photographer"....maybe as an "artist".