One might look at the picture below and think that the photographer who took it has some cool camera (I think I do), or that perhaps, that photo came from the latest iphone and some classy filters. Truth be told, this picture came from the Pentax K5, a nine year old DSLR once considered by DXOmark one of the greatest APSC of the time. Being honest, this picture is far from perfect, it is filled with errors in exposure, light metering, and so many others, that to me it is a reminder of an important lesson I learned that day: the power of limitations
At the moment of taking this picture (and many others), I was not aware of such important lesson. I merely intended to test the Pentax K5 with a newly arrived lens, the adorable Pentax DA* 16-55mm f2.8, that I got at a bargain price. A few days before I noticed the spectacular colors out the sunset, and I thought, man, I have to get a picture with that moody light and probably Amador was a good place to try. Not very far from that sport you could see the Bridge of the Americas which crosses over the Panama Canal. Now, look at the image below:
This is the RAW image of the picture above. True, I noticed the picture had composition power, but it bothered me I couldn't get it better in camera, and just be grateful of the amazing dynamic range that a not well known Pentax K5 can produce. I was so worried about protecting the highlights, I got careless about the amount of shadow recovery I had to do. Well, my first lazy thought was: “sure, if I had a full frame camera, I could recover so much from the shadows with little effect on the quality of the picture". But no can do, I am not a professional photographer, I cannot justify a full frame camera. In other pictures, for instance, the light from the sun clipped the borders of my frames, that again I thought how unfortunate I was not having a full frame camera.
Please, do not judge me, but I couldn't sleep very well that night over that little thing, I woke up so early with an idea I had to test: how does my Pentax K5 meter light? Well, it meters pretty well. Having an old camera, without so many bells and whistles, forced me to think what I was doing wrong, and what I could do to make it right, and I wondered: working fully manual, if I spot meter in the brightest area of the frame (where the sunlight comes from), and then spot meter in the darkest area of the frame I could get the dynamic range, and then use filters to cover most of that range, still protecting the highlights without much worry about the shadows I could later recover with Lightroom. In other words, planning your shot before taking your shot.
You could tell from the images above what a difference it made using a filter and a polarizer when taking this shot. In post, there was so little to recover from the shadows by pushing just a bit the value of the exposure, that it just looks much better. Honestly, this is not new, I already had some knowledge on the use of filters to control exposure, it is just that I thought of them as tools for creative purposes, but not as part of my arsenal to overcome challenges posed to the gear.
To sum up, the lessons learned from limiting oneself anchors much stronger in one's brain, rather than showing off your post-editing techniques in LIghtroom. In other words, there is power in limitations. Let me show an array of photos from both those days using my K5, and also the X-T1, which came along just for bragging rights.
