Zach Arias Webcast

Works for me, thanks for the heads up. The last free one he did was good, though one 'ell of a weekend if you tried to watch the whole thing!
 
Watched for 5mins, basic stuff about I.S.O (I think he means ISO), aperture etc. I assume it got more interesting?...
 
nope.....

but i wonder how many people watched and then completely ignored his advice about really knowing the numbers and will continue to 'chimp' the settings for ever.
 
Hodders said:
He is tending to stretch out each point he makes though.
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Zach doesn't really understand a lot of the points he tries to make about the physics, he clearly struggles with the technical stuff...e.g., in that webinar he said there's no need to adjust the 1/focal length rule for crop sensors, since it's "just a crop". He waffles a lot because I think he's trying to convince himself. Given most of his audience also struggle with the physics he serves a purpose (shows them how to use fully manual settings and gets them onto the more important artistic bit). What he says when he actually gets around to shooting people is more useful.
 
Mud said:
e.g., in that webinar he said there's no need to adjust the 1/focal length rule for crop sensors, since it's "just a crop". He waffles a lot because I think he's trying to convince himself.
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But hang on, his point on this was quite valid? He said if you take the cropped sensor out the back of the camera and replace it with a full frame sensor, does this suddenly allow you to shoot a longer exposure?

The angular movement of an object at distance X with a shake factor of Y will give you the same motion blur irrespective of the size of the sensor. I will concede that a higher pixel density will show more movement - but this is not directly related to sensor size.

Take a 24Mp D3x full frame, and compare to a 12Mp D300 cropped sensor. Roughly the same pixel density, and therefore the motion blur at any given focal length will be identical.
 
Bluelion said:
But hang on, his point on this was quite valid? He said if you take the cropped sensor out the back of the camera and replace it with a full frame sensor, does this suddenly allow you to shoot a longer exposure?

The angular movement of an object at distance X with a shake factor of Y will give you the same motion blur irrespective of the size of the sensor. I will concede that a higher pixel density will show more movement - but this is not directly related to sensor size.

Take a 24Mp D3x full frame, and compare to a 12Mp D300 cropped sensor. Roughly the same pixel density, and therefore the motion blur at any given focal length will be identical.
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Yes, the implicit assumption is that the crop and full frame sensors have similar pixel counts, which given what is available is fair IMO...in any case, he didn't mention pixel densities in his answer - you're thinking along the right lines, he plucked an answer out of the air and gave a vague reason to justify it.
 
Mud said:
Zach doesn't really understand a lot of the points he tries to make about the physics, he clearly struggles with the technical stuff...e.g., in that webinar he said there's no need to adjust the 1/focal length rule for crop sensors, since it's "just a crop".
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Zach wasn't wrong about this point, so not sure why you used it as an example???
I didn't watch it, but it sounds like he made a useful point, I'm sure there are a lot of people who don't understand this kind of stuff, i.e. they might have a 85mm lens, and think that because the lens gives a 136mm field of view on a crop sensor (compared to standard full frame) that they need to be shooting at 1/160, when really camera shake/vibration is no different with the same lens on either a full frame or crop, and they can actually be shooting at 1/80 or 1/125, the same as the folks with full frame sensors.

I do agree though, Zach clearly doesn't get to geeky about some of the more obscure technical points that probably don't even affect him personally, and is clearly more of a strait forward practical thinker...
 
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i found his insight in to composition very helpfull. He put some of his shots onto a monitor drew over them to explain what he was looking for & how it fitted in regarding negative space, shapes, symmetry, clear space behind the head on portraits, frame within a frame, balance with multiple subjects, rule of thirds etc. Also he went over perspective on lenses and how focal lenght can alter the shape of the face and make distant objects appear closer or futhure away. He did have a habit of repeating some things but overall i think he filled some gaps in my understanding
 
I enjoyed the first one very much, although it was quite long and possibly would have benefited from being compressed by a factor of about 2.

Seeing the images size by side taken with different focal lengths (but from different distances so the model stayed the same size relative to the frame) was a real eye opener. I had not considered the effect a longer focal length has on the background (usually my backgrounds are sky) - suddenly the shot from ET where they the children were cycling across the moon on the flying bikes makes sense!
 
Ejizz said:
Zach wasn't wrong about this point, so not sure why you used it as an example???
I didn't watch it, but it sounds like he made a useful point, I'm sure there are a lot of people who don't understand this kind of stuff, i.e. they might have a 85mm lens, and think that because the lens gives a 136mm field of view on a crop sensor (compared to standard full frame) that they need to be shooting at 1/160, when really camera shake/vibration is no different with the same lens on either a full frame or crop, and they can actually be shooting at 1/80 or 1/125, the same as the folks with full frame sensors.

I do agree though, Zach clearly doesn't get to geeky about some of the more obscure technical points that probably don't even affect him personally, and is clearly more of a strait forward practical thinker...
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I think you're nit-picking - Zach got an arguably right answer for the questionable reasons, misleading at best. My point was don't go to Zarias for technobabble as you can see him struggle, go for the creative content Throttle and Bluelion described which is far more insightful.
 
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