
Why My Photographs Are Bad is a photography book for beginners first published in 1902 by a man named Charles Maus Taylor. The book contains many of the same basic tips that can be found in introductory books these days, but also many that are very specific to the way photography was done at the time. Here’s a selection of common mistakes that newbie photographers were making over 100 years ago.
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Ming Thein · Jul 03, 2012
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Beginners: Ever wonder why your photos don’t look ‘professional?’ Amateurs: ever wonder why you lack consistency? Pros: Ever wonder why you lose your edge or drive? Wonder no longer. This article deals with some of the most common oversights by photographers of all kinds, and how to avoid them.
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Steve Giralt · Jun 08, 2012
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Every year I meet with lots of students, assistants, young photographers, and photography educators and discuss the business of photography. Over the years I have complied a list of the biggest mistakes that most young photographers make when trying to become full-time money-making commercial photographers. I want to share those with you in the hope that people stop making the same mistakes.
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Mike Johnston of TOP explains why Sony shouldn’t call its pellicle mirror “translucent”:
[...] “translucent” is just entirely—egregiously, blatantly—the wrong word. Translucent materials pass some of the light that falls on them and diffuse the rest. Muslin curtains, tracing paper, or frosted glass windowpanes in a bathroom are all translucent. An indistinct, fuzzy, or veiled image that’s hard to see is actually part of the definition of “translucent.” A pellicle mirror is a beam-splitter. That is, it passes some of the light transparently and reflects the remaining amount. There’s no translucency involved anywhere. Wrong word—and a bad connotation. Marketing fail? Heck, English language fail.
Wikipedia also notes that a “camera with a translucent mirror would produce an indistinct blob of light at the image plane.” A better word for people who might not know what “pellicle” means might be “semi-transparent”.
Sony’s Big Risks with the A77 [The Online Photographer]