Bad Photos, But On Purpose
OK, the title is misleading, but I thought it was kind of funny. Let me start from the beginning.
I'm 99% sure I mentioned this on the blog but last week my "disposable lens" arrived in the mail. If you're not familiar with this term, it's NOT a lens that you can throw away when you're done with it. Well, I guess it sort of is. It's a body/sensor cover with the lens from a disposable camera attached to it. You can make one yourself very easily - take one of these covers, and find a disposable camera somewhere and get the lens out. Drill a hole in the cap and put the lens in, and you're off. However I decided to buy one for about $40.
It's objectively a bad lens. It doesn't zoom, it can't focus (it has infinity focus, I think). Think about those photos you took with disposable film cameras in the 90s; it's a point and shoot camera with limited functionality and your photos more often than not were over/under exposed and probably a little out of focus depending on how far away you were from the subject. It doesn't help that all you have is a cheap view finder - you can frame up the shot, but you're not going to get any info out of it. I suppose that's the one advantage attaching one of these lenses to your mirrorless/DSLR - it's a lot easier to see whether or not your picture is going to work before snapping and you can adjust as necessary.
But why get one of these lenses? Is the point to take bad photos?
In a word, no. That's not the point.
A lot of people are weary of trying to get that "perfect photo", going for ultra high quality shots and then opening up the RAW image in Lightroom and tweaking everything just right to get an amazing photo. For people who want to do that, it's great! You really can make some amazing photos. Personally my raison d'être for using Lightroom is to make some slight tweaks to colour and lighting as necessary, but in general I'm fine with sharing the photos as-shot. I'm usually happy with what my Sony A5000 gives me on the "Intelligent Auto" setting, though I'm less than enthused with the unrealistically bright colours my Samsung phone gives me (this is where I would tone things down if I'm not shooting in Pro mode). Unless I'm trying for a specific look I try to stay out of Lightroom if I can.
But the idea of "point and shoot, don't think about it" is really attractive and I understand why. In the digital age, as I mentioned above, it's easy to get caught up in getting the perfect shot. Sometimes what we need is the candid photo, something maybe not entirely planned, but you want to get the photo. The result doesn't need to be perfect and that can be part of the charm. Yes, everyone can pull out their smart phone and get that same quick photo and get a high-quality image. But sometimes DSLRs, smartphones - they give you too many options.
"Should I zoom in here? Is the shot in focus? What about the lighting?"
Disposable film cameras, polaroids, cameras like the Camp Snap camera - the purpose of these cameras is to just get the shot. Yes, for sure, line up the photo and frame the shot - but beyond that everything else is out of your control (exposure, focus, etc.). You can still get some great shots with these lenses. I present this example:
The two photos in this post are good examples of the range the lenses have. In the first photo, I clearly don't have the right lighting and am probably too close. It looks like I also used the flash - there's another version of the photo that is really under-exposed. But because I used the flash, it made it too bright and that's how you get that washed-out 90s disposable camera look. In the second photo, I was further away from my dog and had some better natural light (she was directly in front of a floor lamp in the other photo). It's a little dark, but just hitting the "auto" button in any half-decent photo editor turns it into a better photo.
This one is in focus, and I would say looks objectively better than the first photo. If I were using a proper lens I'd probably want a shallower depth of field to blur a little bit of the background, but for something quick this shot is fine.
My point is: I bought this lens for fun. I have three different lenses for taking "good" photos. The cheap lens is for playing around with different lighting, getting some cool point-and-shoot moments. I'm not going to be using it to take a nice portrait of my wife. But I also figure that this is a good learning tool for me; I can use this lens to find out what is possible with a camera without fooling around with the sensors. If I can take a good photo with a lens that can't adjust for anything - then in my opinion that can give me better feel for when I use a "real" lens. Maybe I don't need to make as many adjustments before getting a shot I want and I can focus (no pun intended) on framing or depth of field, for example.
But, also, this lens is also definitely for recreating the look of photos taken from a cheap disposable film camera.
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