More photography statistics
July 26th, 2010 - 1:10pm - No Comments »
Around a year ago, I was looking to buy a new lens for our then-impending US holiday. I posted an article summarising my usage patterns, which assisted a great deal with making the decision of which lens to buy.
I’ve now had that lens for almost a year. My final purchase was the EF 24-105mm f/4L IS USM, which I bought at a discounted price at what I consider a reasonably good deal. After our US holiday I again used took some statistics and compared them to my previous to-date statistics. All things considered, the statistics look very similar, meaning my usage pattern has not changed much at all with the shorter zoom lens.
It’s quite easy to see here that with the lens now covering 24-105mm (instead of the previous 18-200mm), I’m running into exactly the same problem I previously had. That is, I frequently use the lens as wide as it can go and as zoomed-in as possible. The larger red bar on the right, at 110mm, basically covers the same usage pattern from the blue bars from 130-200mm.
So, what about the ISO usage? With a lens that is—in theory—faster, I should be able to use a lower ISO for a larger percentage of the time.
It seems two things have happened here. The first is that I’ve used the camera in a similar pattern to my previous usage patterns. the second is that I’ve been able to use the “in-between” ISO settings more. The ISO100 usage pattern drop is odd, but given how small it is, I don’t think it is anything odd. Perhaps I’ve been using ISO100 in situations where it was not the most appropriate setting previously, or I’m trying to capture images at higher shutter speeds.
For our upcoming holiday to the Balkans, I have purchased a different camera, with a sensor that is supposedly more sensitive at the same ISO settings are previous, and also has a capability of using much higher ISO settings, it will be interesting to see what my usage patterns look like after this next trip.
