'It was simple,' Schweitzer said. 'I only played the good notes.'

Digital photo secrets, Part 2: Work with what you've got

July 1, 2001


By Al Fasoldt
Copyright © 2001, Al Fasoldt
Copyright © 2001, The Syracuse Newspapers

   Albert Schweitzer, famous for his humanitarian work, was also a great scholar on the work of Johann Sebastian Bach. He loved to play Bach's organ music on the old pedal-operated organ in the parlor of his home in Gabon, a small country in Africa.
   One day a fellow Bach expert arrived after traveling all the way from England. Schweitzer, a medical doctor, was busy in his clinic, so while the visitor waited he sat down at Schweitzer's worn-out organ and tried to play a Bach sonata.
   Some of the keys were bent. Others were missing. The notes that came out were grotesquely out of tune.
   When Schweitzer arrived later, the visitor chided his host for not owning a better organ.
   "Surely you could have any organ you wanted," the visiting expert said.
   "But the one I have sounds fine," Schweitzer said.
   The visitor frowned. "Albert, it's time to face reality. That organ sounds terrible."
   Schweitzer smiled and sat down at the keyboard. He started pushing on the pedals to build up the air pressure inside the organ, then began to play one of his favorite Bach chorales.
   It sounded heavenly.
   "How did you do that?" his visitor demanded. "I couldn't get it to play right at all!"
   "It was simple," Schweitzer said. "I only played the good notes."
   I am reminded of this wonderful story often. It brings me back to reality when I feel like complaining about the quality of my digital camera.
   I don't have a Super Whiz-bang model. It has a few wonderful features -- it's a combination digital camcorder and digital still camera, and I love the camcorder part -- but in one important area my digital camera is a dud. It has a resolution of only 640 by 480. That's about half the resolution of my brother's digital camera or the one owned by my friend Mark.
   Yet, as both my brother Bob and my friend Mark will agree, I take good pictures with my camera. You can see for yourself, in fact. The photo essay, "Children of the Amazon," that my wife, Nancy, and I wrote contains two dozen pictures I took with that digital camera. (You'll see a link to our photo essay on the Technofile Web site at www.twcny.rr.com/technofile.)
   What's my secret? I only play the good notes. I don't take pictures that I know will look bad. I only take pictures my camera can handle.
   Here's what I mean. A resolution of 640 by 480 -- meaning 640 pixels (separate picture elements) across and 480 pixels down -- can't show distant scenes very well. Sunsets are jagged looking, for example.
   Objects in the distance aren't fuzzy or indistinct, as they might be using a film camera with a poor-quality lens. When the resolution of your digital camera isn't very high, objects in the distance might as well be made from Legos. They're too small in comparison with the size of the pixels to be portrayed accurately. They're blocky and jagged.
   My attitude toward this? I have two words for it: So what.
   Instead of moaning and groaning over the pixely results of sunset photos or the raggedy-jaggedy look of scenic views, I take close-ups instead. Sometimes my close-ups are taken of people and things that are truly close (a few feet away) and sometimes I use my camera's telephoto zoom lens.
   And sometimes my close-ups are "far-away"-ups in which one part of the picture, maybe an object that takes up a third of the frame, is fairly close while everything else is far away. If I'm careful to take the picture in good light, the close object will look great -- and, believe it or not, that's all it takes for our eyes to perceive the picture as perfectly good.
   In other words, if the focus of interest looks good, the entire photo will look good. Look at the photo I took recently of a dock on a bay in North Hero Island at the top of Lake Champlain. The dock is bright and sharp -- it's the first thing you notice -- but once you start studying the photo you can easily see how indistinct the background is. In fact, it's worse than indistinct; it's pixelated, jagged and blocky.
   But who cares? I got a good photo because I knew the late afternoon sunlight would cast an interesting shadow on the dock. (The dock's bright red, which you can't see in the newspaper's black-and-white version. The photo here shows the full effect.)
   Could a digital camera with better resolution have taken the same picture? Sure. Could it have done better? Of course.
   But so what? I don't have a fancier camera. I'm having too much fun taking good pictures with it to wish for something better. Besides, I'm learning how to make the best of what I have. Isn't that what counts?