 We're on the hunt for something special. I can't say what it is right now and I'm not exactly sure what it is I'm looking for But I'll know it when I see it. My name is David Patton. When I started photography, I wanted to make art But with bills to pay and a family to feed I Decided it would be better to be a working photographer than a starving artist. So I took a job as a photojournalist 25 years and thousands of assignments later. It was time to go back to my first love Come along as I follow my passion trying to create art that shows the essence of nature in a photograph I'll be sharing my successes and my failures in hopes to inspire and educate This is my journey. This is ride in the edge So far I haven't seen What I'm looking for. This could take a while I'm not in a hurry This could take days even a couple weeks Once I find it, you'll know about it I've still got my camera with me today Just in case I see something else I want a photograph But we're running out of time and I haven't even seen a photograph Anyway, I'm kind of in this boggy grassy area I really wish I could isolate something in here I really like the look of it, but I just can't find enough To make an image. There's not enough not enough subject or pattern or something that maybe I'm just being too picky maybe I should just shoot this mess and see what I get I think the deer have been bedding down in here. It's quite soft. It's going to be pretty boggy in here enough And you know a little while I think his winter goes on Ground's really soft in here On the other side of this I saw something from the hill that I wanted to photograph, but I couldn't get to it It's turned into a marsh and I'm on the other side of what I wanted to photograph Oh, well That's the way it goes if these uh seed heads on these uh grasses and bushes here were A little lower I might try to photograph them, but because I had to shoot upon them so much the sky It's going to encroach on the image So one of those things where uh It's frustrating because I I think there's there might be something here and I might try to just Force a couple shots just to experiment with this. It might be something that I can develop an eye for If I see the scene again somewhere else So I might just take a few sketches a few Images and see where they where they take me This is where Shooting a digital camera is kind of handy because it allows me to kind of shoot into a photo And it lets me kind of experiment a little bit and and if it doesn't work, so I know no big loss This this wall of grass here is just There's something here calling me to take a photograph. So I run out of time, but I'm gonna have to try to make a frame in here Switch to the 85 And although I have to shoot up a little bit The trees in the background are blocking the sky so I'm making a photograph of these cattails with a shallow depth of field Just trying to isolate the vertical lines in this composition If you if you try hard You know you keep working at it. You sometimes you can find something I don't know if this is a great photo, but I I do like The lines and the way the light's kind of coming in on it It's kind of a diffused directional light It's nice The stuff behind me. I'm I've been working different things on it different pieces I still don't think I've found anything that's quite working Trying to use some of the grasses with the seed heads together There's a really interesting texture here. I'm just Not Able to arrange it just right where it's just I mean, I don't mind chaos in an image But I gotta have something that's Where my eye can at least rest at for a little while as it before takes that journey or comes back And right now I'm struggling to find that in this in this uh, chaotic mess I I'm attracted to it And then you know as I'm always attracted to weird stuff I really kind of like this. I don't work in this environment very often I kind of like it in here. I just I'm not seeing it although this little tree Growing up in these grasses there might be enough contrast with that that little sticky lines and uh Main trunk of this little I guess it's a bush These limbs going up in the grass might be enough Contrast to give a little bit of structure to the image and over here. I'm seeing a similar setup Maybe I'll try to work with the uh, the limbs coming up See if there's something there Trying to think that what I'm looking for is not in these woods It's a little thick I think I'm gonna have to go somewhere else into the forest Better woodland Today we're doing something a little different. I've got my oldest smallest lightest digital camera paired with my most compact light Lens This is a camera. I don't use I barely use if I do it's just for a video clip or something I haven't really Shot with this in a long time. I've made some pretty good enlargements with this camera in the past But I'm not really sure how it stands up if I shoot a little higher ISO Because I will need that in this darker light. So I thought it'd be fun to Take this one out and just give it a try and see if there's still a reason to take this old camera out On our little daily walks. It's it's perfect for these walks Its size and weight probably rivals even a micro four-thirds camera Once again, I stopped by this leaf that I photographed a couple times so far since it landed here It's still here. It's decomposed even a little bit more. I shot this in film last last time I was out here And this time we're going to try this crop sensor digital camera old sensor I'm shooting it at 1600 and 2500 We'll get a chance to compare and see How close it is to film and to my other digital shots from my uh icon d810 And it's nothing original because I've shot this already, but every time I shoot it it does look a little different The light's different today. It's got a little more of a shine. I kind of wish I had a polarizing filter But in black and white sometimes that shine looks looks As dimensions. So I'm not too worried about that But it gives me a I know it's not a very original photograph, but it gives me another uh comparison Even if I don't make some really good shots today. I need to shoot stuff Because I really would like to know if this is a waste of time carrying around with me. I mean its time may have come and gone but my uh Definition of image quality has changed a lot over the last year or two And what I used to call image quality Now I'm I don't I'm not measuring my images the same way For image quality Is the image Look like I want it to look if if it does then the image quality was perfect Or it was exactly what I needed if you measure on traditional image quality doesn't mean that's gonna meet those That quite criteria But is it meeting my criteria that's that's the uh That's the big one While I was talking I noticed this leaf here I might as well make a shot of this Bright leaf with water dew drops on top Don't really have a macro lens. I'm not sure how close I can focus with this, but we'll see This is a 24 megapixel sensor It's not high res but that's that's a decent amount of uh Pixels to work with In most stuff I shoot that's probably enough. I think I leaned more towards 36 to 40 45 net range I think I would prefer to have a little more of that flexibility to crop and that kind of thing Sometimes I like to have a square frame a square aspect ratio So if I have extra Uh pixels it does give me more opportunity to shoot different ratios One of the reasons I bought this model many years ago was The articulating screen. I really Thought that'd be useful What I like most about that is that you can close the back Not like that, but Walk around with it like this Glass is protected when it's in a camera bag. It's protected And then when you want to use it just pull it out and you can rotate it around or you can use it out to the side It's super versatile Very uh very useful I wish Nikon had gone this route with a lot of their cameras just it just felt like They really missed something there Kind of looks like winter has set in here There's not a lot left to bottom A lot of decomposed leaves on the ground Just a few leaves still hanging in there on some of these trees not too many I'm not breaking any new ground here. That's not the purpose of Today today is to see if I'm wasting my time bringing this along I really hope it Gives me decent results or results that I I like because it's so easy to bring it's so light. It just It's just kind of a pleasure to use. I mean it doesn't have a great viewfinder and that kind of thing, but it's kind of small But I'm willing to to uh trade some of the niceties of the bigger cameras For The size of a camera that's almost the same size as my film camera And actually lighter smaller than one of my film cameras so they're These things can be had for almost nothing On the used market. They're they're super cheap and even if I I could buy a newer model than this one because they made this for quite a few years and they probably improved it each time so I could in theory Go up another model or two and get basically the same camera with slightly better noise Reduction and got that kind of thing Little maybe a little better dynamic range although If this works then You know, there's no really it's like a free camera. It's just sitting on the shelf I might as well see if I can put it to use I find the use camera market a very compelling reason not to update to a mirrorless system It's it's a really good time to shoot the sllr's right now or sllr's for that matter because There's a lot of really really good In icon f mount gear For a lot less than it would cost to buy new And a lot and some of that stuff is in really good shape I wouldn't argue that mirrorless cameras of the future What I will say is The future will always be there And right now I don't I know my pictures wouldn't be any better if I was to buy a mirrorless camera They really don't offer anything that would make a big difference in my photography The cameras have been good for a long time film was really good And it still is And when uh mirrorless come along digital sllr's were Great they were great if I was going to update today I would probably just go and buy a Either a slightly used D850 or maybe even a new d850. They're really not that expensive. You get a lot of camera For for the money There's some long professional glass in the f mount that boy you can have for Half the price that would be so much fun to have Someday I'll probably go that way, but I don't Of course right now I have my I had no money anyway But even if I did There's just a lot of really good reasons not to change yet. I'm glad people are because that that helps Move the industry forward that helps Nikon stay in business I don't have that kind of budget where I can help Nikon stay in business So right now I need to take advantage of making my money go as far as you can To get the images I want And that's in the older system There's a lot of really good lenses and and camera bodies out there that can be had for a lot of money Something I've noticed over the last couple weeks Is a lot of new fern growth Something I hadn't expected this time of year. I expected since we're kind of going into winter everything's going to be dying off But I guess because it's was so dry and warm These ferns like it a little cooler and they're putting up some new growth They might just be the specific type of fern that likes this kind of weather So I'm finding some of that here this morning Nori and I are Gonna try to get a couple more shots with this camera. We're just on a little walk kind of in between rain rain showers so my takeaway from Using this Nikon D5200 Is I was really surprised at how well it did I actually didn't expect it to do as well as I it as the files I was seeing I shot both raw on jpeg and I edited both And I was very pleased with how the jpeg's performed Didn't need a whole lot of editing Will this replace my d810? No, it won't replace my d810 But there are times where I want a compact light camera I'm just for the walks and stuff I'll be grabbing this before I grab the d810 Because I know that this camera is going to produce good results It may not be quite as good as my other camera as far as resolution goes But the look is really good I was able to photograph a leaf that I photographed over the last few weeks That I've actually photographed with film and digital And comparing this to the film shot was it was uh Pretty amazing how close they were how close They looked the lighting was a little different so they weren't exactly but The similarities were uncanny Well, I still haven't found that something special that I alluded to at the beginning of this video So I'm bringing out time this week So that help will carry on If you want to help this channel, don't forget to subscribe and hit the like button If you want to contribute monetarily, I have a patreon page I'll put a link in the description As well as quite a few zines you can preview for free Or you can also purchase those as a way to help out the channel So we're going to end this video right here Until next time Thanks for coming along for the ride