These myths primarily trend toward landscapes, but some are applicable to other genres as well. The main thing is to help fledgling photographers or new photographers not succumb to these long held ideas and to free them up in their photography.
#1 – You need the best camera gear to take great pictures
Not true at all. I started with a cropped sensor camera and thought if I upgraded to a full frame DSLR, that would make a difference. I then went mirrorless to a full frame and to my surprise the pictures were not improving immediately. In fact there were more obstacles at times given the myriad of menu items to cull through on today’s cameras. Lesson learned was that you cannot buy your way into great photographs. You need to learn your craft bit by bit and improve daily. What matters is the person behind the camera.
#2 – Manual mode is the only want to shoot like the pros
Completely false. I shoot a lot in manual with auto iso which is not true manual and it will also depend on your genre. Wedding and portrait photographers may trend to Aperture mode and sports photographers trend toward Shutter priority, which is what I use for my aviation photography.. Great photographs can be taken in any mode as long as you understand the relationship between the exposure triangle and how each, ISO, aperture and shutter speed affect the other.
#3 – Always shoot at your lowest ISO
Again, just a myth. Today’s cameras can easily handle ISO 6400 or greater with minimal noise. Tech has come a long way since the early days of digital. Also with the advent of advance software to help get ride of the noise which usually occurs in the darken portions of the image, you can feel free to set the ISO higher. I wrote and entire blog post on Cranking up the ISO which you can read by clicking the link. Bottom line, use whatever ISO you need to support whatever shutter speed or aperture you are trying to achieve for your image.
#4 – Everything has to be tack sharp in your image
There may instances where this is true, but at times not and has to do with your creative control. Perhaps. you want the foreground soft to draw attention to the middle of the scene of farther back to create depth in the image. Keep in mind that our vision is not designed to see a focus stacked world where everything is tack sharp. That is not how our eyes and vision work.
#5 – Best pictures only come at golden hour or blue hour
I will not dispute that these times of day produce some amazingly stunning images, but it is certainly not the only time to capture beautiful photographs. I prefer an even flat light at times, especially for landscapes like waterfalls where there are not hotspots from sun rays and you can get a beautiful even lighting across the whole scene.
#6 – Must you a wide angle for best landscapes
No way is wide angle the only options. You can you a mid-range zoom to take more intimate landscape. photographs and come away with some great images. Even telephoto lenses can produce landscape images that are memorable and worth exploring so don’t limit yourself to just wide-angle. Certainly, have one in the bag, but don’t limit yourself.
#7 – Your cameras light meter knows best on exposure
This one was easy to not adhere to. Although exposure compensation is a powerful tool, it should not replace one of the most important tools on the screen, the histogram. I utilize this more than anything in challenging scenarios to ensure that I am not loosing detail in the highlights by clipping or is the shadows that I may want to recover later.
#8 – You should never crop
This is a big one that is debated and there are purists out there that produce content about never cropping and getting it right in camera with the composition. Now I am all for that and I do take a look around my viewfinder prior to going click, however, I also do crop when it is impossible to not remove everything at the time of capture. In fact sometimes I will intentionally shoot a bit wider knowing that I am going to have to crop to obtain the image I envisioned. So don’t be afraid to crop.