Manual camera better for evidence photography
Ben Martino
Evidence Photographer
Assistant Fire Investigator
Hubbardston (MA) Fire Department
Photography is a valuable tool in law enforcement and the fire service. With all the new technological advances in equipment today, many departments have strayed away from using the old standard 35 mm camera. This is a big mistake.
Many departments are changing over to digital cameras. The use of digital cameras in certain instances is justified, such as when taking mug shots and entering them into your department computer for use in reports, Web sites, and databases and for flyers, ID cards, pistol permits, and so forth. But unless your department is willing to spend more than $10,000 for a camera, you are not going to have the versatility and quality that you`ll have with a standard manual 35 mm SLR camera.
I specifically said manual camera. Once again, many departments are using automatic or semiautomatic cameras, and a number of these cameras also have built-in flash units. When you use a camera of this type, you will only be able to get minimal photos. One of the first things I learned a number of years ago was in a very basic college photo class: A photographer doesn`t take a picture, a photographer makes a picture. No truer statement can be made in evidence photography.
Unless your automatic camera has a manual switch that allows you to override the automatic function, you are not in control of the outcome of the picture you take–the camera is. Think about the situations that you encounter as an evidence photographer. Low light, back light, no light, dark evidence on a dark background, light evidence on a light background or a shiny surface, and so on. Automatic cameras just can`t read the overall scene properly so that an acceptable picture will result. The camera will only take an average reading of the scene or item and hence will only give you an average photo. Average photos may be fine for your department scrapbook, but unfortunately, they have no place in evidence photography.
You must have a very good understanding of your camera`s capability, how F-stops and shutter speeds work (together and separately), the capability of the film you`re using, the light available to you or that you can supply, the restrictions of the type of lens you use, and the angle of the light. You must understand all of these factors and how to manipulate them to get the best possible results.
At the same time, you must make sure the photos are fair and accurate descriptions of the scenes depicted. Although we manipulate the camera`s settings, we do this specifically to ensure that the photos we make are true and accurate descriptions of the scene.
I have proven to myself a thousand times why cameras with built-in flash units have no place in the field. Personally, I use a separate flash unit. This allows me to vary the strength of the resulting flash for different situations, and with the use of different length sync-cords, I can use the flash off the camera when the need arises. This need arises more often than you might think.
Vehicle fires, construction machinery fires, and chimney fires are just a few of the instances in which I`ve had to remove the flash from the camera and place it down into the area near the object I was going to photograph. I then had to place the lens into a different opening to get the shot. If I had used a camera with a built-in flash, the flash would have illuminated only the outside of the area, and the actual item I was photographing would have remained too dark to photograph. When you can remove the flash from the camera, you can have someone hold the flash unit at the right angle and exactly where you want it so that the resulting flash will strike the object the way you want it to. You can also tape the flash unit to a stick or other object and put it down into areas that are inaccessible to get the shot you need. These shots would have been impossible with an automatic camera or one with a built-in flash.
Digital and automatic cameras may have their place within the police and fire services for certain situations, but for true evidence photography, you need the versatility of a good 35-mm SLR and a variable-strength flash unit. The use of well-taken photographs as demonstrative evidence can mean the difference between winning and losing your case in court.
