Last week on Facebook, I read Richard Sachs complaining about how his new camera, the Sony RX100 wasn’t delivering quality photos like he had hoped. From there, a torrent of fans replied with a mountain of tips, ranging from “get a tripod” to “get a photo studio”. I emailed Richard promptly and offered some advice.

He was shooting wide open with the RX100 on auto. My first advice: set it to aperture priority, then stop it down to around f3.2 to f5.6. After explaining what that meant, Richard went back into his shop and started taking more photos and he was pleased with the results.

Personally, I love watching the process a frame builder goes through while assembling a frame, as much as I enjoy the final product. Part of that entails documentation. No builder wants to call in their photographer buddy to shoot while they’re brazing or welding, so it helps to have a pocket-sized camera like the RX100, the right settings and a steady hand.

Builders like Bishop, Richard Sachs, Firefly, JP Weigle, Winter, MAP and others I’ve featured here do a great job at documenting their process and I think that’s a large reason for their customer’s, both returning and future, engagement.

See more of RS’s work at his Flickr.

I’ve since given my RX100 to Lauren, who was convinced she needed a 5Dmkiii and a f2.8 24-70mm mkii L lens to travel to Myanmar for her work. After giving her a tutorial, she loves it. Meanwhile, I’ve just opted to shoot more 35mm film