Last year my ol'4 mega pixel Fuji FinePix finally began to suffer the viscitudes of old age, beginning with a sticking shutter cover. Other things were intermittently sticking and it seemed to me that the pictures began get a bluish tint. I had been wanting to upgrade for some time, but didn't relish a hike up the inevitable new-features learning curve. The fading of the Fuji made the shop trek inevitable.
Still, i sought to avoid the geek-o-rama by replacing the Fuji with an "interim" entry-level, low-feature, last-year's-model of some sort. I made a view finder and the use of AA batteries my sine qua non, and settled on a Canon A1200.
The Canon had more features than i knew what to do with but basically was my old Fuji +. It had nice colour, 14 megapixels and best of all was unobtrusively small without being ergonomically impossible. Unfortunately it did not work.
By the time i figured out that it was the camera that was wrong and not something i was doing, my 30 day free return had expired. I wrote to Canon and they told me to go fuck myself. I whined to Amazon and they took it back for a mere $10.00 restocking fee.
Result: (1) i remain a loyal Amazon customer and (2) i will never ever buy a Canon product again. Nor should you.
The third result was that i was thrown to the lions geek-o-rama wise. So i began the dreary process of learning everything i did not particularly want to know about digital fotography.
My brother in law is a professional fotographer who years ago pronounced, "Film is king; it will never be replaced." He meant, "for those who are serious about photography." So i sent Mark an email asking, "Is film still king?" "Film is dead," he replied, "caput. No one is using film." He meant "no one who knows anything about anything."
"So....what one or two things should i look for?" i asked. "Mega-pixels and more mega-pixels," he replied, "You can't get enough mega-pixels... ever."
Now i had done enough geeking around to know that there are those informati on various photography web sites who debunk the "sales gimmick" of mega-pixels. The gist of their argument is that more than 10 or 12 mega pixels aren't needed.
The difficulty with the argument is that it doesn't ask, "needed for what?" The number of mega-pixels determines the physical size and detail resolution of a photograph. If one is only putting fotos on the web for screen viewing a lot of mega pixels aren't needed because screen resolutions are between 72 and 96 pixels per inch which means that just about anything my old 4 mpx Fuji took was fine on screen.
If one is printing 6 x 4 or even 5 x 7 glossy fotos, one also does not need more than 10 or 12 mega-pixels. This amount is enough to print those sizes at resolutions of 300 and 600 pixels per inch, which is more than enough for average viewing. To give an example, the U.S. Passport agency does not require fotos at greater resolution than 300.
If, however, one is printing 8 x 10's for art gallery viewing then Mark is right. The absolute minimum for fashion magazine quality prints is 1200 ppi, with 2400 being the average.
And then there is the question of bit depth. Bit depth is to shades and gradations of colour what pixels per inch is to sharpness and size. For most of us 24 bit depth is fine enough. For professional or artistic use, 48 bit is preferable and requires a huge amount of pixel storage.
So with this in mind, Mark was right and the internet pundits were wrong.
But there are other considerations apart from mega-pixels; most importantly (in my book) lens quality and sensor size and quality.
The sensor is to digital photography what film is to film fotography. It is what "registers" all the rays of light that make up a picture. Lousy film, lousy foto. It's as simple as that.
And for both digital and film photography, the lens is everything. Well, not quite; technically you can take a photgraph through a pinhole, so the film ends up being the "everything" -- but what is seen, how it is seen, how crisply it is seen, what colours and shades are seen.. all depends on the lens.
So, with these two factors in mind, i finally settled on a Panasonic Lumix LX5, which was basically a Leica DeLux 5 at half the price and without the nifty little red dot. At the time I bought it, it did not have the best sensor around, nor did it have the max mega pix available but (from what i read and was told) it had the best lens around in its $350.00 price range. It was basically a top of the line point and shoot.
Of course, within three months of purchasing it, all the manufacturers came out with the missing next "level" of camera which my own research had pointed to: the ultra compact DSLR, with swappable lenses.... at double the price but half or a third of the price of the Big Bulkies.
These new "hybrid" cameras are really great and i will just have to wait; which is just as well given that in the meanwhile my foto meanderings have taken me into the funky retro world of film.
While i was trying to decide what kind of digital camera to buy, i ran into a photographer while walking Nicki in the park. We started talking and during the course of our chat he mentioned that he still liked using film for any thing "special". He suggested i give it a try, not to the exclusion of digital but as a supplement.
As it turns out, people are dumping their old film cameras like crazy, so supplementing is not all that expensive.
The first dumped camera i came across was a Nikon FM1 tossed into the junk bin at Goodwill. I bought it for $15.00 and took it to the local camera shop where they pronounced it unuseable due to corrosion and gummed up seals. So I took it back to Goodwill, and kept the lens for $5.00.
Even though i had already purchased the Lumix, i became entranced with the idea of a totally manual, basic film camera. In fact, the Lumix had something to do with the entrancement. I certainly like the digital camera, the crispness of the pictures it takes and the ease with which it takes them up close and afar. But the overload of bells, whistles and features upon features and options upon options produces an equal but opposite reaction on my psyche which yells : GIVE ME LESS! KEEP ME SIMPLE!!
Of course, nothing is truly simple. Optics is a complicated business; there's no way around that. But there is still something to be said for learning to play a "simple" Bach invention before jumping in to play Beethoven's Pathetique.
I'm not off here. Fall is a bad time to buy funky retro cameras because, as it turns out, college photography courses are requiring "experience in film" as some sort of photography bootcamp.
In all events, i decided to give film a try, and shortly after buying the Lumix, the local camera shop came up with a Pentax K1000 in good condition for sale at $45.00 with a basic 50mm lens for another $25.00. Done deal.
So throughout the Spring and Summer, i experimented with and compared digital and film photography, often taking the same picture twice.
It seems that it is almost impossible to "compare" anything without wanting to answer the question "which is better." But the question is ultimately false. Digital and film are both nice in different ways.
It is beyond dispute, that digital cameras have reached the point of such sophistication and technical proficiency that if one had to choose one over the other, digital would be the way to go. From weight and size, the abiltity to take hundreds of rapid fire shots, the instant availability of the results, the range and depth of focusing and the pixel detail available -- all give the new digital DSLRs the edge over film cameras -- and certainly over 35 mm film cameras -- by far. When it comes to getting that je ne sais quoi analog look that "only" film has... there is always Photoshop's "make it look like film" filter.
But there is something that digital will never equal or reproduce and that is the "photographic moment" only available with the turn-dial, clack-a-click experience of a manual camera.
The film experience begins with the weighty feel of the camera which says, in a subliminal way: this is a weighty moment; you are going to take a picture of it forever. It is not "point and shoot".
The experience continues with all sorts of adjustments, sizings, focusings and compromises one has to make. The limitations of film's fixed aspect ratio (that is, how much you can get into the foto's square), the compromises of avaiable light versus the type of film "speed" in the camera, the limitations and advantages of manually set depth of field (how much of the picture is in and out of focus) all these things require the photographer not only to stop and think but to interact with the environment that is making the picture. It is a three part interaction between man, machine and nature. Even if the picture turns out to be a dud because of a miscalculation i made, i still had the satisfaction of being satisfied with what i "captured" and hearing it being captured with that musical click-a-clack of the shutter. I get off on this, just like i used to get off at the sound of rickety trolley steps folding down at station stops.
I don't mean to suggest that digital photographing is a mindless experience producing artistic dreck. It would be stupid beyond belief to trumpet retro-archana in such a way. Digital photography entails a different process with different decisions to be made. For example the selecting which with film takes place before the shutter's click, in digital, takes place afterwards in selecting the one shot from a sequence that is the photo you wanted. An aesthetic judgement must still be made; it is only made at a different time and stage of the creative process.
But that conceded, the experience of manual film photography is unique in itself. It does produce its own photographic genre, in a medium that will last "forever" and with potentially unlimited pixel depth. But most importantly, it affords its own experience of relating with something seen.
And so it was, that today i bought another manual camera; this time the model Nikon (FM) that i had found in the Goodwill bin, only this time in excellent condition. Why did i buy it? I tell myself that i bought it because it will afford me the ability to use a greater range of lenses i come across but the real reason is i couldn't resist beating some college kid to it. :)
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