Resources for film users to learn digital?

A

apconan

Guest
I love film photography. Recently I've been wanting to learn a little about about digital, but most sites I look at seem to be swamped with information, most of it redundant or overly technical.

I'm looking for good information about digital workflow... technical data about cameras and lens is easily found. But is there a good resource that is good for people new to digital, to learn about things like calibration, color management, etc?
 
My Library on Digital Photography

My Library on Digital Photography

HI, I was waiting for someone else to post as I usually get flamed for stating my opinion, but here goes anyway. I have before me five books with more or less the information that you seek. Three are by Tom Ang, they are: "digital photographer's handbook, equipment, techniques, effects, and troubleshooting", ISBN - 10: 0-7566-2355-3; "Digital Photography, an introduction", ISBN 0-7894-9976-2. Those two probably have the most information for the buck. Then there is "Photoshop CS for Photography, the art of pixel processing", ISBN 0-8174-5374-1 which is self described. Then there is "The Digital Photography Book", by Scott Kelby, ISBN: 0-321-47404-X. And finally I would suggest Digital Photography Pocket Guide by Derrick Story, ISBN: 0-596-10015-9. This last book is pocket sized (dahhh!) and is very handy to include in one's camera bag. It doesn't contain anything new or revolutionary, just a load of info that one sometimes get confused about in the heat of the moment.

Good luck with your transition. I went from film to digital and now back to film. Taking the picture is very similar with only the digital camera's many "adjustments" to complicate matters. That is where I got tripped up and needed help. 😱 Tom Ang is a very good writer with a clear and understandable style.

As an after thought, the book by Ang on Photoshop CS is a "generic" book on pixel peeping and all that goes with it. He uses Photoshop CS to describe the processes, but states that anyone can follow along with any photo editing software and achieve more or less the same results
 
Last edited:
I like the reference to the Scott Kelby books

I like the reference to the Scott Kelby books

Easy read, with the information delivered in bite size chunks. In fact he now has three of these small tomes available. The first one is called The Digital Photography Book, The Digital Photography Book 2, and ........ Guess?

He has a web site and offers all kinds of seminars and books on Digital photo, work flow and Editing.
 
I don't know best references. But it helps if you think of digital as slide film. It behaves similarly -- expose for highlights, less tolerance for exposure error, color balance issues.
 
I can highly recommend the downloadable "123 Di" e-learning package. It is very comprehensive and structured at Beginner, Intermediate and Advanced levels.
http://www.123di.com/

For Photoshop and Lightroom I also use reference books by Martin Evening.
 
Digital workflow and post processing is very software oriented and dependent (in terms of the practical skills needed at least.) So an early decision is which software to buy.

When I got started down this path, I actually found it to be easier to buy a few magazines with good articles in them about post processing and to step myself through specific examples with the magazine in front of me till I was confident I knew how the software works and how the various techniques work by experimenting on one of my own images. I found this case by case approach to studying much more digestible than trying to understand an entire work flow in one go.Its pretty daunting if you do not have experience in digital work flow. Believe me its by far the easiest way to go and after some weeks you will begin to get a proper comprehensive understanding of how to process a photo properly. But as I said, you really need to first decide what software to use. This in turn will depend in part on whether you are planning to shoot RAW files or JPGs. Photoshop et al will handle RAW files but many find it easier to use Lightroom or aperture or similar. Making this decision first helps as many technique books are software specific and while this does not matter so much when you are more experienced and understand the principles and something about how to use the software (you can make the translation from one piece of software to another quite easily once you have got some experience) when you are a rank beginner it is a tough ask.

To help you decide software ask yourself how proficient you are likely to be andd whether you want to understand some of the deeper skills in products like Photoshop... skills like using selections and layers properly. These are fantastic tools when you understand them but hard for a newbie to understand very often - although once again the above approach helps as it ensures you learn in digestible bite sized pieces.

In terms of a generalized workflow I use something like the following (my software is Corell Paint Shop Pro Photo X2 as its cheap, about as powerful as Photoshop Elements and has some nice touches that make it easier to learn and use.) But this workflow can be used with pretty well any software.

First open the file as a RAW file in PSPPX2 / Photoshop / Photoshop Elements etc
Reduce digital camera noise
Adjust global color if necessary
Adjust global tone if necessary
Make selective adjustments to individual parts of the photo if necessary
Apply any special effects if desired (I may save several versions)
Sharpen
Save as a JPG.

Something like the above is an easy general purpose work flow that will get you pretty close to a good image every time. The secret is in the middle stages and knowing how to apply the various specialized edits. Most of the books you can buy are very focused on using the individual tools found in various pieces of software like Photoshop and will not tell you how to put them together into a work flow like the above. That's is why it is so frustrating as you can read one of those damn books and still not understand when you need to use specific tools let alone how to use them. But try to remember the above work flow steps and I promise you it will be much much easier. I have taught myself in the space of the past year and am now pretty proficient - I am not a wiz kid but can do pretty well 99% of what a photographer must do and do it with confindence.
 
Last edited:
I recently went the other way, starting to shoot analog again.

I second what Peterm1 said. Read magazine articles and try to follow his workflow.

Other than that, when going digital, I found you have to follow a slightly different path for light metering:

Whereas for analog one very often exposes for the shadows and fixes highlights in developing, digital has different needs. Unlike film, a digital imaging chip does not feature a smooth roll-off in the shadow and highlight areas of the density transmision curve. Whereas film offers a smooth and progressive compression in these areas, effectively hiding many areas of over- and underexposure, a digital camera chip is merciless: It loses image detail instantly, particularly on overexposure, and when details are lost, they can hardly be recovered.

As a consequence, it is a good bet to expose to the right, i.e. to expose for highlights and then recover some "invisible" shadow detail by applying a gradation curve (global tone adjustment). The interesting thing when using this concept: Shadows often contain more detail than is visible on a first glance. This is because the camera can record a wider range of brightness values than your average computer monitor can reproduce.

So, shoot as many pictures as you can, more shots won't break the bank - unlike with film photography. And that will be enormously helpful for learning. Have fun!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom