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Kin Lau
Guest
ruben said:
I'm not an "oldtimer", but I'll heartily agree. That's why I bought my Speed Graphics _after_ my 350D 🙂
Is DSLR a good learning tool?
- Thread starter nickchew
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I'm not an "oldtimer", but I'll heartily agree. That's why I bought my Speed Graphics _after_ my 350D 🙂
nomade
Hobbyist
On the long run, ofcourse digital is cheaper, i can't deny that i've been thinking digital lately, the price depends on the market, here electronics and digital apparels cost a bit more because sometimes u've to pay add. taxes on them..Shipping would be just the same(they make u pay taxes on any shipment too :bang🙂 , in any case if i'm goin to own a digital camera in the near future, i'm not the one who's gonna pay for it...
I'm also waiting for my visa and premium cards, these will surely help me financially, the thing is that i can ask for what i want anytime and i'll get it mostly, but i just don't wanna be that dependant!
Also u wouldn't pay the whole some at once, i love the feeling of buying something new everyonce in a while, adding new stuff for analog camera is much easier and cheaper, of course when i find some decent job :bang: 😀
But who can resist a digital camera when it's handy??
lubitel
Well-known
I recently got a Rebel XT and I have to say its alot of fun to shoot with it. And in a way its both easy and hard. Its easy to just shoot but it seems hard to get a good photograph, and a good exposure. I constantly have to restrain myself from just pressing the button, and force myself to slow down and imagine that what i am holding is no different than Canon AE1. In a way it isnt, its still a camera meant to make photographs. I think as long as the user thinks about what he/she does (wether in Photography or anything else), digital SLR is as good a camera as any analog SLR. With analog this slowing-down-and-thinking just comes somewhat easier.
jaapv
RFF Sponsoring Member.
Peter Klein said:
I agree with the sentiment. But as for dynamic range - Most high-end digital camera's have a dynamic range of 8-10 stops, more than most films I believe. And information content- well film could theoretically store up to about 40 MP picture information, but due to irregular distribution of the crystals, optical effects within the film itself, chemical effects at contrast edges and mechanical irregularities this drops below 15MP in practice, sometimes as low as well under 10MP. And scanning film drops resolution even further. So in technical terms, I think digital has come of age and is reaching a stage of technical consolidation. It will be a good thing, as we can concentrate on the quality of the camera's as such and more or less take the electronic "film" for granted, as we do with analog camera's.
darkkavenger
Massimiliano Mortillaro
If they make a digital Zeiss-Ikon I might consider switching to digital, but as for now, nothing for me beats the magic of film shooting.
Andrew McK
Andrew
I feel that digitall removes the fear of failure. Which for a lot of people is probably the difference between them taking photos or not.
But not for me.
I've spent a while using digital and it let me try out things that I would never have dared to before on film, just because of the cost of messing up perfectly good film.
But then I got myself a FED4 and I like now that I am working with a very small margin of error.
I've had a lot of failures shooting film. Messed up focus. Camera shake. Wrong exposures, and so on. It's not easy shooting film.
But for me. I don't learn from things being easy.
It is meant to be hard. It is meant to be a constant challenge.
That way it keeps you sharp, makes you better.
So by all means use digital to learn, use the safety net it gives. But at some point let it go, Take off those stabalisers!!
(unless you are using digital to use your photos in photoshop. in which case would be a different story)
But not for me.
I've spent a while using digital and it let me try out things that I would never have dared to before on film, just because of the cost of messing up perfectly good film.
But then I got myself a FED4 and I like now that I am working with a very small margin of error.
I've had a lot of failures shooting film. Messed up focus. Camera shake. Wrong exposures, and so on. It's not easy shooting film.
But for me. I don't learn from things being easy.
It is meant to be hard. It is meant to be a constant challenge.
That way it keeps you sharp, makes you better.
So by all means use digital to learn, use the safety net it gives. But at some point let it go, Take off those stabalisers!!
(unless you are using digital to use your photos in photoshop. in which case would be a different story)
jaapv
RFF Sponsoring Member.
Maybe too sweeping, but doing digital without photoshop is just taking snapshots.. One of the nice things about digital is, that it gave us back our darkroom!
Bertram2
Gone elsewhere
nickchew said:
Rather "or not". A good learning tool is a fully manual camera with a handheld meter.
Scanning the negs and work with them using PS is helpful to visualize mistakes tho,
it helps too for a good understanding what kind of postprocessing is done in a wet darkroom.
The instant result is no advantage for something that needs a certain amount of time to perceive and to understand. Youcan't make that shorter than it must be. The himan beeing is the limiting factor, a lost truth in times of an increasing acceleration.
This has survived many revolutions: Slow down and you get more of it. (Said the lady to her lover !!)
B.
f/stopblues
photo loner
I've been on the fence about this question for a while now, but flipping through the latest Lenswork magazine last night gave me a little insight, or at least told an interesting story about learning digitally.
There's a portfolio presented from Robert Swiderski of various images of St. Hyacinth's Basilica that are very nice images indeed. After all, they're in Lenswork, whose magazine I admire! Most portfolios can at least be described as "mature".
In any case, after going through some of the images I read the interview and was suprised to learn a couple things. First off, he's shooting with a Digital Rebel which he shares with his wife. Secondly, he's only been shooting for five years with no prior photographic experience outside snapshooting. He has never shot film at all, only digital.
Regardless of how you view his work, this seems to be an impressive accomplishment, especially given that he has a book put together with publishers interested. He attributes his quick accomplishment to shooting thousands of frames of almost anything.
"By previewing images on the LCD it taught me about exposure, how light behaves, and how photography works. It was also something I was doing every day."
With those advantages available, digital certainly has the potential to be a great learning tool, but I doubt that it's fully utilized by the vast majority of shooters. These cameras make it very easy to overlook the learning potential and start snapping, which is of much less value IMO. If one hones in on the meat of photography, being exposure, composition, etc, then it can do wonderful things as we can see here. The allure of digital is the quickness and ease.. someone with that goal in mind would be hard pressed to then slow down and skip the ease of snapshooting.
On a side note, I think at least of equal imortance is lots and lots of viewing of good photographs. Other people's work can be a great teacher to show what quality work looks like so as to have something to strive for. I especially like jlw's example of watching a welder work and actually seeing what a proper weld bead should look like, as opposed to learning by trial and error.
My $.02 🙂
There's a portfolio presented from Robert Swiderski of various images of St. Hyacinth's Basilica that are very nice images indeed. After all, they're in Lenswork, whose magazine I admire! Most portfolios can at least be described as "mature".
In any case, after going through some of the images I read the interview and was suprised to learn a couple things. First off, he's shooting with a Digital Rebel which he shares with his wife. Secondly, he's only been shooting for five years with no prior photographic experience outside snapshooting. He has never shot film at all, only digital.
Regardless of how you view his work, this seems to be an impressive accomplishment, especially given that he has a book put together with publishers interested. He attributes his quick accomplishment to shooting thousands of frames of almost anything.
"By previewing images on the LCD it taught me about exposure, how light behaves, and how photography works. It was also something I was doing every day."
With those advantages available, digital certainly has the potential to be a great learning tool, but I doubt that it's fully utilized by the vast majority of shooters. These cameras make it very easy to overlook the learning potential and start snapping, which is of much less value IMO. If one hones in on the meat of photography, being exposure, composition, etc, then it can do wonderful things as we can see here. The allure of digital is the quickness and ease.. someone with that goal in mind would be hard pressed to then slow down and skip the ease of snapshooting.
On a side note, I think at least of equal imortance is lots and lots of viewing of good photographs. Other people's work can be a great teacher to show what quality work looks like so as to have something to strive for. I especially like jlw's example of watching a welder work and actually seeing what a proper weld bead should look like, as opposed to learning by trial and error.
My $.02 🙂
Seveneer
Member
Hi, I haven't read all the replies on this thread so I apologise if for that but I wanted to give my opinion none the less.
I got my first SLR about 18 years ago (a Practica MTL5B). I enjoyed taking photos but never really got anything better than a snap shot. After a good few years, a couple of years back I bought a Canon 300D which I soon replaced by a 10D.
I found the DSLR a fantastic way of giving instant feedback on whether or not I had chosen the correct combination of shutter speed and aperture. I liked the fact that I had EXIF data available to me so I could compare the settings used for one photo to the next.
I have recently gone back to predominatly using film as I prefer the results to those I got from my DSLR's. I still use film when I don't feel confident that I will get the results I want but I much prefer the photos I get from film. In fact I haven't used didgital for a few months now and have been very happy with the transparencies and prints thereof I've made since.
In fact, I've enjoyed using film so much that, in the last 6 months, I've reinstated my dark-room. I used to have a B&W darkroom 10 years ago but I now have a colour dark-room that I use for RA4 and Ciba and I enjoy every moment of.
I have also put my digital camera's in the cupboard and use my EOS 5, Bronica SQAi and Voigtlander R for almost all my photography.
I wouldn't have even considered buying a rangefinder or a medium format SLR if I hadn't gained a certain amount of knowledge or photography through my use of DSLR's. So I would reinforce the idea that DSLR's are a great way to learn photography.
I say, "It's horses for courses". If my time with DSLR's has reignited my passion for photography and has encouraged me to process and print my own colour photos at home then it's a good thing.
I seem to have taken a long time in composing this post so just in case I've offended anyone, and I can't see how I would have done, 😛 .
All the best,
/Phil.
I got my first SLR about 18 years ago (a Practica MTL5B). I enjoyed taking photos but never really got anything better than a snap shot. After a good few years, a couple of years back I bought a Canon 300D which I soon replaced by a 10D.
I found the DSLR a fantastic way of giving instant feedback on whether or not I had chosen the correct combination of shutter speed and aperture. I liked the fact that I had EXIF data available to me so I could compare the settings used for one photo to the next.
I have recently gone back to predominatly using film as I prefer the results to those I got from my DSLR's. I still use film when I don't feel confident that I will get the results I want but I much prefer the photos I get from film. In fact I haven't used didgital for a few months now and have been very happy with the transparencies and prints thereof I've made since.
In fact, I've enjoyed using film so much that, in the last 6 months, I've reinstated my dark-room. I used to have a B&W darkroom 10 years ago but I now have a colour dark-room that I use for RA4 and Ciba and I enjoy every moment of.
I have also put my digital camera's in the cupboard and use my EOS 5, Bronica SQAi and Voigtlander R for almost all my photography.
I wouldn't have even considered buying a rangefinder or a medium format SLR if I hadn't gained a certain amount of knowledge or photography through my use of DSLR's. So I would reinforce the idea that DSLR's are a great way to learn photography.
I say, "It's horses for courses". If my time with DSLR's has reignited my passion for photography and has encouraged me to process and print my own colour photos at home then it's a good thing.
I seem to have taken a long time in composing this post so just in case I've offended anyone, and I can't see how I would have done, 😛 .
All the best,
/Phil.
lubitel
Well-known
I believe in a classical way of learning things. This digital vs analog learning can be also compared with drawing/painting lessons. One can start learning how to draw the classical way or start experimenting right away without knowing the rules. Both ways can lead to success. But the classical way will lead to artistic success alot more often, and experimenting can be then done with knowing the proper rules. Picasso could have painted a perfectly "normal" portrait if he wanted to. He just chose his own way.
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