Narrowly escaped another digital encounter

[sf]

This is not an anti-digital rant. This is really just a humorous but totally real experience. It actually has no substance whatsoever, but I just felt like writing.

I just escaped from Ken Rockwell's review of the Nikon D200 with my character intact. Looks like a nice camera - like the one I will probably end up buying if I slip back into shooting film production documentaries and all that. Or other commercial type work.

You know what they say about hell - as per the movie "What Dreams May Come",. . . don't spend too long there or you'll forget it isn't real. You can walk in and look around, maybe try and save your loved ones from eternal damnation, but a moment too long and you're lost and you never feel yourself slip away.

Unless part of you is beyond the reach of what would seek to steal your sense of reality - the part of us that ignites GAS and drives us to spend hours wrestling with chemicals and loading film and working in blazing hot bathrooms under red lights for immeasurable quantities of time. Immeasurable becasue time dissapears under red lights and in the stink of photographic chemicals.

I spent nearly too long reading about the D200's speed, image quality and durability. . . the veil fell over my mind and I began feeling like maybe digital wasn't so bad after all. Then I started thinking of the D200 as a reasonable replacement for a real camera. That moment, I woke out of the trance and closed the window instantly. Some part of me was still sharp and alive, thinking of the Bronica. It kept a little pocket of light deep inside.

This sort of experience also reminds me of "The Ring" in Tolkein's books. Strangely similar in some ways.

Not that digital is bad or anything. I actually quite like how efficient it is - but it clashes with my spirit.

The End

 

[kvanderlaag]

I'm picking one up in a month or two.

It and the M2 can be best friends in my bag.

 

[sf]

I'm picking one up in a month or two.

It and the M2 can be best friends in my bag.

what a cute pair they'll be. My Bronica would probably get in a fight with the D200. I'd have to keep a piece of padding between them.

 

[clarence]

If you need digital for the kind of work you're aiming to do, then go for it by all means. Those superlative technical specifications are there for a reason. There is a real demand, and a real need for that level of technology in certain fields of photography.

How about descending into 'hell' and seeing whether you like it or not? You can always keep the 35mm camera for the weekends.

Clarence

 

[pvdhaar]

what a cute pair they'll be. My Bronica would probably get in a fight with the D200. I'd have to keep a piece of padding between them.

George, wasn't your credit card maxed out a short while ago? 🙂

 

[sf]

If you need digital for the kind of work you're aiming to do, then go for it by all means. Those superlative technical specifications are there for a reason. There is a real demand, and a real need for that level of technology in certain fields of photography.

How about descending into 'hell' and seeing whether you like it or not? You can always keep the 35mm camera for the weekends.

Clarence

Oh, I'll probably buy the D200 to use it for some things - if the need arises, but I'm not excited about it, and I have no measure of GAS for it.

If I move back to LA - which is about 95% likely at this point - I'll buy one because there's alot of film work down there for still photographers - if you know people. But, I've got to pay for my other gear first. . . . and I'd rather NOT work in the industry than have to sell my good gear to buy a digicam.

 

[sf]

George, wasn't your credit card maxed out a short while ago? 🙂

it still is. Now i have a job, though, so there is light at the end of this tunnel.

 

[wdenies]

Sometimes I have also some of those dreams:

A full sized one shot 4x5 digital back

But I wake up in time

Wim

 

[Ash]

Digital is efficient, but i've never seen a digital print I didnt find boring in comparison to one taken on film.

Maybe I'm drawn to the grain :/

 

[Benjamin Marks]

Tools is tools

Ben

 

[anandi]

I've been using a D200 for 3 months on and off (borrowed from my CEO at work) and I'm lucky enough to do the occaisional photoshoot as part of my work. I brought it along with my F3, a couple of new Nikon digital auto-everything lenses and 4 old AIS lenses (mostly picked up from fellow RFFers incidentally). The D200 is a nice camera, but all of the technical settings are distracting in the context of a photoshoot for me. I had to juggle ISO, expsoure compensation, and when using the manual focus lenses, aperature settings. More than once I forgot to reset the ISO or expsoure compensation to the right settings for the next series of shots.

Strangely enough I much more enjoyed shooting with the F3 with just focusing and aperature setting to contend with. It let me concentrate more on the subjects (a static airplane and a lot of takeoffs and landing on the airfield behind me). There's no doubt that the D200 is a nice bit of gear - but one of the best things about is that it's backwards compatible with the AI/AIS lenses.

If it was 'only' full-frame I think it would be the DSLR that you could live with for a decade or more. I still prefer the heft and simplicity of the F3 and FM2n that I have for now - in fact I picked those up to ward off my own DSLR cravings and so far I'm pretty content provided I can borrow the D200 when I absolutely need it.

-Amit

 

[Socke]

The feeled complexity of a dSLR puzzles me every time I read about it. It's not so different to slide film IMHO.

I see whitebalance, ISO and the colour and contrast settings as film choice.

With slide film you would have to use warming or cooling filters to adjust to different light sources, or you would use a ND filter to get to a slower f-stop/shutterspeed pair with fast film in bright light.

Ok, you can allways change your film mid roll to adapt to different lighting or carry multiple bodies for different films, but changing the camera settings is more convenient 🙂

In Madrid I had two bodies usualy with ISO100 slide and ISO100 B/W and I ran in situations where I got a 2/3 exposed roll out of one camera to load it with something different.

 

[Bertram2]

Not that digital is bad or anything. I actually quite like how efficient it is - but it clashes with my spirit.
The End

Well said. And efficiency is the last thing I need in my non-professional photography.
And, translated to "convenience" in the amateur world , I don't need that either.
It's btw not so convenient as often assumed. For me only counts how my results look , that is solely the decisive point. As an amateur I can afford this .

bertram

 

[harmsr]

I have a D200, M5, and MP.

The D200 really is a great camera. The files it delivers really do have more detail and are sharper than film scanned on my Nikon 5000 ED scanner. All this talk about too many menu settings is really just that, talk. (changing ISO setting is just like changing roll of film , shoot in raw and leave WB in auto - it really does a very good job and you can adjust it later without degradation in quality, shoot the camera in manual and you have complete control like any other camera, exposure compensation is virtually not needed on this camera if you choose the right mode of metering - "just like on a film camera", you can ignore all the rest and make any adjustments IF NEEDED in post processing) Files from digital RAW can be flat, unsharp, or eye-popping just as film depending on lens used and the convertor used. Nikon Capture conversions are more to my tastes than Adobe Camera Raw, but the program is very slow. Capture One seems to do the best of everything "out of the box" with its D200 profile. The post processing, if you use a good convertor like C1 is very minor normally and is really no different than tweeks someone would do when you develop film.

Now for my dilema. I think the digital workflow is faster and I prefer it to the development and scanning of negatives. However, I like using an RF much more than an SLR for the majority of shooting I do. I also HATE the huge size of the DLSR and the monster lenses.

My shots normally are better from the M system than the DLSR (maybe because of my enjoyment level), but the files are better from the DSLR than the M scans. All these comments relative to file quality are really only relevant at very large viewing size - in any 8x10 (largest print size that I do at home) their is no discernable difference.

Personally, I'm waiting for the best of both worlds. I want the M in its digital configuration to come.

Just my $.02 . Best,

Ray

 

[Socke]

Now for my dilema. I think the digital workflow is faster and I prefer it to the development and scanning of negatives. However, I like using an RF much more than an SLR for the majority of shooting I do. I also HATE the huge size of the DLSR and the monster lenses.

Sounds familiar, although with me it's Canon and Contax 🙂

 

[stet]

Sounds familiar, although with me it's Canon and Contax 🙂

Me three. D200 vs. Canon and Rapid Omega.

 

[ywenz]

Digital is awsome. I took my 20D + wide angle L lens to a bar last weekend for my friend's engagement party. Rock solid AF + variable ISO + ETTL bounce flash meant I was able to basically point & shoot in fully manual mode with about 90% success rate. Try that with a film RF!

I processed and uploaded 30 photos the very next day. Try that with film!

 

[furcafe]

Digital is fun & efficient, but the "[r]ock solid AF" & "ETTL bounce flash" have nothing to do w/digital technology.

Digital is awsome. I took my 20D + wide angle L lens to a bar last weekend for my friend's engagement party. Rock solid AF + variable ISO + ETTL bounce flash meant I was able to basically point & shoot in fully manual mode with about 90% success rate. Try that with a film RF!

I processed and uploaded 30 photos the very next day. Try that with film!

 

[clarence]

I believe it was the variable ISO that Ywenz was referring to.

Clarence

 

[sf]

I processed and uploaded 30 photos the very next day. Try that with film!

Oh, I think I could manage it. Just go home, throw some rolls in the tanks, develop them in 20 minutes, toss them in the Multi Pro and do some quickie scans. . . 2 hours later, I've got 32 shots or so.

What I like about digital is that it allows very cost effective playing around. It's nice to see what you get when you shoot - for long exposures and things like that. It's nice to be able to switch ISOs on the fly, so as to preserve your ability to stick to a given aperture, or vice versa.

I once wrote a letter to the President of Leica USA describing an idea that I thought made sense - and would give Leica a strong edge on other makers of digital cameras - and a stronger hold of its current market : firmware that allows users to set "virtual films" instead of ISOs and white balance and all that. Just set "Portra 400NC" in the camera instead of setting a pile of other settings.

Much closer to the real thing - much more likely to grab a big market in the older crowd - and much more likely to create a whole new spinoff market for in-camera and on-computer firmware/post processing stuff. Like imaging hacks. And I think the pros would really appreciate this.

We had a couple emails back and forth, and he said he'd forward it to the President of Leica, Germany.

That was the last of our conversations.

So yeah. I think digital could be made much more attractive to our breed, but for some reason these companies have not figured a way to offer semi-custom firmware.