Never thought this day would come... a dslr at last

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Riverman

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Photography has been my hobby, nay my life's true passion, since the late 1990s. For the first 9 years all I shot was a Minolta X700 with a 28mm and 50mm lenses. I still keep a Minolta film system (alongside my main Nikon film slr gear). I'm convinced that some of the Minolta Rokkor lenses are amongst the best SLR lenses from any manufacturer ever.

In 2007 I started to shoot medium format on a Mamiya 6. A tremendous camera. Since starting to shoot large format regularly in 2009 however, my Mamiya sees hardly any use at all. Also, I'm just not a huge fan of rangefinders to be honest.

So these days, I am mostly shooting 35mm and large format film. Today, after a few years of umming and aahing I finally broke down and purchased a Nikon DSLR. I have gone for the D700. It seemed the obvious choice as I have a number of manual and autofocus F mount lenses that I can use with it.

For years I swore I would never 'go digital'. I'm one of those people who bemoans the apparent decline of film - particularly in colour. However, I can't deny the convenience of digital, particularly for low light shooting.

So at last, I have entered the digital era. I will still be shooting 35mm B&W and large format but I expect that for much of my shooting, the DSLR will become my workhorse.
 
Yes - I know the feeling, exactly, as a hold out. You have a great camera. Don't feel badly. Film was (and is) a very viable option and I had - as you did, a strong allegiance to this medium... still do. Up until a few years ago, 35mm film performed better in low light, had greater resolution, better dynamic range. There were few reasonably-priced primes around if you prefered to shoot with primes... Digital cameras were very expensive, and like the early PC's - the PC you bought last year became obsolete this year. But the technology kept improving with each release cycle, the prices (at least in the DSLR realm) kept dropping, companies like Nikon started coming out with some nice affordable primes... and. Well, I may be a luddite but I'm no foo'. You will not be disappointed in the IQ. You just won't be. You will be amazed at their ability to take pictures in low light without a flash... etc. Shoot to your heart's content, no film to buy - which gets to be pricey... And I don't bother with inkjets, I use one of the online services for prints... Winkflash, specifically. No scanning... etc.

I understand exactly where you're coming from. I still shoot film, love film, love the film cameras I have... The major advantage to me is I get "full frame in my pocket" with my little XA... And my fixed lens rangefinder I simply love to shoot it.

Good luck, enjoy... congrats on your purchase.
 
Although this is a big step for me, I don't feel as if I'm completely turning my back on film. Afterall I'll continue to shoot black and white 35mm. In large format I'll be shooting color and B&W.

I must say that I am looking forward to not having to scan as much as I have been. A lot of my day to day shooting is not particularly 'special' or sentimental to me and for this day to day stuff, I really loath having to sit at the scanner in order to put it online. I work long hours and time is precious to me. Time spent shooting is better than time spent scanning.

I rarely print my small format stuff anyway - most of it just ends up on flickr. It's only really my large format work where I focus on printing. That said, I am curious to see how an ISO 400 8x10 print from the D700 stacks up next to an 8x10 RA4 wet print from a roll of Portra 400.

I now have to figure out if I can be bothered with RAW. I understand the benefits of RAW but I'm not sure I can be bothered with it to be honest and I'm hopiong that the D700 will deliver decent jpegs too.

Finally, the D700 was quite a big cash outlay and soon I'll be saying goodbye to two of the three film 'sixes' that I have in a bid to raise funds. My M6 TTL and my Mamiya 6 will be hitting the classifieds soon. The Nikon F6 I'll be keeping though.
 
Don't be put off by RAW. The only downside in my opinion to using it are that you need more disk space for the files, but in this age of terabyte drives, that's no biggie. The huge upside is that you have MUCH more wiggle room to manipulate the image. Using RAW files, I find I can push or pull exposure a couple of stops, for example. When working with jpegs, there's less than a stop of adjustment room before you notice that the image is getting blocked up and ugly. Try it out... you'll love it, especially with the files that amazing D700 can produce.
 
I think you have picked a good camera but then I am biased. The D700 can do very nice ooc jpegs but the NEF files allow for far more flexibility and besides CF cards are cheap now. I also popped for Nikon Capture NX2 to pp the NEF files. I like it better than working in PSE 10. Just a personal preference. I am sure you will enjoy using it.

Bob
 
Reminds me of when I got my first serious digital camera, a D70.

Definitely shoot RAW. The extra bits help a lot when you want to work on the image. If you have any concerns, choose RAW+JPG for a while.
 
Learn to process RAW. Because if you don't, you will be throwing away a significant portion of the quality that your camera can deliver. I recommend an integrated processing platform like Lightroom 3 because you need to solve as elegantly as possible the basic challenges posed by digital files: organize, process, output.

Jpg is perfectly fine for quick stuff. But you clearly have refined expectations which will best be met by taking much more control over your RAW file, the equivalent of a digital negative.

Enjoy your new camera!
 
Disagree on the RAW advice, personally, except perhaps for very low light or you enjoy futzing. But let's not quibble.
 
I've wandered in and out on raw on my D300, and am mostly out. On previous cameras it gave a real bump in detail, but not on this one, and I don't need exposure "correction", since I try to shoot things right in the first place . . . . and can see it right away and correct on the spot. . . . so there's never much to adjust. I think it really depends on what you're shooting, and what you do with it.
 
I'm still a hold-out. No value judgements on anyone else, just a personal preference for now.
 
Well - digital is definitely instant gratification! I just stepped down to the river bank as the tide is low. Set up the tripod for this shot. I figured out how to open RAW in my fairly ancient version of Photoshop. Not quite sure what all the variables are for RAW editing though I added about 1/3rd stop to this then played around with the curve in PS. Lens was Voigtlander SLII 20mm. I think I'm going to have fun with this D700.
 
NickTrop said:
Disagree on the RAW advice, personally, except perhaps for very low light or you enjoy futzing. But let's not quibble.
Click to expand...

Quite right not to quibble. Actually I shoot much more in jpg format - high volume sports - where I have the in-camera jpg processing dialed in and can turn around hundreds of files in minimal time. For me it's a matter of matching the file and processing with requirements, that's all.

@Riverman: Nice first go with your new camera!
 
Congratulations! I hope you enjoy the Nikon.

For me, the only thing worse than scanning is to sit down and face the job of editing (I mean weeding out the rubbish) after a session making photos with the dSLR. The freedom to shoot hundreds of frames, freely, can be a pain in the arse.
 
Riverman said:
...
I'm one of those people who bemoans the apparent decline of film - particularly in colour.
...
Click to expand...

That's funny. For me, color work was always a terrible pain in the butt with film. I don't shoot color film at all any more, other than to do B&W rendering after scanning.

The "apparent decline of film" isn't just apparent .. It's history. Film as the volume photographic medium of choice is gone. The good news is that Photography continues on, as good Photography transcends equipment and even media.



​
 
I hung onto film for quite a while too. Not in my case because I had any fundamental objection to digital but more because in the early days digital just did not represent value for money. Then I bought my first digital SLR - a Nikon D70s. The rest as they say is history. I still have that camera as back up but have moved on to more advanced cameras. And I can say that now I am a true convert. Shooting digital has taught me so much. Not so much instant gratification as you say (although there is an element of that) but more instant feedback - and that means the ability to learn. I would say that the last 5 or 6 years shooting digital has taught me more than I learned for 20 or more years shooting film before that. In particular I love post processing and believe that evey good digital image that has potential, needs PP to bring out its best. I have taught myself how to use Photoshop reasonably well (selections, layers and all) and now get as much fun out of turning a ho-hum so-so image into something good, as I got making the image in the field. If you open your mind to the potential offered by digital you will probably find it renews your passion for photography. I did for me.

Oh one other thing. Some old habits die hard. I still find that before I take an image I find myself asking "Is it really necessary to take this shot - how can I make the best of it." I certainly take more photos with digital than I ever did with film, but by no means do I spray and pray as some do who have only ever shot digital. I am convinced that this ingrained training from years of shooting film makes me a better photographer as it forces me to stop and think about the image I am about to make. Shooting film was by no means a bad thing.
 
Now that you have a DSLR, I'll letchya in on a little secret... Those cheap compact superzooms that you can slip in your pocket ain't s' bad either.
 
There are three reasons not to record raw data.

1. You perfectly expose every photo and never push your camera's dynamic range limits. In this case the additional information in the raw data is redundant.

2. You really don't want to spend the money it takes to buy and update proper raw rendering software.

3. Your employer specifies you must shoot in jpeg. One case would be freelance sports gigs where the boss prints on site.

Otherwise you are discarding useful information away forever.
 
I shoot RAW because I do not live in a perfect world. Indoor basketball under fluorescent lights is tough. Color temperature varies, as does exposure, from shot to shot. Manual exposure helps, but it ain't easy.
 
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