Shooting with digital

[wlewisiii]

I predominantly shoot landscapes.

At first my use of digital with a M4/3 E-PL1 or my Nikon D7100 was almost the same as with film.

With buying my M 240, however, and the lock downs of Covid, I would go for long drives and take lots more photos than before. As mentioned above, I'd not worry about bracketing because I could trust the exposure, but I'd change the angle or perhaps swap the lens or use the 2-foot zoom. The only cost I have to worry about is if the SD card eats itself which has happened too many times for my tastes! 🙂

 

[Tim Murphy]

The mental gymnastics of trying to remember if I took the SD card out of the computer and put it in the camera last time I down loaded pictures and remembering to charge the battery before going out shooting, assuming of course I've remembered to put the battery IN the camera, are more than challenging enough for me these days.

Dear AOA,

I went fishing today and at least remembered to come back in the house and get the SD card out of the computer for my digital bridge camera. I didn't use it though because there were no interesting birds or wildlife along the stream today. I didn't even use my waterproof digital fishing camera because by the time I caught any fish it had warmed up enough so that I left it in the truck in my fishing jacket pocket.

I did take 2 film pictures of the stream because as I was leaving that camera was sitting on the passenger seat of the truck.

Organization is key, unfortunately, disorganization is my motto! 😉

Regards,

Tim Murphy

Harrisburg PA 🙂

 

[Dogman]

Concerning forgetting the SD card, maybe that's why cameras with two card slots are so popular. As long as you use two cards, of course.

 

[JohnWolf]

I've just switched from mostly film to fully digital. I bought an M10 and am about to list my M6.

Sometimes I'm as deliberate with digital as I was with film, but I also like the ability to shoot freely, even wildly, without regard to cost or processing time. I think caution and deliberateness can be the enemy of creativity, especially in some genres of photography.

I enjoy watching Winogrand shoot so freely, something I've always done with my GR cameras. It's like a "no mind" state that today's film cost make hard to reach. I hope to try that with the M10.

John

 

[Deleted member 82967]

The only downside to digital in my mind is that the process is almost entirely automated. Sometimes I want to actually have to work to get a picture and film allows me to do that, I just don't use it for anything but scenic and static subjects.

Touched a nerve there, Tim.

That's why I like to shoot my Sigma SD9 which outputs raw only, no easy-peasy JPEG option!

AF is poor and the metering isn't that hot either. So I shoot in Manual everything.

And always at 100 ISO because shooting above that is a waste of time on that Foveon-based camera unless you happen to like magenta/green blotching.

 

[Tim Murphy]

Dear xparUSA,

I shoot RAW + JPEG all the time for the simple reason that I can immediately email or share a JPEG file. But with the post processing software available today working with RAW files is exponentially easier to do. I kind of enjoy doing it to be honest and can almost always greatly improve the look of the camera's JPEG version. The ones I cannot improve get deleted.

Regards,

Tim Murphy

Harrisburg PA 🙂

 

[willie_901]

I end up taking far more shots. Not bracketing, but more for the comfort of getting a good one. Often with different angles and zooms.

When I shoot with the phone, I always take several shots to be sure!

Good point. I remember a very old article describing a National Geographic photo shoot using a film SLR. The photographer used an incredible amount of film because National Geographic was footing the bill. The first priority wasn’t keeping cost under control, it was coming home with enough photographs to insure the National Geographic photo editors had many images to choose from.

 

[owlie]

I'm wondering if film photos look better with natural light and digital photos look better with Flash.

 

[wlewisiii]

I'm wondering if film photos look better with natural light and digital photos look better with Flash.

Not in my experience. If anything, the opposite is true more often. But really flash is almost always the ugliest form of light and needs to be avoided by every means possible. If you have to use it, so be it, but it's never a good thing.

 

[AlwaysOnAuto]

Concerning forgetting the SD card, maybe that's why cameras with two card slots are so popular. As long as you use two cards, of course.

I was once 'saved' by the fact that my camera has two slots. I'd forgotten the one for slot #1 but was able to continue shooting after switching the card from slot #2 into slot #1. I've invested heavily in cards for my 2 slot cameras just for this reason.

 

[AlwaysOnAuto]

Not in my experience. If anything, the opposite is true more often. But really flash is almost always the ugliest form of light and needs to be avoided by every means possible. If you have to use it, so be it, but it's never a good thing.

I was always impressed with my Nikon D80 when it would call for a 'fill flash' when shooting in questionable light. Really nice exposures every time.
Almost makes me wish I had a flash for my Sony's now.

 

[pvdhaar]

What digital has changed for me is that I've noticed that the joy of photography has slowly eroded away. Can't really say why, maybe it's because it tempts to shoot without deliberate consideration, maybe because it's turned into picture making instead of photography. I've started taking only the analog stuff with me since January, and that sense of excitement that I had when I got my very first roll of film developed and printed over 40 years ago has come back. I'll probably pick up the digitals again after a while, but for now I'll leave them at home.

 

[Ko.Fe.]

Not in my experience. If anything, the opposite is true more often. But really flash is almost always the ugliest form of light and needs to be avoided by every means possible. If you have to use it, so be it, but it's never a good thing.

Maybe if you are using it under primitive way a.k.a. manual flash.

But if you know how to balance it with incident light, which is no problem to learn with working TTL and digital, flash is better than too high ISO.

 

[AlwaysOnAuto]

What digital has changed for me is that I've noticed that the joy of photography has slowly eroded away. Can't really say why, maybe it's because it tempts to shoot without deliberate consideration, maybe because it's turned into picture making instead of photography. I've started taking only the analog stuff with me since January, and that sense of excitement that I had when I got my very first roll of film developed and printed over 40 years ago has come back. I'll probably pick up the digitals again after a while, but for now I'll leave them at home.

Funny you should say this. For me, digital really got me going with photography. I'd always had a hankering to do it but couldn't afford it. When I was finally able to convince my wife a digital camera would be a good way to record our family's growth with two active kids, she relented. I can remember researching cameras to find one that was capable of doing everything my Nikon FE could do. Finally settled on a CoolPix 995, which at the time was @$800. This took some more convincing on my part as that was a large chunk of the budget for us at the time. Once I learned the in's 'n outs of how to post photos on my favorite site at the time, my photography really took off. Not saying I'm a good photographer, but I am having a lot of fun with the digital cameras I have now.

 

[dmr]

I'm wondering if film photos look better with natural light and digital photos look better with Flash.

I say it doesn't matter, really. Flash will help with some film shots and with some available/natural light shots.