The Cellar - View Single Post - Photography

Kitsune · 10-13-2004, 09:20 AM

My breaking point for going digital was a beautiful, cold morning along the East coast of Florida. A glow on the horizon, and space shuttle Columbia had lifted off on her second to last mission. I shot through a full roll of 36 exposures with my little X700 and was so anxious to get the images back. When I did -- half of the images had been destroyed because the developer had fed the negatives into the print machine with the emulsion on the wrong side, resulting in a massive scratch straight down the middle of the film. I can't even begin to tell you how furious I was and getting back my $.75/print wasn't going to get my pictures back.

What I miss about film: the ability to shoot true black and white, the ability to develop my own film (which is incredible amounts of fun when you don't fuck it up!), the ability to shoot infrared, and the feel of it. I also found myself taking a little more time on composition because I knew it counted.

Whats good about digital: I go out shooting a lot more often because I'm not so worried about the cost, I tend to get a lot more keepers because you're free to adjust settings and bracket a lot more on a single shot, and any hot/warm/dead pixels you might get on a CCD are much better than the dust, hair, and scratches you get on returned prints from film.

What I think sucks about digital: I'm afraid to change lenses because I *hate* cleaning the CCD and popping the lens off invites all manner of crud to invade. Even when you don't change lenses, it still happens. Over-exposing any bright areas can result in complete loss of detail that can't be regained -- you learn to underexpose if you question it. That little LCD screen on the back that shows you the picture you took? Never, ever trust it -- it lies! The price of equipment, and not just the camera because getting a flash that works with a digital set is a killer because you can't use a normal TTL. CCD size makes composition difficult if you intend to make prints -- the aspect ratio on all but the extremely expensive models isn't true 35mm, so you have to leave a lot more room for cropping to get it ready to print. (Another note: a 50mm lens equals about 70mm on most digital CCDs! I made a costly mistake, here.)

10-13-2004, 09:20 AM	#11
Kitsune still eats dirt Join Date: Sep 2003 Location: Tampa, FL Posts: 3,031	My breaking point for going digital was a beautiful, cold morning along the East coast of Florida. A glow on the horizon, and space shuttle Columbia had lifted off on her second to last mission. I shot through a full roll of 36 exposures with my little X700 and was so anxious to get the images back. When I did -- half of the images had been destroyed because the developer had fed the negatives into the print machine with the emulsion on the wrong side, resulting in a massive scratch straight down the middle of the film. I can't even begin to tell you how furious I was and getting back my $.75/print wasn't going to get my pictures back. What I miss about film: the ability to shoot true black and white, the ability to develop my own film (which is incredible amounts of fun when you don't fuck it up!), the ability to shoot infrared, and the feel of it. I also found myself taking a little more time on composition because I knew it counted. Whats good about digital: I go out shooting a lot more often because I'm not so worried about the cost, I tend to get a lot more keepers because you're free to adjust settings and bracket a lot more on a single shot, and any hot/warm/dead pixels you might get on a CCD are much better than the dust, hair, and scratches you get on returned prints from film. What I think sucks about digital: I'm afraid to change lenses because I hate cleaning the CCD and popping the lens off invites all manner of crud to invade. Even when you don't change lenses, it still happens. Over-exposing any bright areas can result in complete loss of detail that can't be regained -- you learn to underexpose if you question it. That little LCD screen on the back that shows you the picture you took? Never, ever trust it -- it lies! The price of equipment, and not just the camera because getting a flash that works with a digital set is a killer because you can't use a normal TTL. CCD size makes composition difficult if you intend to make prints -- the aspect ratio on all but the extremely expensive models isn't true 35mm, so you have to leave a lot more room for cropping to get it ready to print. (Another note: a 50mm lens equals about 70mm on most digital CCDs! I made a costly mistake, here.) Last edited by Kitsune; 10-13-2004 at 09:24 AM.