Mike Johnston wrote:
> Personally I'm extremely surprised by my own reaction to trying digital.
Yes, you seem like a kid let loose in a candy store with a gold card
<g>
> What has caught me completely by surprise is that I find I love it. I love
> PICTURES--I love exploring the look of the world with a camera, the
> serendipitous, quasi-accidental manner in which good photographs occur (I
> almost can't go out to shoot without getting something good, but I never
> know beforehand what it will be); I love crafting the
> results--"post-processing" has always been very satisfying for me; I very
> much enjoy darkroom work--and I love looking at results. Where some people
> will reach for a book to read in bed before falling asleep, I often reach
> for a stack of prints to look through, study, and enjoy.
OK - so far there's no real difference between digital and
conventional photography here.
> So far I am extremely enthused about much of what I'm doing in digital. I
> like the look of the prints, I like the radical streamlining of my working
> process (so fast, so easy, so cheap in both money and time). But what I
> think I really love and have been MOST surprised by is the versatility of
> the camera.
What is it that you like about the look of the prints? Do you like
them more than a wet print? Are you printing in color or B&W? How
large are you making the prints? Have you compared a well-printed B&W
photo to a digitally made print, same size, same subject, same light?
> I have a decent-quality $650 3-mp p/s that's pretty limited--it simply has
> to be prefocused to be at all responsive, for instance. You have to achieve
> the "green dot" first or the camera is so slow as to be useless.
For those of us living in caves, what's the "green dot" and how does
that relate to making a photograph?
> But because
> of the extremely small size of the CCD and the extreme shortness of the
> lens, wonderful things become possible. First of all, depth of field is so
> great that at moderate apertures (I mean like f/2.8 or f/4) and ordinary
> camera-to-subject distances, pan-focus (i.e., everything in focus front to
> back) is the rule rather than the exception. d.o.f. at maximum aperture
> (f/1.8 on my camera) is amazing---
So, how do you get a more selective DOF? What if you want just a
small area in focus and lots of out of focus area in front of or
behind the subject? Can you set the focus between two subjects, where
there is essentially nothing to focus on? Can you control the
aperture yourself and see what's in focus, or does the camera decide
aperture and focus for you?
> MACRO work is laughably easy--the camera has a "macro mode" and the d.o.f.
> is so great that it allows virtually "macro snapshooting." Bokeh is superb.
> Panoramics, even of numerous frames, are now simple.
Here again I question the value of great DOF when shooting macros.
Not that it's never a good thing, but can you control it?
>
> It really seems like many 35mm cameras in one. It's a zoom lens, but it's a
> high-speed lens too (how many film cameras have f/1.8 zooms??). It's a GOOD
> macro lens. It's three film cans in one camera, switching automatically or
> manually between ISO 100, 200, and 400.
A good macro lens compared to what? How does it stack up against a
Pentax A*200/4.0 macro for example, or the A100/2.8? What sort of
working distance can you get between the lens and the subject? What's
the magnification ratio?
Three films in one sounds a little strange, in the "Jack of all trades
master of none" context. It's my understanding that there's a
noticeable drop in quality as one moves to the higher speeds. Have
you noticed that? What do you do if you want a slower/faster speed?
Does the camera have exposure compensation? Can you set it to over or
under expose depending on what you want to see in the final "print"?
Well, that's enough questions for now. Gotta get to work .... I may
continue with the rest of your post later.
--
Shel Belinkoff
mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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