On May 18, 2005, at 10:49 AM, Ann Sanfedele wrote:
I don't know a lot about Windows. Is it impossible to simply upgrade to
Windows XP?
In a word, yes... in my circumstance
Well, what can I say? Perhaps it's time to consider a new system ... ? I dunno.
My advice: - Bolster your memory by keeping a notebook.
I WILL kill you :) Geez. I NEVER would have thought of that!
LOL ... all meant in the best intent. :-)
- Stop thinking of it as "the digital stuff" and think of it simply as photography.
It isn't, though...
going from shooting manual when all you have to think about is f stops and aperatures on the tech side is a huge leap.
It's a change of paradigm. With a film camera, we think about f/stops and apertures, focus distances, etc, based on a priori knowledge of how particular films respond. If you don't do your own slide/negative processing and printing, you have studied the responses of processing machines in conjunction with film behavior to arrive at the f/stops and shutter speed combinations that work, and know what to expect from them.
With a digital camera like the *ist DS or Canon Pro-1, you have a sensor which sees light differently from a piece of light sensitive film and therefore responds differently. If you want to use the in-camera rendering to JPEG images, you have to learn how to set the camera for the combination of that sensor response AND scene dynamics to get the best it can do. It's like learning what you know about a particular slide film and the processing afforded for it, but you can manipulate the settings on a frame by frame basis rather than having to accept the same settings for 36 exposures in a row, consequently you end up changing the sensitivity, the saturation, the contrast, etc more frequently rather than just compromising with what the film is going to act like.
If you want to use RAW format, working the camera becomes much simpler ... NONE of the image processing settings you make do anything other than setting up some data that the post-processing software can use as a default. The only important settings are the sensitivity, aperture and shutter speed, just like with film. You need to learn the sensor's exposure response, that's all, and focus of course.
This puts you squarely into the analog of a negative to print process. What comes out of the camera is not a finished product, you now have to use software to render, to interpret it. The difference is that you are doing it on a computer screen where you can see exactly what every change is doing rather than doing it through a sequence of chemical transformations that you can only see after you've completed them (or through a processing/printing machine that you've learned already). Yes, this takes some time to get started up, learn the basics and develop technique, no denying it. It also costs money to get started ... the right computing engine, the right software, printer, etc. ... but these costs are analogous to what you'd need if you were setting up your darkroom lab. Once you're set up and you have a working system, there's never any real reason to change it unless you want to take advantage of new things that come along.
Ok now tell me how old you are :) I don't have the memory I did when I was in my 20's - I'm pushing 70 - I spend half my day trying to recall things and staring at something and not seeing it. Its pretty depressing.
There has been a huge super fast leap from film stuff to digi stuff in a very small period of time.
I'm 51 this summer and have been doing photography since I was 8. A youngster, I know. ;-)
For me, the leap has not been super fast. I've been involved with digital imaging professionally from way back in 1984. I held off buying a digital camera for my own photography for many years, although I had access to several for periods of time starting in the late 1980s. I went the negative->scan image->image processing route from 1994 onwards, shut down my darkroom printing work for the last time in 1996, and stopped doing film based photography as recently as mid-2002. The last film cameras I used frequently were 100% manual beasties: Leica M, Hasselblad 903SWC, Zeiss Ikon Super Ikonta A & B, Rollei 35, and Minox subminiatures.
The frustration I feel is not about "photography" it's about electronics and
mechanics and math, not being able to see the controls on the camera
because someone things its nice tohave every thing in black...etc...
Don't worry ... you don't really have to know electronics and mechanics and math, you simply have to learn to see the digital sensor as a kind of film which responds differently. Right now the technology is in a phase where everyone feels they have to know all the details, just like photographers at the turn of the last century felt they had to know all the specifics of the chemistry and such, but it will pass. (I would promote the book I'm writing a proposal for if I had a title yet, but I suspect you'd be a prime candidate for the audience I'd like to address. :-)
The design of stupid controls which are not understandable ... well, that we all have to live with.
But there is much I already love about the camera - I jsut can't stand how much I have to learn to get to the point where it is second nature.
Again, think of it as photography, not "that digital stuff" and just play with it a lot. Get your computer and software sorted out to be useful. It will come to you. :-)
Godfrey
