I generally try to make all of my frames keepers. Sometimes in the heat of the moment, its easy to start snapping away with digital though. I've ended up with some great keepers out of off the cuff shots. I love seeing something and throwing the viewfinder up and knowing I have it. I only ever chimp to check exposure occasionally and set EV compensation as needed. Since I generally shoot manual or Av, I usually have a very good idea about what my shutter speeds are like. Its the number I look at constantly in the viewfinder. I used to keep the iso as close to base as possible, but lately I've decided that bumping the ISO and getting a shutter over 1/100s yields far, far more keepers with good results at 100%. Below 1/100 its far more of a gamble, even with decent technique. I will go down to 1/8s handheld with a fast lens, but I find 1/20 bumps the keepers up a great deal. With the k-5, I am no longer reluctant to use iso 1600 like I was with the k-7. It changes everything even in good light because a shot at iso 800 will look totally great and give you a fast shutter speed.
I also shoot film a bit and I certainly slow down and make sure everything is 100% right before I click the shutter. If its a killer shot I will take two shots for insurance. On digital I tend to click the shutter at least twice for nearly every shot. Sometimes three times or even a low burst if I am attempting something with a long shutter time hand held. I had many great shots that I had to toss 4-5 blurred ones before I got to a sharp one because I was shooting at 1/10s hand held. Digital doesn't cost anything. When I sort I just take the sharp keepers and toss the rest eventually. I find that given the choice, I prefer to use the DSLR vs the film camera. I mean I love the simplicity of film, don't get me wrong, but you can do so much more with digital (HDR, panos, etc) and you have INSTANT feedback. There's no reason you can't get the shot with digital if you know your equipment well and how it will meter and focus. I started shooting digital. I never really got into film when that's all there was. I never had the desire to figure out darkrooms. Too analog. Too messy. I was always a computer geek and digital cameras interested me. I guess the reason I have been shooting film is because I want to understand what that process was like for people. I agree with everything this article says. Film isn't fun in a lot of ways. Its just a fun toy medium for me, though medium format film is still pretty appealing to me. You can make amazing prints from MF scans. I would still use digital for anything critical. Film is not much different than digital at the picture taking stage. Just different latitude, different DR, better resistance to blown highlights. The approaches are mostly the same. The flipside is that shadows are pretty grainy on film where I can pull up shadows on my K-5 2-3 stops pretty easily without a great deal of noise, but then at the same time my k-5 blows bright skies that film would easily retain. Film is a dying artform and that's certainly also part of the appeal. Certain films have a feel that is pretty hard to reproduce digitally. Does slowing down and taking less pictures make your pictures better? I'd argue no, because you actually have less opportunities with film. Shots you might not have taken because you only have 10 exposures left might have been keepers in the end. On Wed, Apr 17, 2013 at 5:24 PM, Aahz Maruch <[email protected]> wrote: > On Wed, Apr 17, 2013, Larry Colen wrote: >> >> Thinking about the differences between film and digital and how film >> tends to give higher keeper ratios (albeit with lower technical >> standards), I came up with an idea for a device that would not only >> help improve the keeper ratio of digital photos, but would emulate >> a critical aspect of the film experience. A small shredder, or >> incinerator, that attaches to your camera. Every time you want to >> press the shutter, you feed it a dollar bill. >> >> That would certainly get people to think carefully about each shot >> that they take. >> >> Actually, a variation on that might be a good exercise in a photo >> class. Tell the students that every frame they shoot will cost them a >> quarter, the money collected at the end of the day could be donated to >> charity, or pizza and beer for the critque session. > > Maybe it's because I started with film, but I still think that way a lot. > And it's even still true to some extent because processing images takes > time. > -- > Hugs and backrubs -- I break Rule 6 http://rule6.info/ > <*> <*> <*> > Help a hearing-impaired person: http://rule6.info/hearing.html > > -- > PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List > [email protected] > http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net > to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow > the directions. -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
