I was reluctant to join the digital community, but did a few years ago. Then played with PhotoShop and it's a new world. Previously, I was lucky to get 1 usuable pic from a roll of 24. Now, after mild PS tweaks, I get 2, a 100% improvement! Of course I save a ton on film, too. I used to bracket and burn through $$ on every outing. Related, most videocams on the market today will be obsolete within 18-24 months as non-linear storage matures, HD trickles down and the price drops. You can get a decent HD tape-based videocam for well under $1K now, a 50% price drop in one year. I sold all of my standard def kit last week and am migrating to HD now.
My 35mm SLR developed a light leak in the body. That was a few years ago. We switched to digital. I'm hoping that, this year, we can get an SLR digital, now that I have more time for photography.
I couldn't let go of the SLR format when the Elan quit working. I would never buy nore recomend the Rebel to anyone, just too light fragile feeling. The Rebel Digital on the other hand gave me the same feel as the Elan AND all the lenses were interchangable. New body, same ole lenses, except the SIgma 18-24. It was like an old friend was back in my hands. The first pic is from the Elan 35min exp, Joshua Tree National Park, looks really good blown up to 16x20. The second is from the Digital 30min exp, Dingle Irelend. The Elan pic was scanned in using the negative and the Digital of course was loaded straight from the camera. There's no way I could blow up the Digital pic to 16x20 and be happy with it.
I think it's at about 8 Mp that digital gets about to the same resolution capability as most 35mm film types. With 12Mp hitting the point-n-shoot market, I'd say that in some small regard we've arrived. But CCDs still have a bear of a problem with dynamic range, and you've gotta be really careful about levels in your subject matter right when you shoot, or no amount of photoshop-fu is going to save it. Which is why I can't quite understand why anyone wants a physical optical viewfinder anymore, because you get so much more *information* on the screen if you turn on the detailed display modes! Watch your histogram as you line up a shot, and you'll come away with all the information you need. I usually shoot down one or two thirds EV just to make sure I'm not blooming too many highlights to white, and it's done pretty well for me so far. . I still think it's sort of ironic that I go off and capture a 4000x3000 original and knock it down to 1024x768 for my web pages, and people still think it's "so beautifully detailed". But the original would take you ten minutes to wander around inside of in the usual browser, so there's gotta be a compromise somewhere. What sort of irks me besides the dynamic range problem is the noise at anything over like 100 ISO equivalent, which makes P&S-grade digital sort of suck for capturing anything in a moving, dynamic enviroment ... like dancing or sports. But so far I've avoided going to cameras I can't slip into a jacket pocket and carry around. . Unfortunately the mass-market in digital buyers exhibits the strong tendency to just put it on "green camera icon" full auto mode, and what they produce suffers as a result. Staying in full manual gives one an appreciation not only for the capabilities of digital, but also its limitations and hopefully how to best work around them. . One of these days I'll get more into the whole printing side of things, but I've stayed mercifully away from worrying about that so far since most of my work-product winds up on the net as webpages so far. At that point I'll wonder if 24 bits is enough. . _H*
Some excellent points Hobbit, particularly as regards dynamic range. However it is, again, only the print films (not slide film) that offers greater dynamic range than digital, and then only some of them. Further, when you shoot in a raw format you can use the software to extend the dynamic range capability to close to that of print film. Better yet, in situations where you know the light in an image to be outside of the dynamic range (bright backlit sky with a shady foreground being the classic) of any film or digital one simply needs to take 2 or 3 shots exposing for each area of the image then merge them in layers. This is something nearly impossible with print film and you'd have to use graduated density filters to try to adapt the image. I know Galen Rowell used to use a full 5 stop ND grad filter for those situations. I haven't used my ND grads since starting with digital. I tend to use the eye viewfinder almost exclusively with my digital photography. But these are optical veiwfinders with nearly 100% coverage...much more preferable for any kind of action shooting and for compositional purposes. But I do try to check histograms of tricky shots to be sure I'm keeping within the desired dynamic range..and excellent tool that would have saved me many dozens of wasted shots with film where I 'thought' the shot was OK only to find my exposures were wrong a week later when I got the film back.
I haven't meant to sound like I don't like my digital, quite contrary, I love it and wouldn't trade it, except for maybe...... naw wouldn't trade it, I'd just upgrade and keep it. There's no way I could give up the instant viewing capability of the digital camera. I can't tell you how many I've deleted, which is money in the back that would've been lost on film. There's also that instant gratification. You took it, it looks great, woohoo. But then there's that intangible wait with film. You took it, but now you have to wait, now there's suspense, drama, did I really get it or will it be lost to my memory forever? Then you see it, the perfect shot in the mist of 34 ruined photos and it makes you forget about the money you just spent on 1 picture, until you have to buy a new roll of film LOL. I think my next camera will be whatever 10+MP Canon EOS they come up with for under $1K, when I get sick of this one.
