The 5th was taken with one of these...and yes, it is just as cheaply made as it looks:
Posted on 07/06/2012 5:39:13 PM PDT by SWAMPSNIPER
This small mountain of gear leads to two very frightening thoughts. Firstly, there’s no ending in sight; one keeps accumulating more and more equipment in order to keep pushing the edge of what’s possible both from a compositional and artistic standpoint, as well as from an image quality standpoint. You’ve either got to have a great day job and very deep pockets, or some good recurring clients.
The second thought is around obsolescence. In the film days, the camera body and lenses lasted a long time; you invested in glass, got a decent body – one that fulfilled your personal needs as a photographer – and then picked the right film for the job. In that sense, image quality differences between brands were down to the lenses and the photographer. This is to say that if you put the same film in every camera, the difference in sharpness or acuity or color or whatever would be down to the lens only. If you wanted more image quality, you went for a bigger format – and thus a larger sensor. The digital equivalent to this would be having only one photo site design of a fixed pixel pitch; say around 4.9 microns, which would get you 16MP at APS-C, 36MP at FX, about 60MP on 645, and something silly on large format. For an equivalent size print, the larger format would definitely outdo the smaller format by an amount proportional to the difference in resolution.
I not only buy, but eat green bananas.
I let then ripen internally.
Or you used a tripod. Or an advanced developer to produce finer grain.Or finer grain film.
Here’s the thing: sure, you’ll get more detail from a larger resolution camera. But, when you print a picture at say, 20 inches or greater, do you look at it from 10 inches away? Most often, pictures that are larger are viewed from longer distances, and the extra detail is lost anyway. If all you’re doing is making 4x6 prints, you don’t often need more than 3 megapixels. If you’re viewing the pictures on a computer, you don’t need much more than the best resolution most computers can handle. A 2560 x 1600 display is only 4.1 megapixels.
In the meantime, the tradeoff for having that huge sensor is a definite loss of sensitivity. There simply isn’t as much light to share among 20 million individual pixels as there is to share among 10 million. If you have to shoot in low light at a slower ISO, it doesn’t matter how many megapixels you have. Your picture will likely be blurry anyway due to the slow shutter speed required with low ISOs.
I’d LOVE to be able to find a point and shoot camera with manual controls (shutter priority, aperture priority and full manual) with a SMALLER sensor (maybe 5-6 megapixels) that had a much better ISO sensitivity than most point and shoot cameras have.
Got my Sony Mavica MVC FD90 1.6 MP Digital Camera used from a friend in 200 for 400 bucks. You can get em on e-bay for 30 now. This camera takes great pictures. I wish it was as fast as my Canon PowerShot, but do I really need anything bigger than 2 or 3 meg pictures?
Newer and fancier gadgets just means I have to upgrade all the periferals to use them. I cant afford a 60” computer screen to view a 32 meg picture and I have been following along quite nicely with all the photoshopped birth certificate and Reuters news photo threads.
What am I missing?
(Former Canon AE-1 and A-1 user. Digital did save my ass cause I was going broke buying film and developing.)
I used to load the plates for my daddy’s Speed Graphic before he would go out on a shoot. 100 of them in a huge leather valise probably weighed 70 pounds. Then I would assist him in the darkroom.
Got an enlarger for my 16th birthday!
Love the old stuff.
...better...
The 5th was taken with one of these...and yes, it is just as cheaply made as it looks:
I store all of my final images at 22" x 15" at 300 dpi I try to do landscapes a 100 ISO. I've done available light at 25,600 ISO and smoothed the noise. Viewing distance is 1.5 times the diagonal of the image.
in 16 bit Tiffs at 28 megapixels.
My DSLR, a Nikon D40, is only 6 MP. Nikkor lenses are SUPER sharp, and I never had a problem with clarity or detail...
I use a Dx40 mated to a 18-200,both Nikon as are a closet full of bodies and lens for film.
I used to carry a trunk full of gear, now just the Dx and the 200, good for just about everything.
I still have 6 rolls of Extar 25 in the freezer.
I still have (and love) my old Canon AE-1.
No point in ever selling it. I wouldn’t get out of it what I have in it, plus there’s too much sentimentality attached to it. It was my first camera with REAL electronics abd I shot a LOT of pictures with it.
My first SLR was an East German Praktica LTL. Loved that thing too, and shot with it semi-regularly up until a few years ago.
Thing is you wouldn’t want the 10 Year old DLSR. I used a leading edge one back then; it was good but BIG and EXPENSIVE. The state of the art was moving so fast that building something durable was a waste. The technology is only now slowing down in terms of quality improvement, price drop, and efficiency increase.
I’m more worried about the operating system of my computers wearing out by running day in day out!
I want a Sony Qualia 016. At the time was a top-end 1MP crammed into the size of a pack of gum. $3000 for the camera, lens kit, and case.
Size isn’t the problem for me that it seems to be for some people. I have a good range of lenses but seldom use anything shorter than 75-300. I’m not likely to ever be a street or nightclub photographer.
One advantage of high megapixel sensors for bird photos is that you can significantly crop an image and still have decent resolution in the crop for printing. I can crop a smaller section of an 18 megapixel image and print it than I could with my old 8 megapixel images. I've found that cropping the same small portion of an 8 megapixel image will sometimes fail pixelation limits for prints (i.e., a small crop of an 8 megapixel image will sometimes have too few pixels to print without pixelation).
I've cropped about 25% of an image from my Oly, had it printed at 20x30 and unless you were pixell peeping, all the digital grunge that was present got lost in the bokeh. It is a compact, but it has an f1.4 lens.
The Sigma is a DSLR, and with L-glass can produce some incredible images, but it is a cranky, crotchety beast that requires buckets of light, don't even think of shooting over ISO 200.
The 60D doesn’t have the Foveon “look”, but it has allowed me to capture images in several situations where I wouldn't have even gotten off a shot. I can take descent pictures at ISO 800 handheld that with the Sigma requited a tripod and auxiliary lighting.
As far as prices, you should get several thousand images out of a camera body. Your real investment is in the glass, which locks you into a particular manufacturer's system unless you want to get involved with adapters that let you use lens X on body Z at some time in the future if you decide to change.
Finally, consider the total cost of a camera system. Yes, one or two thousand dollars is a pretty good chunk of change, but over the course of ten years that breaks down to $200 per year or a little less than four dollars a week,
and while you do have costs associated with printing an image, I can get a 16x20 print on matte Fuji paper done on a $4000 Epson printer at Sam's club for under $10, and you have 0 costs for film.
This is truly a golden age for photographers and modern technology allows even a rank armature to produce pictures that equal and even surpass works of the Masters of times past. Part of the process and part of the fun is just the learning process that results with picking up even a cheep $100 camera and being able to shoot hundreds of pictures for free, and in the process, learning by doing.
Doesn’t help. I have polarizing sunglasses. It’s not glare but brightness of sun. Inside it’s great.
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