Digital cameras - advice needed

Hey, when did you get an Aro?

Tony.

PS is that Bowie's Stage on the deck?

 

PPS You have fitted the Aro headshell fingerlift incorrectly - it should go on top of the headshell - you are dramatically reducing the rigidity of the cart in the arm. Change it, it will sound better!

 

Yes I finally bahhed myself into debt!

It is stage. I didn't realise I didn't have it! And then it appeared on a market stall for a fiver, looks unplayed. Not a great album though.

 

****!!@

I couldn't decide what was right. I'll change it round, its not like this cart needs the hight!

 

Is it me or has my picture gone again?

Bloody NTL

 

Mick, as tones said, you are comparing photographers, not cameras.

Modern digital SLR cameras are already far superior to 35mm film in any way you care to measure it (and they use the same high quality lenses as film SLRs).

Michael.

 

Tony

Your photograph of the camera is also poor.

Where is the contrast between the camera body and lens body. It is one big blob.

Now please look at my pic. I have a good camera but am only of average ability on photography. My pic murders yours. Sorry to be blunt but it needs to be said.

Regards

Mick

 

For what it's worth also, I find even my "only" 3 MP Canon EOS D30 provides a better quality image than film much of the time, comparing to the Nikon LS-30 film scanner I also use. Unfortunately, the AF, metering and build of the D30 don't touch the EOS 3 film body I have.

That new EOS 1DmkII looks mighty fine though.... :tempted:

 

Re: Tony

Everyone lucks out from time to time.

I can show you thousands of pictures taken with digital cameras (by amateurs) that "murder" your photo of your Sunbeam.

Sorry to be blunt

My Olympus E-10 D-SLR has 'only' 4 MP but the pictures I have taken with it are generally miles better than any I ever took with my Nikon F2 or Mamiya ZM 35mm SLRs.

Here's an example:


Michael.

 

I'm not being funny, but it might be time to calibrate your monitor! My picture ain't great, it's just a 24k .jpg. Here is a crop of the bit you didn't like, it shows a little camera shake at this res (it was hand held), but is still reasonable:



Tony.

PS I can't see your pic at all, which probably implies you haven't managed to compress it small enough to post yet. Lets see what its like when it's the size of ours!

 

Tony your picture looks fine to me, mabye a totally and utterly boring subject, but well took none the less!

Mick, you need glasses or a decent computer, judging by your thread on naim I think a new Power Mac G5 may be in order.

Afterall why have the best in hifi and worst in computers eh?

 

This thread is rapidly degenerating into a 'my dad's bigger than your dad' rant last heard in the junior school playground.

Stop it!

Bob

 

Aha, found Mick's pic. A truly fabulous bike, but he's not playing the game with posting pics! Thats a 168k 800x600 pic, mine was crushed down to 24k and so is a mere seventh of the size!

The point I'm trying to make is that whilst a mid-range digital like mine is in no way equivalent to a £2k Leica body with a £1k lens, it will however give any 35mm camera in its price range a run, especially when you can do all the 'darkroom' stuff yourself on the PC.

Tony.

 

Tony

Are you saying that you could take a photo of my Sunbeam and it would come out the same as my photo.

If so then fair enough. I am not sufficiently technical qualified to comment on sizes etc but the end result is what matters.

Michaels portrait of the girl was good.

Regards

Mick

 

At the screen resolutions we are talking about here I doubt you would see much difference in actual quality, though comparing a projected slide or a print much larger than 10x8 the Leica would win hands down. I would however have taken a far better photo – with the best will in the world yours is a simple point and shoot with no finesse in composition at all. The picture only works at all because the bike is so astoundingly good looking (it is one of the coolest motorcycles I have ever seen).

You should be able to get some truly astounding shots with that subject matter. Hint: don't just stand up and shoot straight from eye level, it almost always leads to utterly pedestrian pictures, kneel down, get on the bikes level, try going close and do a three quarter shot from the front using a wide aperture to throw the background out of focus. Think about how things fit in the frame. Think about what you want in focus, and what you don't – we really didn't need to see your fence in intimate detail! Get in close, do some detail shots etc. Experiment. Photography is art, push it a bit. Its fun!

Tony.

 

Re: Tones

No. What you need is talent. Lenses and cameras are just hardware. I don't wish to sound like a snob, but David Bailey could take a better photo with a homemade pinhole camera than you could with a Leica (or I could with a 30 year-old instamatic ).

 

A good scan of a 35mm slide can give resolution (in pixel terms) well in excess of the Canon 1DS which offers a 12megapixel shot... besides I do not think the 1DS is a realistic consideration for anyone in this forum other than a pro shooter - over £6000 just for a camera body?? I appreciate the suggestion of printer (Olympus 400) - it looks pretty good but I am still getting bogged down regards dye-sublimation versus inkjet - thought it would be one or other of the technologies but seems like there are apparently dye-based inkjets to consider which fall somewhere between the two camps - just to confuse the issue... the Epson Stylus Photo 2000 (2100 in the U.S.?) has had some rave reviews, prints up to A3 but is a BIG machine and requires a lot of setting up/calibration for individual types of paper etc... and still suffers from metamerism (spelling?) which is a kind of sheen present when light catches the print at certain angles especially in black/white photo printing.

WARNING *DOOM MONGERING RANT FOLLOWING....*

Regards the grand debate (is there one??) on digital vs slides - I prefer the purity of film photography - a 35mm slide will always represent the pictorial truth (allowing for some use of filters) - a digital image can no longer represent the truth and I fear an all-digital future where nothing in the world is real but merely a synthesis.... my big point: digitalization (of any media) is actually a DUMBING-DOWN of our world - once we have surrendered all our radio and televison and music and photography and telephony over to the dark force that is digital we actually lose control rather than gain it (the only thing we gain is convenience) - the controllers of our digital world can manipulate it and alter it without our knowledge - for example, digital radio and television, despite the "spin" given to the consumer is actually there for the advantage of the media companies not you and me... we were promised better pictures and sound but already the bandwidth on both digital terrestrial TV and DAB is being reduced across the board in order that more commercial channels can be shoe-horned in.. Mobile phones - remember when the speech actually sounded real? - digital cellphones were hyped as offering cd-quality sound over analogue and we all bought the idea - the real motive was that the networks/government wanted more control and the ability to plug the system into computers that could eaily store and scan our conversations etc - sure they are more secure but they could have easily made analogue just as secure a system - we end up with a really low voice sampling rate that makes most calls sound like shite... oh dear I think I am losing it. The thing I am trying to say is hold on to ANALOGUE where possible - it is something real and tangible - whatever medium it applies to.:SLEEP:

 

That's a bit misleading I think. Photography, whether analogue or digital, does not "represent" in the same way the human eye and mind do.
I don't think that film is inherently more truthful than digital - in same ways it is rather less so; Film's highly exaggerated (but very beautiful) depth of field effects are not "real". Digital or HD video is more "real" in this sense. Well, maybe not less real than video, but neither see the same way we do, or with the same sensitivity. The human eye is an amazing optical device, coupled with the brain it is quite awesome (of course this has nothing to do with hifi - we use our ears for that after all).
Film grain (when controlled properly - see Tavernier's "Dimanche a la Campagne") is much more beautiful than video noise.

 

Re: Tones

Thanks, Mick, but from what I've seen, digital is perfect for what she wants, record material of her trip to the USA. Moreover, the camera is small and convenient, with no bulky lenses to carry. If she were pursuing photography as an art, yes, I think a conventional film camera would be better, but for what she wants, the advantages of digital photography far outweigh the disadvantages/limitations. In addition, the prints from the Canon look quite good to me (admittedly as big a non-expert in things photographic as I am in things hi-fi).

 

But that's a fallacy. You may get a 20MP scan from a 35mm slide but you're always bound by the native resolution of the film which is less than that of the Canon 1Ds 12MP sensor. I suggest you take a look at the various articles comparing film and digital at The Luminous Landscape. Starting with this one. What it shows is that a 1Ds image absolutely wipes the floor with an equivalent 35mm film image and is, in resolution terms, about equal with a Pentax 645 large format film image allthough the 1Ds image is shaper and has less noise than the large format image.

Photography is one area where digital is unequivocally superior to analogue in every aspect other than perpaps the cost of the equipment. The only other issue I have with digital photography is the permanence of the digital "negatives". At the moment to be sure I don't lose anything I've got to backup my image files to CD-R or DVD-R and at least once a year copy those optical backups to new versions as CD-Rs have an uncertain shelf life. I've had 6 month old CD-Rs that have become unreadable. Film negatives OTOH will survive for hundreds of years if even moderately carefully looked after.

I'm prepared to live with that issue though for the better quality images I get and, perhaps most importantly of all, the power of the "digital darkroom" which has actually rekindled my interest in photography more than anything else.

Michael.