Never buy a DSLR!
Discussion
This is advice to all those tempted by the evil mistress that is a decent DSLR. Don't do it! I am sat here watching slide shows of holidays before DSLR and all I can think of is how crap the photos look compared to my 550D. I wish I had never seen how incredible pictures can look even when an amateur takes them with a decent camera. For my last holiday we took both cameras, point and shoot and 550D. As the slide show transitions from one camera to the other it is like going from SD to HD.
I now want to go back to all the places and re-take the photos which could prove costly. I bought the 550 AFTER a tour of Asia so now will have to live with knowing I bought my 550D 1 month late.
I now want to go back to all the places and re-take the photos which could prove costly. I bought the 550 AFTER a tour of Asia so now will have to live with knowing I bought my 550D 1 month late.
To be fair film will still do better than digital, but it is MUCH harder work, and very expensive (in the back end dept.). To that end, I gave up film in 2001 and life is much easier.
I know some here still do, or go back to film, but I'd rather eat rusty nails. DSLR gives so much more flexibily for us lazy sods.
Fair play to those that struggle on though. It's a passion.
(Long live LPs and 1" tape too).
The OH is a photo-obsessive, studying for her MA in Photographic Art currently........... And prior to her, I was digital all the way.
BUT she always takes a bunch of battered eBay special SLRs from the 70s-80s with her on holidays/days out, and the pictures are fantastic in terms of depth and quality compared to the digital stuff.
Admitedly, some of that is due to her talent and knowledge, but for a £15 eBay gamble, putting it up against the £1,000 digital camera of my dads that I borrow......... It's mad.
BUT she always takes a bunch of battered eBay special SLRs from the 70s-80s with her on holidays/days out, and the pictures are fantastic in terms of depth and quality compared to the digital stuff.
Admitedly, some of that is due to her talent and knowledge, but for a £15 eBay gamble, putting it up against the £1,000 digital camera of my dads that I borrow......... It's mad.
When we had a week in Scotland, and beautiful scenery and our own car, a boot full of films, 35mm cameras and even a Medium Format Camera chucked in for good measure, was no problem.
Conversely, 2weeks in Egypt, and a suitcase for packing, point and shoot digital-ness was best idea. Especially as there was no scenery to shoot, just holiday snaps.
h0b0 said:
This is advice to all those tempted by the evil mistress that is a decent DSLR. Don't do it! I am sat here watching slide shows of holidays before DSLR and all I can think of is how crap the photos look compared to my 550D. I wish I had never seen how incredible pictures can look even when an amateur takes them with a decent camera. For my last holiday we took both cameras, point and shoot and 550D. As the slide show transitions from one camera to the other it is like going from SD to HD.
I now want to go back to all the places and re-take the photos which could prove costly. I bought the 550 AFTER a tour of Asia so now will have to live with knowing I bought my 550D 1 month late.
I agree, I'm desperate to go back on safari to re-take loads of pictures that I took with a camera I was perfectly happy with at the time.I now want to go back to all the places and re-take the photos which could prove costly. I bought the 550 AFTER a tour of Asia so now will have to live with knowing I bought my 550D 1 month late.
I also have the problem that I'm happily surfing down the slippery slope that is upgrading gear. Not because I really need to but because I can.
Now I've got a 7D (started with a 500D, that lasted me a year) I'm thinking that I'll need better glass.
This is starting to get quite expensive.
Vipers said:
One drawback with DSLR's whereas you went on hols with a bunch of 35mm films with 36 exposures, you were much pickie what you took, not with digi stuff, you come back with hundreds of pictures, mostly crap, but I still wouldnt go back to film.
Yeah, but it didn't matter much once the 'low power' xray machines had driven their way through your shielded film storage bag.LongQ said:
Vipers said:
One drawback with DSLR's whereas you went on hols with a bunch of 35mm films with 36 exposures, you were much pickie what you took, not with digi stuff, you come back with hundreds of pictures, mostly crap, but I still wouldnt go back to film.
Yeah, but it didn't matter much once the 'low power' xray machines had driven their way through your shielded film storage bag.Unless someone tells me theirs was fogged.
I did a photography workshop a couple of months ago and the course leader said that whenever someone says to him something along the lines of "wow you have an amazing camera it must take some brilliant pictures" his reply is "yes, and Rembrandt had some really amazing paint brushes".
Some of his landscapes are shot with a camera that only has two controls.
The camera is just a tool.
Some of his landscapes are shot with a camera that only has two controls.
The camera is just a tool.
Vipers said:
Strangly enough I never ever bothered with film storage bags, and it all survived, I think the "x-rays at the airport will damage your films", was a hype.
Unless someone tells me theirs was fogged.
Yes, happened to me. I did a week in Germany with the RAF and had my bag x-rayed on the return leg. The fresh film in the camera bag was fogged but the exposed stuff in the x-ray bag was fine.Unless someone tells me theirs was fogged.
Vipers said:
Strangly enough I never ever bothered with film storage bags, and it all survived, I think the "x-rays at the airport will damage your films", was a hype.
Unless someone tells me theirs was fogged.
I forget where I had been but on one trip 2 exposed films had a nice outline of one of the zips on my camera bag. The exposed film was in a pouch which turned out to be next to the zip. Presumably the rest of the films had been affected before processing but maybe not so obviously. Unless someone tells me theirs was fogged.
mattdaniels said:
I did a photography workshop a couple of months ago and the course leader said that whenever someone says to him something along the lines of "wow you have an amazing camera it must take some brilliant pictures" his reply is "yes, and Rembrandt had some really amazing paint brushes".
Maybe something he borrowed/adapted from...“A photographer went to a socialite party in New York.
As he entered the front door, the host said ‘I love your pictures – they’re wonderful; you must have a fantastic camera.’
He said nothing until dinner was finished, then: ‘That was a wonderful dinner; you must have a terrific stove.”
– Sam Haskins
GetCarter said:
To be fair film will still do better than digital, but it is MUCH harder work, and very expensive (in the back end dept.). To that end, I gave up film in 2001 and life is much easier.
To be fair I think digital supassed film in ever respect other than actually being film a fair few years ago.RobDickinson said:
GetCarter said:
To be fair film will still do better than digital, but it is MUCH harder work, and very expensive (in the back end dept.). To that end, I gave up film in 2001 and life is much easier.
To be fair I think digital supassed film in ever respect other than actually being film a fair few years ago.I remember seeing the pictures taken by one of our managers many years back, he had some portraits of his daughters, random fishing boats in the harbours back home (Greece). All were absolutely impeccable. I had barely even touched a camera for years at that point, he'd taken the pics with a relatively cheap manual affair, aperture defined by what it said on the box of film.
He was the one that re-ignited my interest in photography, and while I see colleagues spending thousands on lenses, I'm happily trying to be creative with either my phone (N8) or the basic/old DSLR (Sony A200).
clonmult said:
I think its only just approaching the resolution of film, which iirc was claimed to be the equivalent of 20+mp?
I remember seeing the pictures taken by one of our managers many years back, he had some portraits of his daughters, random fishing boats in the harbours back home (Greece). All were absolutely impeccable. I had barely even touched a camera for years at that point, he'd taken the pics with a relatively cheap manual affair, aperture defined by what it said on the box of film.
He was the one that re-ignited my interest in photography, and while I see colleagues spending thousands on lenses, I'm happily trying to be creative with either my phone (N8) or the basic/old DSLR (Sony A200).
Surely any comparison depends on what type of film, what quality of film, how it is processed and what size it is. I remember seeing the pictures taken by one of our managers many years back, he had some portraits of his daughters, random fishing boats in the harbours back home (Greece). All were absolutely impeccable. I had barely even touched a camera for years at that point, he'd taken the pics with a relatively cheap manual affair, aperture defined by what it said on the box of film.
He was the one that re-ignited my interest in photography, and while I see colleagues spending thousands on lenses, I'm happily trying to be creative with either my phone (N8) or the basic/old DSLR (Sony A200).
Talking 35mm (as opposed to larger formats) I have some shots on Kodak film stok - 200 or 400 ASA - from the mids 00s for which I was shooting with a Canon NewF1 and a 600mm Canon L spec lens. So about as good as things got 30 years ago hardware wise but improved film capability. The changes for the EOS systems were, afaik, mainly to do with AF and metering and automation generally but none of that matters if the image taken is well exposed and sharp anyway.
When I scan the negatives what I can achieve is limited by film grain (assuming one is pixel peeping). The same lens, working with an adpater that introduces a few issues, on a 400D provides a much different result and the potential for greater cropping and elnlargement. However the comparison is a little unfair since the crop factor needs to be taken into account as well as a further multiplication that results from the FD to EOS adapter.
I suppose I really should us up all the film stock I had when I bought the 400D ...
LongQ said:
When I scan the negatives
All IMHOAs soon as you do that it ceases to become analogue (obviously). Surely film is still so impressive because it isn't digital... a bit like analogue sound recordings compared to digital (digital losing much of the info to store in 1s & 0s). Enlarge film from an F6 in a dark room and enlarge from a D3X and the digital will fall apart far sooner than the film.
As stated however, I still prefer digital - I never enlarge to a size that 12 mp on a large FF sensor won't do the biz.
We had to get some film developed for the first time in years. We took some disposable underwater cameras with us on holiday. Coming out of Boots clutching a couple of envelopes of prints was nostalgic, but opening them highlighted one great advantage of digital - with film, you don't see your mistakes until you can't do anything about them! You can't look through a viewfinder with a snorkel mask on, and it wasn't until we saw the prints that we realised that you really needed to stuff the camera right in the face of whatever you were photographing. With the digital, you can keep on taking more shots until you get what you want, and because they are effectively free you don't care how many you have to throw away. Out of 72 prints, I would say five or six were worth keeping, and these were the only two I really liked (and one of them just because we got the turtle).
I had so many attempts at these two before I got something I liked, I'd have gone through rolls of film and probably still been disappointed. For someone (like me) who lacks the technical ability and experience to get exactly what they want first time, digital is a godsend.
I had so many attempts at these two before I got something I liked, I'd have gone through rolls of film and probably still been disappointed. For someone (like me) who lacks the technical ability and experience to get exactly what they want first time, digital is a godsend.
GetCarter said:
All IMHO
As soon as you do that it ceases to become analogue (obviously). Surely film is still so impressive because it isn't digital... a bit like analogue sound recordings compared to digital (digital losing much of the info to store in 1s & 0s). Enlarge film from an F6 in a dark room and enlarge from a D3X and the digital will fall apart far sooner than the film.
As stated however, I still prefer digital - I never enlarge to a size that 12 mp on a large FF sensor won't do the biz.
Yes, sort of, assuming you are going to enlarge using analogue options since these will add their own effects to the result. Paper, chemicals various other choices are in the mix for analogue post processing. To some extent that second part of the process could mitigate the limitations of the film - analogue smoothing if you like.As soon as you do that it ceases to become analogue (obviously). Surely film is still so impressive because it isn't digital... a bit like analogue sound recordings compared to digital (digital losing much of the info to store in 1s & 0s). Enlarge film from an F6 in a dark room and enlarge from a D3X and the digital will fall apart far sooner than the film.
As stated however, I still prefer digital - I never enlarge to a size that 12 mp on a large FF sensor won't do the biz.
High quality slide film viewed through a quality projection system could be pretty impressive although I always felt that was mainly when the images were specially created for vibrancy. The thing is though it's all a bit of a waste of time if the results are only accessible with huge effort.
Prints hanging an a wall are fine if you have the wall space. We used to have some prints of 3 of 4 of my better shots from travels back in the 70s and 80s but they disappeared from view after redecoration. A few years ago I bought some great images I had seen at an exhibition. If it were my choice alone they would be hanging on the walls and I would be re-mounting them every year or so to removed the thunder flies. As it is not my choice alone they are in storaage somewhere and I don't have digitised copies. They are useless to me.
It's the same with music really. I ran some conversions of my old vinyl albums (or at least those that were not in need of a thorough clean) to MP3 purely for convenience. I thought on some of those files the results were better converted (more detail from the mix for some reason but the mix or pressing could have been rubbish) than simply played back on the same system from which it was recorded. I know that will sound like heresy but, on a handful of albums that was how it seemed. The odd thing is that having pretty much completed that process (the dirty LPs are still dirty) some years ago I don't often listen to anything much these days. I guess perceived needs change.
The original observation at the top of the thread seemed to relate to the difference between pocket digital and SLR digital in a slide show with film being introduced tothe dscussion later. If the film is to be compared to digital like for like either it will need to be digitised of the digital image will need to be copied to film. Or you have 2 projector system side by side. Whichever way one tries to compare there will be compromises.
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