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DIGITAL
CONNECTION:
The
Positives of going Negative-less
A
report from the field
Since
I recently purchased the Canon 1D and have tried it out in the
field, I've been anxious to tell everyone how the experience
has been. Typical of experiences that exceed any possible, conceivable
greatness, one word won't suffice, so get ready for a read!
First
of all, I no longer have to fumble with film. Hitting the end
of the roll at the most inconceivably inappropriate time is
a thing of the past! You get used to this (hitting the end of
the roll) and you learn to live with it. It's not until you
have switched to digital that you realize what a nuisance that
was! Gone! Just keep shooting! No cursing, no fumbling, no missing
that perfect shot! Gone!!
Second,
Keeping track of individual rolls is also gone. Yes, I do have
to write notes that track each horse, but that's much easier
than doing only that (as well as keeping track of each roll).
There are a couple of ways of doing that, and I won't go into
it here.
I
can change film speed, frame to frame. Can you even imagine
how convenient that is!? Have you ever shot during a day with
constantly passing clouds, bright sunlight, and dark shadows!?
And speaking of shadows, I couldn't help but notice right off
that digital is much less contrasty than film.
And
speaking of film, I'm not wasting any. I shoot whatever I want,
take a few seconds to sneak a look at the results, and delete
what I don't want. Simple.
The
peripherals mentioned above include extra batteries for the
camera and the laptop, the 550 EX flash, a couple of 512 MB
flash cards, an Apple laptop (OS X, classic and 9.2, 800MH,
40 GB, 512MB of memory, modem, CD/DVD burner, Airport) and a
Canon S9000 printer.
It's
enough of an outlay all at once to make me feel faint. I've
been debt free for several years and it's a delicious feeling,
but I had to have the camera. It only made sense, so here I
am now, back in the world of reality, but it's OK. This camera
and all the benefits it bears are more than worth it. I couldn't
have known that without having gone this route.
Continuing
on about the camera: the current state of digital is so much
sharper than film could ever be! I never knew that was possible,
so looking at the first images was a real high. Now, a thousand
captures later, I'm still high. Can you tell?
:o)
Used
to be that whenever I took a picture, I'd think to myself that
I could fix the background later. It involved scanning, of course,
but that was OK. Really, Desktop Printing was a marvelous invention,
and I really appreciate what it's brought me over the years.
However, I DON'T HAVE TO SCAN ANYTHING ANYMORE! One less step
in the workflow, and it's a great big one.
Another
thing that blew me away was the color calibration. In my office
I work (image manipulation and ad design) on an old G3 and even
older Epson Stylus 800. Getting them to output something similar
to the final output from the printer was always a challenge.
We got it worked out, but it varied from time to time, especially
whenever I did a reinstall on the harddrive. Now, I'm very pleased
to announce that the camera, PhotoShop, the laptop and the lab
I use all agree, first time. The capture comes out in print
the way it looked going into the camera. Gone are the days of
frustrating struggle to get everything to work on the same level
of color, contrast and exposure.
Creativity
is increased, too. When I was shooting film, people used to
say that the film was the cheapest part of photography. Those
people were uninformed, but they said it anyway. It was partly,
somewhat true, but I spent more on film per year than anything
else when I was doing shows. That frequently kept me from shooting
everything I saw (or thought I saw). Now I don't have to even
think about that. I just fire away.
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And
that's another thing about this particular camera: its response
time is faster than I'm accustomed to. I used to shoot the 1v,
Canon's top of the line film camera. It was (and still is, really)
the perfect film camera. Quick and all that, but once I picked
up the 1D, I found that I had to wait an instant before pushing
the shutter. At Gladstone (June) when I was borrowing the 1D
from Canon, I found that many of my pictures came out an instant
sooner than I wanted. This was unheard of! I had to retrain
myself to use the 1D, to learn to wait just the tiniest fraction
of a second before releasing the shutter. It's very, very responsive.
I'm not complaining; I'm marveling!
Used
to be that whenever I took a picture, I'd think to myself that
I could fix the background later. It involved scanning, of course,
but that was OK. Really, Desktop Printing was a marvelous invention,
and I really appreciate what it's brought me over the years.
However, I DON'T HAVE TO SCAN ANYTHING ANYMORE! One less step
in the workflow, and it's a great big one.
I
can select the resolution, too, both in the camera and in the
computer. I'm still learning about this, so I can't explain
it fully. I just know it's true.
Well,
that should about....no, wait, there's more! I nearly forgot...
Not
only can I change "film" speed, I can also change
"brand names." That is, I can switch the "look"
(actually called "matrix" on the camera), switching,
for instance from Kodak Royal, to Kodak E100SW to Fuji whatever,
to Portra, on and on, and from frame to frame. And not only
can I do those two things, I can also switch from exposure to
exposure. That is, from bright sunny, to shadow, to flash, to
neon, to tungsten.......well, you get the picture. (hah, hah!)
In
review, going digital for me is going to turn out better pictures
and save time and money. Now I ask you, what else is there?!
How can you possibly make your business more profitable than
to save time and money, while making better pictures, to boot!
Go digital! It's awesome.
Susan
Sexton
www.susansexton.com
P.S. If you do go digital, the first and most important thing
you want to check is the time lag. That was most important to
me, and it's why I spent $5,100 on the camera, alone. Ask around,
but particularly, talk to people who own both the Canon 1D and
some other kind of digital camera. These are the only people
who really know what time lag is!
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