Month: July 2009

Last Friday I sold my Bessa R3a and Nokton 40mm f/1.4 s.c. lens. I felt as if part of me, a photographic part of me, had died. Selling that body and lens was hard. I’m seriously glad it went to someone I know will love it like I did.

The Bessa was the biggest hurdle on the way to dispensing with all my film gear. I’ve been thinning my collection for some time, but even though I kept thinking I’d shoot some film, I never did. When the choice came down to shooting with film or digital, I went with digital every time.

After months and months of this, it became apparent that my film gear, lovely as it is, was sitting on the shelf. I don’t like to see good cameras sit on the shelf, so I decided, once and for all, to go 100% digital.

Certainly convenience and speed of turnaround were the biggest factors in my decision. Life is short, something you really feel when you reach your 60’s. I no longer wanted to spend time developing film and scanning it. Even though I love film, I love digital even more, so it’s not as if I’m surrendering to some Dark Side.

My main interest in film is B&W and I still maintain, as I always have, that film B&W and digital B&W are different — that film has more subtlety. However, I have also discovered Nik’s excellent Photoshop (and Lightroom) plug-in, Silver Efex Pro. The digital B&W’s I’m pulling from that are so satisfying that I’ve not felt the need for film to express myself in B&W. Once I fully realized that, the writing was on the wall.

Another critical factor was purchasing a Panasonic G1. Because the sensor on the G1 is located so far forward, it can be adapted to a huge range of lens mounts, including rangefinder lenses. I sent to Shanghai for Leica-M, Nikon F, and Pentax M42 adapters. With them I can use any of my existing manual focus lenses. I no longer needed the film bodies.

I’ll either sell, or give away, my remaining three film bodies. Then I’ll thin my lens collection to just those manual-focus lenses I intend to use regularly. It’s time to move on.

One of the things I’ve moved on to is writing. I’ve always written, but it’s become a major focus for me now. Fiction as well as nonfiction. Personal writing, plus writing on assignment.

Another thing I’m doing is catching up on about three to four decades of pop culture — movies and TV shows, especially. I missed a lot of great stuff and I’m now in viewing overdrive, and loving it.

So, goodbye film. It was a long love affair, about 50 years. I hate to see you go, and I’ll never forget you. Sadly, though, you won’t be missed.

A friend of mine is thinking of moving up from a good P&S digital camera to a DSLR and, like many first-time buyers, is confused by all the models out there and how they compare. She is currently wondering which of the brands takes better pictures.

What I want to explain is that the brand makes little difference, when it comes to image quality. What matters is size — the size of the pixels rather than the number of pixels or megapixels. The larger the pixels, the better the image will look. In general, the larger the sensor, the larger the pixels.

If you look at the chart above, you can see how consumer digital cameras compare in sensor size. Using 35mm as the “gold standard,” what’s called a full-frame (FF or FX) digital has a sensor the size of a 35mm negative or transparency. There are some high-end Nikon, Canon, and Sony models that offer these. They’re expensive, and big. You would have no trouble making smooth, gorgeously sharp 16×20″ prints from a sensor this large, and you could print even larger without losing too much detail.

Compare that to the little 1/3″ and 1/2″ sensors in the center. That’s the size of the sensor in most P&S digicams. Considering the difference in size, the P&S units do a remarkable job and can print beautiful 8×10″ prints and can be stretched to 11×14″ and still look relatively okay. A few P&S digicams have the more desirable 2/3″ sensor, but they’re limited to a very few models.

The majority of DSLR’s fall into the middle, from 4/3″ to the slight variant of the APS-C size sensor (1.6x crop for Canon, 1.5x crop for Nikon). If you compare these to the tiny sensors on digicams, you can see why there is a big jump in image quality potential in this mid range. An APS-C sensor has a slight advantage over 4/3, but as the diagram shows, the difference isn’t dramatic.

The thing is, any brand of camera in this mid range is capable of excellent image quality. 11×14″ prints will look great, and they can be stretched to 16×20 without too much quality falloff. They also allow for better prints after cropping than a P&S digicam.

The brand doesn’t make a lot of difference to any of this. True, each manufacturer puts its own processing software in the camera and there are very subtle differences in the default look of images. Canons tend toward warm tones, Nikon toward cooler tones. But you can adjust any of these cameras to look pretty much like the output from any other. Panasonic and Olympus have done such a good job of processing on the 4/3 sensor that they can be used up to ISO 800-1600 and still deliver good quality.

The real leveler in all this is Photoshop, or whichever photo editor you use. It’s good post processing that takes a good image and turns it into a great looking image. That and the photographer’s eye, of course.

There are reasons to think about brand. Where they differ most is in their ergonomics, which is why it’s important to try them out in the store to see which feels best and most natural to use. I personally don’t like the ergonomics of Canons, but that’s totally subjective. To me, Nikons and Pentaxes (and Sonys for that matter) seem to have controls and menus that are located where I expect them. Take a look at how menus are organized too. Again, I find Canon menus confusing, compared to Nikon menus. That’s one of the reasons I switched from Canon to Nikon, but bear in mind there are people who go the other way, for the same reasons. Canons feel right to them.

Lens selection can be a factor. Canon and Nikon offer more “pro” lenses than other brands, which is why the pros use them. If you’re not a professional photographer, though, this is likely not a big issue. All the brands have a good selection of consumer lenses, and they’re very good.

So, the bottom line is that any DSLR in the mid range can deliver great results, including the 4/3 cameras made by Olympus and Panasonic. Choose the one that feels like you want to use it a lot. Then brush up on your Photoshop!