Dragged picking and grinning into the digital acquisition age
I finally surrendered to the digital tsunami and bought a little Canon SD700IS digicam. Smaller than a deck of cards. I take it with me every time i leave the house. In a period of less than 2 weeks I took over 2000 photos. Since the storage is “free” –i.e. prepaid, like cell phone long distance–I did a lot of experimenting with things I would never try on film at 35 to 40 cents per frame of 35mm E6. The results can be quite nice in terms of composition and color, and the lens seems reasonably sharp with only a little vignetting on some images. The internal color settings available include a pretty accurate “neutral” setting, as well as a saturation-goosed ‘vivid’ setting, and a very goosed ‘positive film’ setting. In addition you can decrease contrast to deal with high dynamic range lighting. Unfortunately you can’t choose aperature or shutter speed, and the thing only focusses automatically. It has a lot of difficulty with closeup material in dim light, but other than that is incredibly convenient, and better than most film point-and-shoots I have encountered
Yes, I’d rather use a Nikon or a Leica, but the last time I went hiking I took along a Nikon and a couple lenses, (probably 3-4 lbs.) and never even loaded the film into the camera.
Now I get to take advantage of any photo op I encounter in daily life, and if it looks promising enough I can usually go back with a film camera anyway.
The best camera is the one you have with you when you see a good photograph.
Anyway, if you wanna see the more satisfactory of the shots, click on “Canon SD700IS photos” under ‘Photography links’, and for the latest stuff, click “Latest digicam photos”.