Digital camera blues

Judy - I don't know much about digital cameras because after months of
looking into buying one I concluded that scanning a photo would be better
for me. I have had my totally manual Nikon camera for 20 years and I can
still buy film for it. If you get a digital camera, you need to figure out
what type of memory card it uses and will that memory card be used even five
years from now. Also, what type of attachment do you use to get the pixels
into your computer and will that attachment still be usable a few years from
now.

Another thing to consider is how much data your computer will be able to
handle. I have a 1 Ghz Imac with two 512 MB memory (cards?) - it was the
fastest Imac I could purchase back in February (2003) but it has trouble
dealing with large images.. Some of my images are 240 MB and I have to sit
and wait 20-30 seconds every time I want to make an adjustment (and about a
minute to open up the image itself).

Another problem with working in digital files is that you only have images
if you print them. When I am working on a new idea, I usually like to sift
through former photos (even the throw-away, don't look like much ones) to
get me in the right frame of mind. That's hard to do with digital images
unless you've bothered to print all of them.

Lastly, I read that some digital cameras have a problem with 'noise' in
either the highlights or shadows or both. Yes, the scanner picks up some
things but not so much that I can't get rid of it with a little Photoshop
help.

I have an Epson Perfection 3200 scanner which is great. I can't even scan
at the highest dpi (ppi?) because my computer can't keep up. So I keep
using my film, get my shots from the photo lab and then scan the ones I
want. But the idea of digital negatives really intrigues me so I'm going to
pursue that (with the help of Dan Burkholder's book).

Sorry this post is so long but this topic is one I have wrestled with for
almost a year and now think I'm happy with my conclusion. Whatever
conclusion you come up with, I thought I'd make sure you had included some
of these questions in your personal debate. Charlotte Gabriele
Received on Fri Nov 7 21:27:49 2003