Re: Digital camera blues

Charlotte,

Read your post to Judy and thought you might be interested in my
experiences. About 4 years ago, when I was working for a college as their
photographer, they bought a digital camera for me to use in order to speed
up getting those publicity shots out. It was an Olympus 2.5 Mpixel with an
Olympus zoom lens and it used either flash cards or smartcards. I had a card
drive attached to the Mac I used.
It was OK for newspaper shots but hardly adequate for fine art work. Also I
hated those expensive little smart cards which were easy to misplace and
damage. I had a couple that went bad on me also. Bummer!

I normally shoot film and scan it. I have a 4000dpi scanner for 35 mm, that
lets me make prints up to 13 x 19 inches that look very good. I am running
Photoshop on a Mac G4. I also have a flatbed photoscanner that will go to
2700 dpi with a special attachment so I can scan 120 and 4x5.

I have resisted buying a digital camera for some time but recently I broke
down and bought one. Like you I agonized over the camera possibilities for
over a year. What I ended up with was a Sony with a Zeiss zoom lens, 4.6
Mpixel camera that uses small, 3", recordable CDs. These CDs can be put
directly into your computer drive and they are not as delicate as a
smartcard and, best of all, hold 66 high rez images and cost about 40 cents
each. I am very pleased with this camera. I bought an extra battery and a
car cord so I can charge it in the car. I believe they have a 6 Mpixel
version of this camera out now.

Bob Schramm
Check out my web page at:

  http://www.SchrammStudio.com

>From: Charlotte 1 <cgabrie1@optonline.net>
>Reply-To: alt-photo-process-l@sask.usask.ca
>To: alt-photo-process-l@sask.usask.ca
>Subject: Digital camera blues
>Date: Fri, 07 Nov 2003 22:25:07 -0500
>
>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
>
>

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Received on Fri Nov 7 21:54:20 2003