When I was younger I had a really nice setup with a Contax 137MA and a Yashica FX-D Quartz. I had a few really nice Zeiss Prime lenses 28, 50, 85 and 135 plus a 70-210 Yashica zoom. the quality of the photos I was taking then is better than what I have been doing with my Canon XTI.
The difference isn't the quality of the gear. The difference isn't the switch from film to digital. The difference is my retention as a photographer. My camera bag was stolen in 1998 and I lost all of my gear. shortly after that I got my first digital point and shoot. a 3.2 mp Fujifilm camera that was reminiscent of a mini slr. a little while later I got for Christmas a Nikon camera that was as small as a deck of cards and had a whopping 5 mp sensor. Yah. I know 5 mp was gigantic.
That little Nikon is a great camera and takes a nice snap shot. My Son still uses it. A snap shot however is not the same in my mind as a photograph. A snap Shot is a record of events taken without thought to form or composition. A Photograph is a image created with a camera with the purpose of having visual interest or artistic merit. Please remember that this is not a definition but an opinion. My own opinion, thank you.
Here is an example of some photographs taken with my little Nikon point and shoot. I had no control over focus, depth of field or exposure.
I just wasn't able to capture with the camera what I envisioned. I ended up using the camera for nothing more than snap shots which it did very well. One day My wife came home with an Epson scanner that she picked up to digitize all of her old photos. This scanner had racks to scan negatives and slides. I used it to scan some of the slides I had from my old camera an was amazed at the quality. It blew my little Nikon out of the water.
It is the flag pole atop the Parliament of Australia in Canberra.
Seeing the striking difference between the capabilities of a small point and shoot and an SLR camera I started the hunt for a new to me and free camera.
My hunt didn't last long. I soon found an unused Canon Elan 7 sitting in a corner of my parents house. Seeing as my parents are happily the providers of things borrowed and not returned, I liberated it.
My first trip with this camera was to Disney Land in California. The following is one of my favorite shots. the software in the scanner automatically cropped the top of the image but as I really liked the result I kept it that way. My Nikon point and shoot would never have been able to manage a night shot like this.
The time and cost involved in buying, developing and scanning film soon had me haunting local camera shops looking at digital bodies that would fit with the gear I now had. I settled on a slightly used but in great shape Canon XTI and was off to the races. I have found that with auto exposure and auto focus and auto everything else I started using these newer cameras most of the time in the P or Program mode which is really just automatic that allows for some user interference. Most of the really good photos that I have taken, I have been in M of Manual mode and have taken the time to consider my vision, my exposure and the camera settings. Just the way I used to take every shot.
After watching some episodes of Postpro on YouTube with Kevin Kubota, I decided to go back through my pictures and re-look at some I had dismissed in the past. When I first looked at this picture in my computer after the trip I just dismissed it as lost opportunity because it didn't portray the feeling I remembered when I took the photo. I was on holiday on the Oregon coast with family. The girl in the photo was lying in the sun to warm up after playing in the lake. The light was really nice with the sun providing a rim light. I could see a really nice shot in my mind but was unhappy with the result.
I had envisioned the light being warmer and brighter. Had I used manual exposure I could have brightened it up a little but would have risked blowing out the highlights. Some fill flash would have made a big difference but I hadn't brought a flash with me to the lake and I don't use the pop up flash because with the hood on my 28-135 I end up with a big shadow arc in the bottom of the frame.
The saving grace is that it is a nice photo and it was shot in raw. I was able to add back the warmth that i saw by adjusting the white balance I than made a small adjustment to the exposure to capture the brightness that I was looking for and then did a little retouching to her face. The end result has a totally different feel and is more representative of the actual conditions when the photo was taken.
I never would have been able to make this photo with a film camera. I could have come close if I was doing my own developing and printing in the darkroom but color printing is time consuming and expensive. I have done it and really enjoy the process but with work and family I just don't have the kind of time it would require. Using Photo shop on the other hand I can work in small increments like when the kids are doing home work or gone to bed. It allows me to have the freedom to produce the photograph that I envisioned on my own for little cost.
I think that I am going to embrace Photoshop and all it has to offer.
