Long Live the Digital Era

tinodjumini@yahoo.com

Me and my Camera

Finally I made the switch from my old analogue Mamiya 456 camera to a digital SLR camera the Canon 40D Inevitable as a professional photographer I have to stay up to date and if possible ahead of time. To buy me an analogue film in particular the large format is like looking for a needle in a haystack and then I’m talking about a metropolis like Jakarta. No single store was able to provide me the black and white Kodak Film 400 ASA and only if I was lucky they would sell me an expired one dated from grandmother’s time. Processing and printing the black and white film is another story I won’t have to mention. I am an Old School photographer who prefers to shoot in Black and White so custom processing is something I hold dear to my heart. 

In the beginning I really had to get used to the instant way of taking pictures. Processing, previewing and selecting at the top of my fingers all combined in one single frame. However one thing which disappointed me was the quality of the 40D’s display in preview mode. For verifying if the picture really is in focus you need to see it on a large monitor because somehow even in close zoom the pictures still look a bit blurry. I prefer to shoot Close ups and medium shots and try to avoid the Totals because there is still the loss of detail in the pictures different than the analogue films and Camera’s I used shot on large format the quality of wide screen panorama’s is amazing. But this probably depends on the camera and the price you can afford.

Taking pictures with my Canon 40D became almost boring so I quickly switched over to manual function and started to shoot raw images. This is much more convenient and satisfying to me. Especially when you compare the quality of the images after I have downloaded them on my laptop. Compared to the Jpeg format the Canon CR2 Camera raw format is far more suitable for digital processing because of its high resolution and unprocessed nature. Unfortunately Windows XP doesn’t have an integrated feature for previewing raw images and starring at blank thumbnails really gets annoying. So hopefully Microsoft will come up with a pro version for photographers who like to shoot in raw format. Now I’m really depending on Adobe’s Bridge application in combination with Photoshop CS4. Combined with the Camera Raw plug in version 5 of Adobe you have a powerful tool which gives excellent results and full control of processing raw formats.

Another point I like to mention is when shooting in relative low light conditions. And then I mean afternoon, indoor when there is still sun light. The 40D especially in manual mode doesn’t give me much choice of making the right balance between shutters peed and lens aperture when it comes to indoor photography.

After increasing the Iso to 1600 and setting the lens aperture wide open I still need to use my build in flash light with relative long shutter speeds. I still haven’t figured it out yet what could be the case maybe it’s the lens or the type of camera. For now my advice is without having the full range equipment of a photo studio etc using a tripod is useful to avoid motion blur when shooting in low light conditions.

What about black and white? Unfortunately not as good as the original analogue film so for now I stick to colour. But this is according to my opinion probably there are people who have other experiences with this. Looking back I’m very happen with the switch to use digital cameras because it opens a wide range of possibilities like batch processing, digital processing, publishing to the web etc. Experimenting becomes fun and stimulates the creative process of shooting images without wasting too much money on film. Long live the digital era!