About a month and a half ago, I finally joined the digital photography revolution. I’ve been a film hold out, waiting for the right balance of price and quality in a DSLR. Finally, the time came to sign up for the revolution.
My weapon of choice in this revolution is a Canon EOS 450D. My version, here in Japan, is called the Canon Kiss X2. My version was the double lens kit. One is an 18~55mm, and the other is a 55~250mm, providing great versatility and decent image quality. And with my16GB SD card, I can shoot around 2000 shots at 12MP (jpg). Considerably more than on a roll of film!
As I said, I’ve been a film hold out. I’d shoot about 24~36 images on a $5 or more roll of film. Then, processing (no prints) for about $6~10. Then nearly 2 hours of scanning film, followed by another 15~20 minutes per (worthy) image in Photoshop stamping out the hairlines and dust particles from the scanning. And since last August, when I started in microstock, I had gone through my collection and “dusted off” many images to upload. Many images, good images, were rejected because of “grain” and “noise” problems, relating to the film itself and the scanning process. This labor intensive process had to come to an end.
There is certainly a transition I’m going through in adjusting to digital. I’ve used a digital point and shoot from time to time before, but still mainly used my trusty Canon AE-1 35mm film camera. I’m not only adjusting to digital, but also the new camera and its settings. My AE-1 had no auto focus. Everything was manual. I’m hoping to couple my ability in manual focus and exposure with the freedom of auto.
With film, I tried to make every shot count, which of course didn’t always work. Now, my ratio of bad shots has increased, but the ability to experiment without worrying about the cost and time, and being able to see right away what I’ve taken, has truly freed me photographically. I can already see improvement in my photography because of this freedom.
I hope to improve and upload much more. For now, above is the first shot accepted to DT taken with my new camera.
