TRIPphotography by rick matthews
Taking the Pixel Plunge F
or several years, digital cameras had inferior image resolution and slower motor drives and auto focus. However, in the last year or two digital technology has narrowed the gap to the point that I finally took the plunge and bought a digital camera. There are pros and cons to going digital. Like buying a boat or paddle, your choice of camera depends a lot on what you’re planning to use it for.
What’s the use? If you mainly share photos by email, digital is
the answer, the easiest way to send off those trip photos the moment you unpack your drybags. If you mainly shoot print film and build scrapbooks or photo albums, you may want to stick to film, although you can now get prints made from digital at most film labs.
If you put on slide shows, the decision gets
tougher. Good digital projectors are still very, very expensive at $2,500 and up. However, you can run the show on a computer and possibly through the television with some adaptation, and you may be able to borrow or rent a projector for shows. Putting a digital slide show together and adding music can be done with a software program in a fraction of the time of a film show. If you’re an aspiring expeditioneer or travel
writer, the biggest digital advantage may come in submitting images direct from the field to Internet websites or print media. Professional adventurers now transmit images from remote wilderness areas via satellite phone.
Also consider the type of photographs you will shoot. Most point-and-shoot digital cameras have a shutter delay that can throw off the timing of action shots. Higher-end “prosumer” digital cam- eras have reduced this lag time to under 0.1 sec- onds, but this is still something to consider if you’re shooting action.
Film is still the better choice for shooting star
trails, northern lights, campfire scenes and other long exposures. In a digital image, any exposure longer than a couple of seconds builds up signifi- cant “noise” (grain).
Negs vs. Megs
The obvious attraction of digital is the prospect of doing away with film and processing costs alto- gether. However, it may take several years of shooting before you recoup the up-front costs of digital—including a computer, a photo-quality printer and paper at approx $1.50 per page if you’re making prints, and a CD or DVD burner to save images.
Once you fill up your digital camera’s memory card, called a “compact flash card,” you’re out of film until you put in a new card or download your
22 Summer 2003
Switch to digital or stick to film? That’s the question kayaking photographers should be asking themselves these days.
memory card and downloaded my images to a $600 MindStor unit by minds@work. If you already own a laptop, it may be cheaper to take that along instead, although inconvenient on a kayaking trip.
Although you won’t be using up film, digital cameras use up lots of batteries, especially if the LCD screen is used frequently, and require lots of spares for extended trips.
Preview, delete, preview, delete….The beauty of the LCD
My favourite feature of digital is the instant visual feedback you get on the camera’s LCD moni- tor—great for checking action shots to see if you have really nailed it, for seeing the effects of pan- ning, the effectiveness of backlighting, when and how much fill flash to use and other fine-tuning. Previewing has a few added benefits when trav-
elling. You won’t get home and find that half of what you thought were great shots aren’t that great after all. You can delete imperfect shots as you go, meaning you don’t need as much media card space as you would need blank film. And you can show people photos of themselves in the LCD, gen- erating friendships and additional photo opportu- nities.
Buying digital
If go digital, stick to manufacturers that have a background in cameras, not computers. Camera makers tend to pay more attention to details like putting control buttons in the right places and have
D-100 ($2,700) and Canon’s 10D ($2,500) have all of the bells and whistles of a good film SLR. The quality of prints and the size of enlarge- ments you’ll be able make is generally determined by the camera’s megapixel capture, a measure of the quantity of information that the camera cap- tures with each shot. More megapixels generally means greater image quality. A two-megapixel camera will be sufficient for viewing images on a computer. A four-megapixel camera will generally provide good print quality up to about 8x10”. Waterproof housings are available for some cam- eras in the three- to four-megapixel range. With my professional six-megapixel SLR digital camera, I have made prints up to 20x30” with excellent results, proving that the old limitations of digital enlargements no longer apply.
D
igital photography still isn’t for everyone, but I have succumbed to the lure of megapixels and compact flash cards and had a positive experience on all fronts. Being able to immediately see the image I’ve created, delete unwanted images and try new approaches right away sparks the creative spirit, which is where great photos come from. Add the ability do all this without burning up roll after roll of film and it’s hard to imagine anything better.
Rick Matthews is a professional sports photographer and avid paddler.
images. Downloading is inconvenient on an extended trip, so you may need to take extra cards just as you would film. A 128-megabyte card holds about 45 images and costs about $60. An alternative is to download images in the field onto a storage drive. These units are about the size of a fat Palm Pilot and can hold thousands of images. On a recent two-week trip I used one
more experience producing quality lenses—still the biggest factor in getting great images. If you’re used to shooting with a 35mm camera with a zoom lens you might consider one of the prosumer cameras such as the Nikon 5700, Minolta Dimage 7 or Olympus Camedia E-10 which retail for around $1,500 to $2,000. Features include lenses in the 28 to 240mm range and a hot shoe mount for a separate flash. If you already own an SLR (single lens reflex) camera with a set of lenses, you might consider buying a digital SLR to use with your existing lenses. Nikon’s
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