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who switched totally to digital?


angelo_smaldo

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<I> but firing 16 frames in 2 seconds (and scaring your subject, in the case of wildlife

photography), is not exactly professional, or even ethical.</i><P>

 

Ummm.... so the wildlife subject in question is supposed to know to be scared by digital

more than by film? This makes no sense at all (in fact, at high speeds DSLRs are generally

quieter than film cameras with motor drives). And by what set of rules is shooting at high

frame rates somehow not 'professional'? Ever watch a pro sports photographer at work?

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Mark, when your CF cards turn 5 years old, we'll meet again. As for your 8 fps concern: Look, it's quite simple. Since it costs you next to nothing to shoot 8 fps, the casual digital photographer (with the appropriate hardware, ofcourse) tends to fire at will, long bursts at all. This person will become less and less interested in knowing WHEN is the right moment to release the shutter. This is true in wildlife and sports. Not that I care, as long as it doesn't affect me (it could affect shutterlife, but that's not my shutter). All I'm saying that if you neglect "feeling the moment", and relying on your camera to do all the work instead-- then you're missing out more on photography than you can gain. Give a real pro a manual focus camera with a 1fps manual film winder, and he/she'll KNOW when the crucial moment is about to happen, and thus come back with the winning shot. 8 fps won't help here, other than shorten shutter life.

 

Peace.

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Where have you folks been hibernating?!

 

I have an old Nikon F2 (almost as old as I am- give or take few years) with an MD-2 and a classic MB-1. This is capable of 5 frames/sec!

 

Only with digital, the film flatness (or lack thereof) issues are absent and 5 or 8 frames/second and the action shots will not be fuzzy.

 

If someone want to use an all manual camera with nothing auto and all hand processing, analog printing, by all means do it. If this is your personal preference and passion , no one is going to say anything about it.

 

But to think that you are a "better"photographer because you do not use meter (analog or digital), no artificial light, no automated processing of film, no scanning, etc ...hmm.. if that makes you feel good about yourself, great!

 

Photography can indeed be a healthy substitute for other shortcomings in one's life.

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Gloria, in my last post I was not talking about you; it is a very general misconception that auto features make people lazy and I was addressing it. Take a look at just two posts above this one. Yaron is still making that same false argument.

 

I welcome 8 frames/sec for action shots. Just take birds in flight for example. I sure don't have the precise control to get a shot when the wings are up or down to my liking, expecially if we are taking about humming birds with very fast beats. Just the fraction of a second from shutter lag will mess up my timing and composition. In those cases I like to get 4, 5 consecutive frames within 0.5 second or so when the general composition is right and pick the one with the best (wing and everything else) position. That is very different from taking 30 random shots and hope for the best.

 

I admit that I don't have such precise timing control to take only one shot in the heat of action as Yaron describes; in fact, I don't believe anybody else has that kind of timing either. In team sports, it could be a great shot now and 0.1 second later, one player could be blocking another, a hand could be blocking an eye. The same applies to animal groups, etc. etc. In those situations it is very helpful to have several consecutive shots that are 0.1 second or so apart to choose from. If you shoot landscape, that is a totally different situation.

 

If one shoots landscape and needs to take 10 consecutive shots to bracket exposure across 5 stops, that is clearly a situation when the photographer doesn't understand exposure.

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Amatures can use any gear they like cos if the get only 1 good shot in 36 or even 1 in ten rolls of 36 its there money and nobody but them cares. Pros gotta think of there bottom line so the most keepers they can get at the least cost is whats gonna make em the most doe. That's why most of em are glad to have some auto fetures to pick n choose from and they ain't a buncha prema Donna's braggin on how they never use AF or TTL or IS or whatever. And if the client wants a digital file then sure the photographer can shoot film and scan it but he ain't makin money sittin in front of a computer when he could be out in the field instead.
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<I>This person will become less and less interested in knowing WHEN is the right moment

to

release the shutter. This is true in wildlife and sports. </i><P>

 

Really? You have some credible evidence for this sweeping statement? Personally, from

my own experience, I think it's total nonsense. I use 8 fps almost exclusively on flying

birds, and I can assure you that I'm VERY MUCH after the 'right moment' (some results <A

HREF="http://biology.ucr.edu/personal/MACphotos/flyingindex.html">here</a>).

Having modern tools available (high frame rates, autofocus, stabilization, and digital) has

given me far more -- and more importantly, far <B><i>better</i></b> -- images of

birds and insects in flight than ever before.<P>

 

<I>Give a real pro a manual focus camera with a 1fps manual film winder, and he/she'll

KNOW when the crucial moment is about to happen, and thus come back with the winning

shot. </i><P>

 

A 'real pro', eh? So all those folks with their big lenses on the sidelines of sporting

events, shooting at their maximum frame rates to catch the action, are not 'real pro'

photographers? Despite their 'PRESS' badges and paychecks? <P>

 

I'm getting a distinct sense of "nobility in suffering" (motto of numerous deceased British

explorers such as Robert Falcon Scott) -- unless you do something in a very difficult way,

it must be unworthy and unrewarding. I do not find it so. You're certainly welcome to

use that philosophy, but the sorts of lofty, fatuous, broad-brush, and (let's face it)

condescending generalizations expressed here are just plain silly. In my opinion, of

course. Reminds me of the Leica forum ;-) <-- note smiley.

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Shun, Mark, there is no need to personalize your attacks. Since when did photo.net forums turn such narrow minded? "False Remarks", Shun? since when do you have the authority on photography, digital, film, auto focus, et al? As for gifted people who may have the touch for things beyond your (and mine) grasp-- these exist, and despite my relative young age, I've been fortunate to meet some first hand.

 

Mark, "pro photographers" get paid for their work. They shoot what they can sell. The "Press" badges on their shirts are working tools, just as their cameras. Whether they produce better photographs than you and me, has nothing to do with it. What's better for them, is not better for me, and might not be better for you. Yes, 8fps comes in handy, so does fast AF, and AE. No, it does not warrant a good photograph. I myself have much more appreciation for people who can feel an exposure rather than rely on a machine to estimate it.

 

Mind you guys, I have nothing against technology, i'm neck-deep in it. There is simply nothing wrong with Gloria's question, and she needs not to apologize to you, or any one else. If you want to employ technology to the max, you are certainly entitled to spend your money as you please. Some people would rather shoot with a pinhole. What's wrong with that?

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Yaron, neither Mark nor I am personalizing anything; what we are focusing on is your comments. Mark said it very bluntly, but otherwise I wouldn't be able to make it any clearer than he can. You are making some baseless generalization that somehow 8fps makes people less interested in learning when to shoot and somehow "real" pros don't need auto features. That is the problem here.

 

If you chose to shoot with a pinhole, that is none of my business. But you don't have the right to suggest that people who use auto features are somehow inferior or those features create/lead to bad photographers without being challenged.

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Shun, my remarks were:

 

"You have to be very much in self control not to fall into the dark side of digital"

 

and

 

"digital is a great medium; it shouldnt change the way you take pictures-- everything but the emulsion remains the same"

 

That's all. I didn't suggest that EVERY photographer metamorphs into a dark image of itself. It's common logic (and I've seen this happen first hand) that when you're busy firing away multiple frames per second, then chimp through them, and you're constantly using AF/AE, then you get detached from the scene. No, it doesn't happen to EVERYBODY, but it does happen to some.

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Q: "Do you still take the time to study and understand your subjects so you can anticipate their behaviors?"

 

A: Hi Gloria. Yes, absolutely. I have been an ardent naturalist my entire life. This was the catalyst that caused me to take up wildlife photography as a hobby. A major side benefit is that I spend lots of time observing. I always observed closely before, but the hours I often spend to take a photo of a particular subject has taught me a lot about those subjects.

 

Recently I found a great spot for observing and photographing quail... birds that previously I would see from time to time, but didn't know much about. I was able to take some photos, but the biggest payoff was watching the birds go about their business... how the male stays near the female, jumps up on rocks to call, scratches the earth for food, runs across open areas. They are beautiful and via photography I have come to know them better. It just happens to be a Fuji DSLR behind the lens. Nothing else has changed except I can experiment more.

 

I enjoy wildlife photography very much, but the quiet time watching the birds and other animals, taking a closer look at the plants... is my primary motive. I could leave the camera behind, but I will be roaming the wild places.

 

Best to all, -Greg-

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Yaron, as a friend and the moderator for this forum, I am not interested in the continuation of the silly debate here. For those who don't know, Yaron lives a few blocks from me and we have done a little bit of shooting together.

 

Instead, let me tell you a little story from 30+ years ago. For the younger readers, you might have grown up always with hand-held electronic calculators. The first time I saw one was around 1973 or so. At that time integrated circuit (IC) chips were in their infancy and they had just become affordable. A simple four-function (+ - x /) one was initially around $50 to $100 or so but prices dropped quickly, while today you have them built into $15 electronic watches. I was fairly young then and one of the first things I heard from some older folks then was that the calculator was a bad thing because all the kids wouldn't need to learn (and be able to do) arithmetic any more.

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Shun,

 

Before you criticize Gloria too harshly, have you ever seen her work? She was (is?) one of the most talented bird photographers I have ever come across. She comes from an art background, not a technical background, which I think is a great part of the magic. I say "was" because she has completely abandoned the 35mm format and gone cold turkey LF and dropped the birds completely for reasons that are her own. I suspect the connection to the graphic arts is closer with LF, even though there are significant technical hurdles to overcome.

 

If you really think she needs to learn how to fall back on automation to get a good shot, you really ought to check out her website.

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Mike, I have known that Gloria is an excellent bird photographer for a long time. Yaron also happens to be an excellent photographer as well and I rally like some of his San Francisco city images, but that is totally irrivalent in this discussion/debate. What I disagree with are their comments here, not the images they create.
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I have known very talented scientists, engineers, artists, poets, writers, whatever who also do good photography. Just because someone may be talented in something does not mean they can be appreciated for certain narrow minded views they have.

 

It will most certainly not get them very far in any photographic business with such opinions.

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Shun, thanks for the kind comments, I believe you already know of how highly I think about your work and experience. We can definitely debate and argue here-- that's what I feel these forums are for.
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I'm a professional wildlife photographer. I have a collection of over 200,000

transparencies shot in 24 countries. I have not shot a roll of film in at least 6 months. I

use three digital bodies (Kodak SLR/n and two D2X's). Without a doubt, the digital files

surpass the quality of images I captured on film (Velvia 50, 100, Provia or older KR 64). It

does involve more time to caption & keyword images with digital files, and I find it more

difficult to sell digital files to my traditional markets, but I'm still happy I've switched.

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From the New York Times today (I would have included the link, but it makes you register and sign in.):

 

Which Camera Does This Pro Use? It Depends on the Shot

By SETH SCHIESEL

 

DAVID BURNETT spent the dog days of 1963 prowling the drag strips of Salt Lake City with his Yashica-Mat while he waited for his senior year at Olympus High School. He has been taking pictures for money ever since.

 

So with four decades of war, sports and politics at hand, it was easy for Mr. Burnett, one of his generation's top photojournalists, to engage the dozens of photo experts who packed the back room of a Manhattan restaurant last month for one of his guided slideshows.

 

Yet through the first 20 minutes of Mr. Burnett's presentation, the cognoscenti seemed less deeply moved by his work and more entertained by his banter ("These are some of the farmers," he said drolly about a picture of Secret Service agents in a pasture during the 1988 campaign).

 

With one transition on the screen, that changed. In an instant, the chatter stopped, replaced by gasps and a collective groan of appreciation.

 

Mr. Burnett was explaining why in this age of ever more plentiful megapixels, at this moment when the concept of "film" seems as old-fashioned as a rotary telephone, he has spent most of the last two years lugging around a 55-year-old 4-by-5-inch Graflex Speed Graphic camera, complete with tripod.

 

On the screen was a wide overhead picture of a John Kerry rally last fall in Madison, Wis., which Mr. Burnett shot with a Canon 20D digital camera, the same camera used by thousands of other professionals around the world. Not surprisingly, the picture looks like thousands of others that were shipped around the globe during the campaign.

 

The colors are bright. Every part of the image is crisp, so crisp that just picking the minuscule figure of Mr. Kerry out of the huge crowd takes a "Where's Waldo?" moment.

 

And then Mr. Burnett flipped to a photograph taken seconds later with the ancient Speed Graphic. Suddenly, the image took on a luminescent depth. The center of the image, with Mr. Kerry, was clear. Yet soon the crowd along the edges began to float into softer focus on translucent planes of color.

 

The effect is to direct the viewer's eye to Mr. Kerry while also conveying the scale and intensity of the crowd. In accomplishing both at the same time, the old-fashioned photograph communicates a rich sense of meaning that the digital file does not.

 

The digital picture pretends to display raw reality. The analog picture is a visualization of human memory.

 

"Most people follow the crowd in terms of approach and equipment," Francisco P. Bernasconi, director of photography at Getty Images, said over the hubbub after Mr. Burnett's presentation last month. "David feels comfortable exploring other types of photography that are out there."

 

That may be why a black-and-white portfolio of Mr. Burnett's Speed Graphic work from the Athens Olympics for ESPN magazine won the top prize for sports stories at the World Press Photo Contest in Amsterdam this spring. A tableau of field-hockey players looks like miniature dolls individually placed on a felt playmat. Beach volleyball players seem suspended by invisible string on a puppeteer's stage.

 

"It got to the point a few years ago that everyone in the press was using essentially the same tools," Mr. Burnett, 58, said the morning after his talk, drinking coffee around the corner from the Manhattan headquarters of Contact Press Images, the photo agency that Mr. Burnett helped found in 1976. (The agency's roster now includes Annie Leibovitz and Sebasti㯠Salgado.)

 

"Everyone is using the same couple of Canon and Nikon digital cameras and the same three or four lenses," Mr. Burnett said. "And it isn't that everyone is using them in exactly the same way, but I started to notice a sameness in the look of most things I was seeing. Don't get me wrong: I think digital is incredible in a lot of ways. For me, digital has pretty much totally replaced shooting 35-millimeter slides. But as a photojournalist, you're just trying to get someone turning the pages of the magazine to stop for that extra second before they go on to the jeans ad or whatever. So I started thinking about different looks."

 

Naturally, Mr. Burnett found his new look in the closet. He hasn't gotten rid of a camera since 1978 (when he traded in all his Nikons for Canon gear) and he has around 50 cameras and 50 lenses at his home near Washington. So by the time he hit the campaign trail last year for Time magazine, he was packing not only the Speed Graphic and the digital Canon, but also a 2 1/4-by-2 1/4-inch Mamiya or Rolleiflex and a $15 plastic camera called a Holga. In fact, a photo of Al Gore on the stump that Mr. Burnett took with a Holga won a top prize at the 2001 White House News Photographers' Association's Eyes of History contest.

 

Michele Stephenson, now the director of photography at Time, first met Mr. Burnett when he arrived at the magazine as an intern in 1967. (Mr. Burnett is currently one of the magazine's contract photographers.) "David has always been a curious person and has always tried new and fresh approaches," she said. "I worry about his back, carrying all of this stuff, but never about his eye. He is always looking for something new, even if that means going back to something old."

 

Mr. Burnett is certainly no Luddite; he has been using Macintosh computers for his photo work since the 1980's. And he said that digital photography remained his medium of choice when he must file pictures quickly to an editor or when he wants to shoot dozens or hundreds of photos at once. He added that the instant feedback offered by a digital camera was a major help in fast-moving situations.

 

"Digital is fantastic in its flexibility, not only in being able to get the image and then transmit it around the world in minutes, but in difficult situations where something like the Speed Graphic is just impractical," he said. "Like if you're in the jungle and you know the tiger is going to come along this one spot and you don't want to have to change film, a big memory card really helps.

 

"And also, with film you had to wait hours or days to see what you had come up with," he added. "With digital you can see instantly what you've missed, so it can really help you fine-tune your composition. That's a big benefit."

 

Nonetheless, when listening to Mr. Burnett talk about the evolution of photo technology, you hear a bit of the priest whose temple has been invaded by heathens.

 

"The change really started with autofocus," he said. "That opened up much of what used to be a more craft-based part of the business to almost anybody. I mean, if you can hold it steady and aim it and push that button, you can get an in-focus sharp picture a great degree of the time. And digital, I mean, now anyone with a camera can shoot one, see how bad they screwed up, try and fix it, shoot another one."

 

Average consumers, of course, often have enough trouble even with that. Pressed for a tip for the birthday-party photographer, Mr. Burnett said: "The thing that bugs me the most when I see people taking pictures of their family or the Grand Canyon or whatever, is that they spend so much time fumbling with the controls that whatever real moment there might have been is inevitably lost."

 

"Ultimately, the technology is just a tool," he said. "It's a tool that lets your eye become the picture. It's easy to get caught up with all of the gadgets and all of the technology, but the most important thing is just to get comfortable with the tools you have."

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I'm not a professional, but an avid amateur. I do have a 4x5 System and shoot only transparencies. However, I also own two digital SLR's (FUJI S2 & Kodak 14n). I'd agree that 4x5 transparency (I'm talking Velvia here) quality is superior in terms Megapixels and perhaps tonality - I used to say color saturation as well, but I've found a way to to optimized my digital workflow to have an equivalent or better color quality than the velvia of old. You also have the convenience of using movements, however rarely did I use this feature in Landscapes and the most movement I've used is tilt to compensate for the shallow DOF - which was never a problem in Digital (f/22 and nearly everything is tact sharp).

 

That's pretty much all the positives I can think of in 4x5, if I really need that much detail and want to print larger than 20x30 then I use my 4x5 otherwise it's mostly digital. It's also more expensive for me to use 4x5: the chemicals (toxic to the environment), costs of processing, costs of scanning, and so on. Digital has greater exposure lattitude/dynamic range than transparencies. Shadow details from my digital files are much better than a Drum scanned tranny (which costs upwards a $100 to scan). I can work faster with my DSLR in rapid changing conditions in lighting (where I do most of my shooting).

 

In the end though, I'll go back to the old addage, it's the photographer that makes the photograph not the camera. Afterall DSLR's, 4x5, and Medium Format; they're all just a light tight box right? Horses for courses right? So why all the equipment angst?

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