D30 and wildlife: Pros and Cons

[dick_ginkowski]

I have been considering going (at least partially) digital since the

D30 came out. I have seen some people have good results but was

curious what feedback there would be after several months of use.

 

From my perspective, a D30 with my 300 f/2.8L and 2x should give me

960mm f/5.6 at less than the third of the cost of a 600 f/4 new.

 

I actually had a chance to play today with the D30 and the new 1D

(Canon rep's). The 1D will be about $5200-$5400 and is built like a

tank (similar to the 1V). Out of my price range (but a nice unit

nonetheless).

 

The D30 feels like a digital version of a Rebel or Elan. The

shutter's "trigger action" seems slow (slower than the 1D, which is

like the 1V) and I wonder how difficult this lag plus the fact you

can't get off many "motordrive shots" makes it for shooting wildlife

(such as moving deer and elk, birds, etc.)

 

I've read various pros and cons of the D30 but would like to hear

from the people who use it for the purposes we would

(pros/cons/suggestions) Thanks.

[dick_ginkowski]

I forgot to mention: what do you do with images after shooting them?

 

Seems like the Kingston 256mb compact flash card works best in the D30. You get a 1G Microdrive with the D30, too. Seems like you should be able to get the equivalent of nearly two rolls of film on a 256mb card in RAW (anyone really use anything but RAW?).

 

I have heard about the Digital Wallet for storage. Anyone have experience with it or a similar device?

 

And then what after that? Seems like the logical choice would be to download them onto a CD burner...maybe something like the equivalent of five rolls or so onto a CD.

[ShunCheung]

I'll make a very general comment: I expect myself to switch to digital in the next year or two. However, when to switch will be a difficult decision because the competition in digital is heating up. I expect the quality to improve quickly while the price come down quickly.

 

It is like buying a PC. A year ago we bought a PC for ~$1400. Today, a much better model is a few hundred dollars cheaper. Unless you are pretty rich or a pro who uses his/her equipment a lot, it is difficult to spend $3000 to $5000 on a digital body and watch its value cut in half in a year or two while getting obsolote.

 

I use my PC every day, so it is much easier to justify the cost despite the fact that it is clearly a losing "investment." For backup purposes, I'll need at least two repidly deprecating digital bodies, making it even harder to justify. (I cannot really use a film body as a backup, because I would have to buy film which most likely will remain unused and expired.)

[bobatkins]

I agree with Shun. I expect a significant price drop in the next year of so. There's really no good reason why a 4 megapixel camera like the Canon G2 (complete with a lens) should cost $600, while a D30 with 3 megapixel sensor costs $2000 more (without a lens). It's my guess we should see $1500 digital SLR bodies next year. I think the technology is in place now, but while people are prepared to pay $2500+ for a "digital Elan" and $5500 for a "digtal 1v", there's no huge incentive to cut cost. Once one manufacturer does it though, the others will follow. I'm just hoping Canon gets there first with a D30 replacement!

 

I did ask if there was anything in the pipeline at the Canon booth at Photo Expo in NYC, but they couldn't (or wouldn't) say. There was a rumor of a lower cost Canon "D3" posted on a French web site which has a decent track record when it comes to rumors. They have been wrong at times, but they've also been right...

[chuck]

"There's really no good reason why a 4 megapixel camera like the Canon G2 (complete with a lens) should cost $600, while a D30 with 3 megapixel sensor costs $2000 more (without a lens). "<p>

I think there is. I suspect G2's 4 million are puny, noisy, third rate pixels compare to D30's much larger, higher quality, and lower noise pixels. I think digital SLRs generally have much better imaging sensors than the consumer digitals of similar pixel count. If that is not the case, then after 3 years, someone should have caught on to Nikon's bluff and publisized the fact that D-1 isn't so different from the CoolPix.

[mikemilton]

Hi Dick, Gee I have not talked to you since the CI$ era!

 

I was using an EOS3 and bought a D30. I finished the roll in the

3 and have not used it since.

 

Clearly the D30 is much less camera, but here are my 'reasons'

 

- workflow (I work in digital, providing TIFF file to the lab for

printing on traditional materials) and the scanning step is time

consuming)

- Image quality (I actually prefer what I get off the sensor to film) it

seems to have better colour gamut and latitude (check out

www.luminous-landscape.com for similar comments and

sample shots)

 

My major complaint is focus (accuracy / speed / lowlight perf)

[lee_shively]

I'd love to go with digital but I also think the prices need to come down and the megapixels need to go up a bit more before I would be interested. But then, I don't make a living from my photography and feel no over-riding pressure to jump in.

[bobatkins]

"<em>I think there is. I suspect G2's 4 million are puny, noisy, third rate pixels compare

to D30's much larger, higher quality, and lower noise pixels</em>"

<p>

I'm sure Nikon and Canon would love you to believe that, but I don't think it's true. Look at the tests on the web and the sample images. The top end SLRs may be slightly better, but the difference for most applications is quite small.

<p>

The CCD/CMOS in SLRs may be larger (physically, not in pixel count) in the SLR, which accounts for some of the difference in price of course. Economy of scale helps too. You can sell a lot more $600 camera than $5000 cameras, so you can cut your profit margin on each sale.

<p>

Despite these factors, you are still paying a high premium to be "first on you block" with a digital SLR at the present time. If you're a working pro who can recover the cost of a digital SLR in 12 months it makes good sense to buy one. If you're one of those photographers who buys a camera to last 5-10 years then unless you have lots of surplus income to spend it really doesn't make a lot of sense to jump into a pro-level digital SLR at this point. It probably makes more sense to buy a 4 megapixel "P&S" like the G2 or similar. That way you only lose 1/2 of $700 rather than 1/2 of $5000 when you upgrade next year and get twice the performance for 1/2 the cost! Of course you can't use your 600/4 on it, but if you do a lot of shooting in the 35-135 range, a high end "prosumer P&S" digital could be a good buy.

[bob_k]

I experimented with wildlife photography in the back country of Alaska a year and a half ago when the Nikon D1 first came out.

 

The biggest problems were 1) storage for a large quantity of shots taken over a week in the backcountry 2) power, because the D1 only had a rechargeable battery pack and did not take batteries and 3) quality.

 

For storage I ended up taking a Sony Vaio to offload shots off of 340MB microdrives. It worked well and I was able to evaluate the images in the field as well. It was kinda weird using Photoshop in the middle of nowhere on shots I had taken within the past hour. To me, this is a huge payoff for digital. I can see eventually using a firewire from the digital camera to a small computer (or similar device) so that you can see your shots at high resolution as you shoot them, even if you are a 3-hour plane ride away from civilization.

 

For power, I just brough extra battery packs for both the camera and the Vaio. I still had to really conserve on power. A better solution using batteries is needed.

 

The quality was still nowhere near slide film. Pictures just aren't as good. Also, I never bought the idea that you are getting free telephoto. It's the same as the free telephoto you get if you crop your slides.

 

Seattle, Washington

[bob_k]

Also, other than the slightly lower quality of the pictures, my conclusion was that digital is a very usable solution for wildlife photography. The extra 4 or 5 pounds of weight for the computer and battery packs was almost negligible compared to the weight of the tripods, heads, super-telephoto lens, cameras, etc. The extra weight was not really noticed on daily hikes of up to 4 or 5 hours each way. And you might even be better off as far as space when you consider the space your film takes up.

 

Digital is also a much better solution as far as the hassles of aiport baggage security x-ray checks on your film.

[martin_feldman1]

I don't think the price is going to come down much for the pro models. However, the number of megapixels is going to increase and I suspect it will be at about 8 to 10 within the next year or so. Then I'll buy.

[bob_k]

It's not only the number of pixels, but also the color range for each pixel. That's probably even more important. Then there's the ability of the camera to detect and record different ranges of light.

[ShunCheung]

The main reason I think digital SLR prices will come down is competition. Merely a little more than two years back, those Kodak-modified Canon/Nikon SLRs were like US$15K to 20K. When the Nikon D1 was introduced two years ago at $5K, the Kodak price dropped quickly. After the D1x/D1h were introduced early this year, the original D1 dropped to the $3K range. For two years the D1 family has no serious competition, but that will change when the Canon EOS-1D becomes available. Moreover, other brands such as Contax, etc. also have digital bodies in the pipeline.

 

And even though the top-of-the-line models ramain at the $5K range, for example, hyperthetically, if Nikon introduces a 8M-pixel D2 in 2002 at $5K, the D1x will have to drop to $3K. So your "investment" will still be cut in half and become obsolote in a year or two.

 

The value of the current film bodies is another issue. Just a few days ago somebody asked me about buying a Nikon F5. My answer was that when will you switch to digital, and when will everybody else switch to digital? An expensive F5 may only serve you 2, 3, or 4 more years. When people switch over to digital SLRs in large numbers, I can see a flood of film bodies enter the used market with few buyers. The prices (both new and used) for high-end film bodies will probably come down rapidly as well.

[paul_dibiase3]

I think the affordability of digital bodies is only part of the issue. The other is how people are going to store and then retrieve images over a period of many years and even decades. I know several librarians and archievists and this is a troubling problem even for the professionals. I can see Joe Photographer (obviously, not a member of this elite group) having a hard disk crash and losing a few years worth of photos. Or Joe thinks that his photos are safely archieved to a home burnt CD-ROM, only to find the the CD-ROM has a lifetime of less than seven years before deterioration sets in. Archieving the digital images will have to be very easy, the media will have to have a long life, and/or conversion to new media will have to be so easy that Joe Photographer will do it. Currently, most people find it a bother to back up their computer data on an occasional basis.

 

On the plus side for digital images is the idea of being able to make perfect copies that are easily stored off-site.

[bobatkins]

I don't see storage as that big an issue. CD-Rs are cheap, easy to write and easy to copy. I'm sure a CD-R (good quality), cold stored, will probably outlast me. There's always the question of whether the technology to read CDs will be around for a long time, but I suspect it will be (or at least the DVD burners/writers will be able to read CD-Rs).

 

I think the question of whether to go digital or not depends on your application and how much film you shoot. If a D30 costs $2500, how much film do you have to use in one year to make it a worthwhile buy? Say you can sell it for $1500 in one year's time (if you have one for sale at $1500 now, I'll buy it!). That's $1000 you've spent. How much film can you shoot, develop and scan (or get scanned) for $1000? Say 100 rolls? If you shoot more than 100 rolls/year and you don't need super high resolution files, it may well make sense to buy a D30 now and "upgrade" if something better comes along in a year's time.

[bob_k]

Shun Cheung: You are right that digital photography technology will improve and drop in cost drastically in the next few years. It's happened with every other form of digital technology, so this shouldn't be different. How far will prices drop? I'm guessing that in 3 or 4 years the top-end digital cameras will be cheaper than today's prices for top-end non-digital 35mm cameras. The question is how long will it take them to be better or at least close to equivalent as far as quality?

 

On storage: There are at least two different types of storage we need to look at: long-term storage and short-term storage for when you are in the field. For short term, there are already small hard-disk units for offloading photos, so I don't think it will be a problem. Having used a Sony Vaiao out in the field, I think people will want portable high resolution viewers as well. The technology for long-term storage will also improve: writable DVD's; tape drives; and as bandwidth improves, online storage of photos.

 

With online storage, you can set it up so that images in a certain directory on your hard drive are automatically uploaded to a "digital vault" site that has all the protection and back-up you can possibly imagine. (I know there are companies doing this for corporate documents, but I don't know if there are any yet specializing in photo images.) It is safer than slides, where you are susceptible to fire, accidents and natural disasters. Storage and handling for digital images will be easier, safer and cheaper than film.

 

On the motivation for going digital: Total price (including equipment, film, storage, etc.) is important, but I think the primary road block for going totally digital is still quality. It's getting there, but the quality of digital pictures is still not close enough to traditional pictures for many professionals and serious amateur to switch. But digital quality and price will be here soon.

[dick_ginkowski]

of course is that Canon will upgrade the D30 soon (could that account for recent price drops?) to rectify what seems to be the two major concerns: buffer and shutter lag.

[ShunCheung]

Your don't need to "fear" that Canon will update the D30 soon; they will and they will often: like every one to two years (that is what I mean by "soon."). It is about a year and half between Nikon's D1 and D1x/h. Their Coolpix line releases a top model every year.

 

As far as storage goes, I don't think that is a concern at all. My current concern is that my house might burn down and I'll lose all my slides (and perhaps my own life as well). With perfect digital copies, I can have additional copies saved in my parents' house and a friend's house on the other coast. Sony already has a PC in the mid $1K range with a DVD burner. If anything, digital has a huge advantage there.

[bill_oneill]

For me, it�s going to be a while before I give up on film. There are numerous reasons of which the most important is image quality. I have a 4000 DPI Nikon scanner that produces images with almost 20M pixels from a 35mm slide at a 16 bit colour depth. This far exceeds any SLR type digital camera body, yet the image quality is not as good as the original slide. Still, it cost only 1/3 as much as a Nikon D1. A lot of us buy $7,000 lenses, put them on $1,500 tripods and hone our technique over years to extract as much image quality as we can from those slides. The last thing I�m going to do is throw all that away in favour of some expensive toy with only 5M or 6M pixel resolution and a miserable12 bits per colour.

 

Next to the image quality is the ease of use. Currently, film is still easier to use than digital. When I go for a 4 or 5 hour hike into the landscape I want to bring as much photographic equipment and water as I can to maximize the opportunities. I have no desire to tote a laptop or other mass storage device with me along with it�s associated batteries. As it stands now, I can change a roll of film in about 20 seconds without leaving my tripod. The pocket in my vest that I put film in holds more than 30 rolls. More than enough for a day�s shooting. I can see no time soon when digital will offer me a better solution.

 

Next in line is the tangible slide. For storage, viewing and transportation it just can�t be beat. It takes no time at all to pick one out of my files and view it with a loupe. At least not next to the time it takes me to fire up my PC, search through several directories then start loading 50MB-120MB images into Photoshop until I have the one I want. With slides, I can put together a 30 slide show in under an hour from scratch. It takes me more than 3 times as long using my computer and I have been using computers for 28 years. Then comes the presentation of the show. My $600 worth of Kodak carousel projectors will cast a wonderfully bright image 12� by 8� at a resolution that will totally embarrass the pitiful image I get out of the $7000 InFocus digital projector I sometimes borrow from work.

 

I could go on and on, as I am sure many of you could, but what it gets right down to is that digital for nature is still just an expensive toy. It�s great for the newsprint journalist, but not for me. However, I am realistic. I know eventually there will be a 35mm digital camera that will offer 50M pixels and a 24 bit colour depth and it will be almost as good as Fuji�s magnificent 100F. When that camera costs me the equivalent of about $2500 in today�s terms I will think hard about making the switch. That�s provided they have solved some of the other problems that haunt digital right now. My estimate is that this will be a reality between 6-10 years form now. Until then, I won�t give up on film.

[herman_hiel2]

Dick,

I haven't used the D30 myself; there is a british pro wildlife photg

( Andy Rouse) who wrote a review about it and compared it to his 1V; he admits the AF is slow but after a while he got more keepers than with the 1V. I also like to shoot fast with my 1N, but you should see my trash bin when I look at the results...