Switching to digital for Nature Photography

[derek_franks2]

Well, I've been away from photography for a couple of years. Lately,

I've been interested in getting back into nature photography. More

specifically, wildlife photography. I've got a pretty good Nikon

setup - n90s, 80-200/2.8, 35-70/2.8, 24/2.8, 400/5.6 (tokina). Part

of the reason I moved away from photography was I really didn't like

the hassle of handling the large volume of film I always brough back

from trips (not to mention those costs add up). Now that the D100 is

out, I've been considering switching over to digital. I've never

printed larger than 16x20. I really like the idea of being able to

edit images on my computer and being able to e-mail pictures to

friends and family. Additionally I see not having to sort, file, and

store slides/negatives as a big plus.

 

So will a D100 fulfill my needs?

 

On a related note, I've been considering switching over to the af-s

lenses. Are there any major differences b/w canon and nikon's af-s

lenses? Price, function? I'm only asking because if I'm switching

lenses out and buying a new body, it wouldn't be much hassle to go

with canon's d60 instead of the d100. When I was drifting away from

photography, it seemed like canon was starting to outpace nikon with

regards to technical innovations and in some cases pricing. Is this

still true? I swear that I'm not trying to start a flame war :-)

Anyways, your thoughts?

[ellis_vener_photography]

WILL A D100 FULFILL YOUR NEEDS? <P>If you are photographing wildlife,

probably not because you'll likely want more frames per second and a larger

in camera buffer. Quality wise ? sure absolutely. If you can wait a few months

the nikon based Kodak 14n will be even better -- as will the Canon 1Ds. The

14n has a list price of about $4800. The Canaon 1Ds has a set list price of

$8000.<P>Image quality is very much not related to pixel count or sensor size

however. Just if not important is wich recording mode you use: 8 bit JPG Fine /

Large, TIF or 16 bit NEF or RAW. Also a great deal is going to depend on how

you process the image when it is in your computer.<P>RE: NIKON vs

CANON. <P>Let me inflame a lot of people by made a definitive statement: at

the end of the day there isn't a dimes worth of difference between the two: the

differences are imperceptable. End of story. what I have noticed when

shooting digital is that the quality of lenses is very important, and to get the

best images you need the best glass. This is a much more significant issue

with digital cameras than with film cameras. Remember the basic rule of

computing? GIGO? which means Garbage In = Garbage Out. Your 80-200 f/

2.8 if it is the AF-D version will be fine, the 24/2.8 should be too but I think

you'll be dissatisfied with the others. If you go with Canon you'll want the "L"

glass. If you go with Nikon, you will want AF-S glass.

[bobatkins]

If you don't want to project slides or send slides to publishers and you don't really need huge prints then digital may be just fine.

 

There's something of an issue with some ink jet prints fading faster then conventional prints, but that's nothing money can't fix.

 

I'd agree that from looking at the images you couldn't possibly tell whether Nikon or Canon equipment was used. Nikon has tended to be a little behind Canon in bringing out new fetaures (e.g. IS lenses, Eye controlled focus, full frame DSLR etc.), but their quality is comparable and they do have the advantage of some compatibility with older lenses.

 

The major current downside of DSLRs is the fact that they depreciate very fast (and so make poor long term investments), they are still evolving so next year's model will not only be cheaper but it will also be better and if they go wrong they may be very expensive to repair. As I've said before, you can get a 4 year extended warranty on an SLR for about $50, but a 1 year extended warranty on a DSLR is $250. The warranty cost is normally based on repair costs and repair frequency, so draw your own conclusions!

[karl_lehmann]

<I>"I really like the idea of being able to edit images on my computer and being able to e-mail pictures to friends and family."</I><P>Well, you could just buy a scanner and do this - probably a good idea anyway if you already have a lot of slides & negs. If this enables you to put off buying a digital body for even a year or so you'll probably save enough to pay for the scanner - prices are dropping fast and quality is rising.<P><I>"I see not having to sort, file, and store slides/negatives as a big plus."</I><P>True, but it's not a free lunch. You'll have to sort, file, and store digital files instead. Of course if you go with a scanner you'll have to do both, at least for a while!

[arnabdas]

Hi Derek,

<P>

I agree with what Ellis, Bob and Karl have to say. Additionally, whether the D100 is right for you depends on the kind of shooting you want to do.

<P>

I have had a brief 2-day stint with a D100 but this is what I can say --

<BR>

-- If you bang around your camera often then the D100 may not quite be upto the task. The build quality is perfectly adequate for the occassional shooter, though. I did not find it exceptional. Weather sealing may be questionable, too.

<BR>

-- Dust on CCD: I have not experienced it but have heard people talk about it. If you change lenses in the field often -- you may have to watch out for this.

<BR>

-- As Ellis mentioned, if you are interested in wildlife "action shots", the FPS will be limiting.

<BR>

-- If you camp/trek in the absolute wilderness for 2-3 weeks or more, you might want to take a film camera alongside. The rechargeable battery of the D100 I heard lasts a long time, but maybe not that long.

<BR>

-- If you have been shooting slides so far, then it may become difficult to project/display your shots if they are in digital format. If all you want are prints, not much hassles (apart from color correction stuff).

<BR>

-- If you shoot macro, the D100 does not have mirror-lockup. No matter what people say -- mirror lock sure makes a difference. I traded my N90s for a second FM3A body just to get the poor-man's mirro lockup with the self-timer.

<BR>

-- D100 *does not meter* with PN-11 attached, or for that matter -- with MF nikkors (except AI-P) attached.

<BR>

-- I heard the D100 produces softer images compared to D1x/D1h/D60 (because of stronger anti-aliasing), but never got a change to compare.

<BR>

-- I'm assuming you are very conversant in computers and Photoshop. I find color correction/image manipulation quite challenging to do myself. I noticed that some of the shots with the D100 really needs quite a bit of tweaking, but that could be my bad.

<BR>

-- Cost and obsolescence. This one hurts !!! The camera you buy new today for $2000 may be selling mint at ebay for $750 in about one year's time.

<P>

From here you can pretty much sense how a D100 could suit your needs. It all depends on what you expect to accomplish with your camera.

<P>

On a related note, I almost decided to buy a D100 about a month ago. I was (still am) quite dissatisfied with my Canon D2400UF scanner and the scans don't look 1/10th as good as the original Velvia slides. But then I decided not to fall in the "yearly upgrade" trap and join the megapixels race, made up my mind to continue doing macro-work exclusively on film using classic MF Nikon bodies. Traded my N90s for a black FM3A (already had a chrome one) and am living happily since then with them and my two only lenses -- 105 AF and 200 AF micro-Nikkors. I'm a happy dinosaur :-)

<P>

BTW Why don't you rent a D100 and see how it feels?

<P>

Cheers

<BR>

/Arnab

[matthew_cromer]

I find it very hard NOT to encourage serious photographers to switch to digital. I think a digital kit will develop a photographers skill at least 2x - 3x faster than a film kit assuming the person is serious about developing their ability, due to the immediate feedback and the ability to shoot and shoot and shoot for free.

 

My interest in Photography as a serious pursuit only arrived after having a digital camera for a while. While that first 1.4MP point and shoot model had many limitations, I was able to shoot as much as I wanted to and I could see the pictures on the back LCD screen as soon as I took them. Eventually I moved from just wanting snapshots to the desire to take good pictures. I scraped together some coin and bought the best digital camera I could afford. In the 9 months that I have owned that new camera, I've put 14,000 frames through it and my photography skills today are almost infinitely better than they were a year ago.

 

The D100 is a good camera and I suspect you will really enjoy the digital workflow and the ability to shoot for free. In a couple years you will upgrade to something better, but in the meantime the D100 will give you great enjoyment and tons of great pictures.

[ShunCheung]

This is a topic I very much would like to discuss. Back in August I bought a D100 and took it to Australia for a 3-week trip, along with my F5, F100 and a Contax 645. During the trip I managed to take similar images with 35mm slides, digital D100 and 645 slides. In fact, I am working with Paul Wilson, who frequently posts here, to compare some of the images.

 

Since the D100 is fairly new, I have only used it for a few months, but then nobody has used it for much longer. Its build quality is clearly not as good as the pro cameras such as the F5 and D1 series. However, as long as you don't abuse it, it should be fine. My main problem with it are two fold: (1) slow AF and (2) the lack of a super wide angle. The D100, Fuji S2 and the up-coming Kodak DCS 14n all use the same CAM900 AF module as in the F80/N80 while the F5, F100 and the D1 series use the CAM1300. Even with AF-S lenses, the AF in my D100 is not fast enough to lock focus on flying birds. (Incidentally, I have read a lot of complaints about the slow AF on the Canon D60 as well.) And because of the smaller CCD, even my 17-35 zoom is like a 25mm on the wide end. Since I am now spoiled by the 17mm, I'd like to get a true super wide for the D100. If previously your widest lens was a 24mm, maybe this isn't a big issue. Of course, the 1.5x "multiplying factor" is a plus on the long end.

 

Quality-wise, the D100 gives me very nice 8x10s from my EPSON 1280 printer, and I have seen excellent 13x19 from the Canon D60 printed on the Canon S9000 printer. As far as image quality goes, the current "lower end" DSLRs are very close to 35mm film. It is still not as good as even 645 medium format yet.

 

Unfortunately, here is another bad news. Ok, there are no more slide or negatives to sort though. However, you'll have a lot of digital files. Practically all "keeper" images from DSLRs require some post processing on the computer. So most likely you'll spend a lot of time sitting in front of our PC tuning the colors and saturation before you can print them. You might save in one area but you pay elsewhere. And needless to say, you'll need a higher-end PC/MAC with plenty of processing power and disk space as well as modern image processing tools. I just upgraded to a full PhotoShop 7. Meanwhile, each NEF (Nikon Electronic Format) RAW file from the D100 is about 10M. The images from my trip filled up my older hard drive in no time. I currently use a MindStore "digital wallet" to store images during the trip. I have no doubt that in a year or two, a laptop will have to be part of my standard travel kit.

 

As far as Canon vs. Nikon, I agree with Ellis that you aren't going to see much difference from the images. Nikon is often more expensive though if you compare the prices of equivalent lenses, but frequently the choices are not entirely the same so that a direct comparison is hard. Bob is absolutely correct that Canon has more innovations. For example, the fast USM AF lenses from around 1990 totally changed action photography and Nikon was slow to react. IS has been quite successful but Canon doesn't even put eye-control in any EOS-1 bodies, be it the 1V, 1D, or 1Ds. That says a lot about the success of eye control. In 1999 Nikon introduced the D1, the first "affordable" DSLR to the market and it took Canon a while to response. But now Canon has the EOS 1Ds, the most advanced and the most expensive DSLR on the market and Nikon hasn't responded yet. So the competition goes on. Eventually, it is the person behind the camera that makes the most difference.

 

Incidentally, both Fuji and Kodak are making Nikon-mount DSLRs so that Nikon users have more choices. A lot of people feel that the Fuji S2 is "better" than the D100, so that is something to consider. The Kodak 14n is designed to be a studio camera, a Hasselblad/Mamiya 67 type replacement. While it has 14M pixels, it is going to have slow AF (the CAM900 again) and a slow frame rate. It may be a very good landscape camera but I am not sure it'll be good for wildlife photography.

 

I have mentioned this a couple of times. Canon expects the "lower end" DSLRs to be below $1000 in 2004. Clearly my D100 will depreciate very quickly. But in a year or two, a lot of nature photographers will switch to digital because it is going to be very affordable. You just can't beat instant results.

[jess_lee]

The D100 or the d60 are not suitable as wildlife cameras. I have used the D100 briefly and the d60 extensively and they are comparable. Which is to say the are slow. If you wanted to use them for other nature applications they would be fine.

As for your question about Nikon vs Canon,as a former member of nikon pro services and a current member of Canon pro service well you can guess the rest. Canon does service Nikon does not, VR is not in the same ballpark with IS, those are the two issues from my view. I used Nikon gear for 25 years and Canon for 3 years right now Canon has the upper hand.

[alex_p._schorsch]

I do a lot of Nature photography. I have been documenting the Iguassu National Park in Brazil for several years. Here it is very hot and with dense underbrush and even though I often have an assistant I find that it's very hard to carry and set up very heavy tripods and lenses. It is hard enough with medium sized equipment. I find that nature photography is a mixture of landscape, telephoto lens shots and macro shots. After taking a lot of macro and landscape, I found that the wildlife and bird shots with a 400mm lens were just not filling the frame. Instead of paying a fortune for a 500 or 600mm lens I bought a D60 to use with a 400mm lens. All of a sudden I started getting really excellent results. I find that with this combination I can round out the rest of my work and complement my landscape work. I publish my work in the form of magazine style books and calendars. As long as I don't blow up my d60 shots they compare favorably with my slide shots. I don't recomend the D60 for landscape work because of the lack of wide angle possibilities. For macro and wildlife I find it to be excellent. The D60 can already give me excellent results but maybe in a couple of years I'll trade up to a camera with more pixels, but I would like to mainatain the 1.6 cropping ratio as I definately don't want to carry heavy glass. I consider the D60 to be my "tele-body", and I'm getting more and better shots than ever before. I recomend you try it. You'll probably feel that this setup will open up all kinds of photographic opportunities for you. This has been my experience, FWIW, cheers.

[alex_p._schorsch]

Red Breasted Toucan with D60 and 400mm f/5.6<div></div>

[alain hogue]

Hi,

 

To my point of vue, digital is maybe good enough for some kind of nature photography, but certainly not for bird photography. The reason is very simple : "CROPPING". In the small bird business, very often we need to crop the picture. Regularly, we need to get an 8" X 10" enlargement (sometime more) from a surface less than 25% of the original frame. For now, I think digital cannot support this. However, I have to admit that a huge progress have been made for a couple of years. Maybe in short futur bird photographer will get what they need (+ 10 megapixels with acceptable speed an acceptable price).

 

Alain Hogue

[bobatkins]

[That should of course read "Digital Moose"]

 

Alain - well, you're in luck! Cameras like the D60 already crop the frame to less than 50% of a 35mm frame (in terms of area)! Alternatively you can regard this as the "digital multiplication factor". Whichever way you cut it, if you intend to crop 35mm frames, the smaller size of (some) digital sensors is a bonus for you.

 

I recently used an EOS D30 ("only" 3MP) in Maine to photograph moose. I also used an EOS-3 with Sensia 100 film. I took the same shots of the same moose using a 500/4.5L + 1.4xTC. Now if I enlarge THE MOOSE to the same size from the digital file and from a 4000dpi scanned file, I see very little difference in terms of resolution. The film scan is maybe slightly higher in resolution, but the grain is quite evident. The digital file is "smoother" and grain free. Of course if you print them both at 8x12, the film scan is a little sharper - but the moose is smaller!

 

I would not say the D30 and D60 aren't usable for nature work. While they may not be the best for rapidly moving subjects, they do very well on more static targets. I had no problems with moose or seabirds for example - and of course trees and other landscape elements don't move much either! As long as the light is OK, the AF is decent. It's not as good as the high end bodies in dim light though.

 

One potential problem with digital, as Shun points out, is that you may tend to take a lot more pictures. That's fine until it comes to storing and retrieving them and backing them up. It's not difficult to fill 500MB to 1GB per day, especially if you shoot RAW files. Processing them takes time too. While you don't have to buy film, you do have to buy CDs and hard drives and memory cards, but at least they are reusable!<div></div>

[alex_p._schorsch]

One thing that Shun forgot to mention - conventional film setups nowadays usually include a "scan". If you do scan "in house" you will have lower definition than Digital camera output, will have to invest in a scanner, and scanning is a very hard art (hours of work) to master. I consider it to be the Achilles heel of a Film to Digital setup. If you are going to publish your photos than you will probably have to pay someone to scan them on a drum scanner which can put you back at least $20.00 a slide and maybe more for color corrections. One of the major advantages of a digital camera is that you can import the image directly into photoshop without having to do a lot of fiddling with curves etc.Cheers.

[jess_lee]

My main issues with using these second tier digital cameras is the same as previously mentioned by Ellis. I might add the slow auto focus and inability to auto focus at f8 is a problem. When I am shooting wildlife I need speed and these camera don't cut it. Others may not have the same requirements and these cameras will work great for them.

[ShunCheung]

My previous post is so long that I am sure I already bored a lot of people to death. This is not a simple topic and there are clearly a lot more issues to deal with. Having said that, I am still using a somewhat old Nikon LS-30 (Coolscan III) that requires a SCSI card from the pre-USB era, and I am quite happy with the results.

 

Ellis and Jess are right about the frame rate. The D100 gives you 2 to 3 frames per second at the RAW mode with a buffer of 6 frames. That is clearly insufficient for any actions shots. However, my point is that for action shots, you really need good AF. If other people have better success with the AF on the D100, please let me know as maybe I doing something wrong. But with my 300mm/f4 AF-S, I am having a hard time getting sharp birds-in-flight images, something my F5 has little trouble with. IMO, a high frame rate is pretty much meaningless unless your AF gives you sharp images to begin with. Therefore, I feel that AF is the bigger issue for the D100. (Again, apparently a lot of these limitations apply to the Canon D60 and Fuji S2 as well.)

 

I mentioned these issues because Derek's original question is about the D100. If you use higher-end DSLRs such as the Canon EOS-1D (and apparently the up-coming very expensive 1Ds) or the Nikon D1x, AF speed is not a problem. (In particular, the D1x now has a RAM upgrade to improve its performance.) In fact, a few friends of mine have switched to digital for good after getting the D1x. I am just not ready to pay over $4000 for a DSLR that is kind of out of date already.

 

And as Bob and other point out, if you are into more static shots, image quality from the "lower end" DSLRs is just fine and can rival that of 35mm film.

[matthew_cromer]

I'm surprised to hear of your trouble with the D100 AF. Lots of people have been complaining about the D60 AF but I hadn't heard many problems with the D100. Too bad about that, you might think for $2,200 you would get good quality AF.

[mlfly]

I think he was desiring to go to digital but was seeking justification for doing so (no offense, but not doing photography because of the process of getting film back and having to review it is a tad weak as an excuse <g>) That's ok. For those of us who don't (or no longer) strive to go pro and sell our work, who do it for the outing, the fun and just being around birds, digital brings a lot to the table. You can use a shorter, lighter lens (although I still prefer the 600). Getting sharp focus and good composition hasn't changed with digital. Exposure/color balance is perhaps easier but that means it's also easier to let the camera do the thinking. So, it is also easier to NOT get good exposure/color balance. IOW, There's no shortage of challenge and that's not even taking into account sneaking up on a bird, wrestling it to the ground and then using duct tape to secure it in a pleasing pose.

 

Mike

[bob_royse]

 

I've thought long and hard about going digital, but haven't yet for a few specific reasons.

 

#1 Money. Sure you could save some bucks on film. I photograph mostly birds nowadays here in Ohio, where I live, with maybe a couple trips per year when I can afford them. I spend maybe around $2000 per year on film and processing, so a $4k camera would be paid for in 2 years. Or so it appears on the surface. You have to throw in the expense of having a modern computer that can handle large files, the price of Photoshop, those card things, an external hard drive to store digital files, a laptop for travel, and ideally a spare second digital camera body for backup when travelling, all which need to upgraded as technology advances. I choke at the dollar signs when I think about it. Throw in the facts that have been repeated above several times about the camera bodies becoming quickly obsolescent and having little resale value down the road, and going digital becomes harder to justify quickly. I'd much rather spend my money on travel, seeing and photographing new species, than sitting at home paying for computer related equipment and soon to be obsolete cameras.

 

 

#2 End use. What do you do with your photos? How do you and, especially, others look at them? Yes, digital photos can make nice prints, but so can film. If you make more than 50 or so prints per year, then maybe purchasing a digital camera and expensive printer would be worth it to you. I have a local lab that does an oustanding job with my prints from film when I get requests, which is less than 50x per year at the moment. I only have so much wall space to clutter with prints and don't do it for my own pleasure. I do give a lot of slide shows to various nature groups. I love to see my slides through a loupe or projected. I hate looking at computer screens. Even though I consider myself an amateur and don't market my images, I make about $5000 anually from selling rights to publishers who request slides only for the most part. Where would digital fit in for me at the current prices? I personally can't justify the expense.

 

On the flip side, I do believe that I will go digital within 2 years assuming Canon eventually offers a camera body I would feel comfortable buying. It would have to be reasonably priced and offer enough features to make me feel confident that I'll get a couple years out of it and would pay for itself many times over for what I do with it. There currently isn't a demand from publishers for digital nature photos. When that happens, will the digital files being recorded with current cameras now be what the market asks for? I am impressed with what beginning photographers who start out digital can do. It can take years of trial and error with film to get to the same level of the instant feedback digital offers. If you're knowldgeable about how you favorite films work in various situations already, then that's not an advantage.

 

There is no easy answer over when to go digital for anyone. It really all comes down to two things as far as I can tell : money and end use. Only a few years ago, spending a couple thousand dollars on a camera or lens seemed outrageous to most nature photographers, but nowadays there seems to be no shortage of folks who can dump $20K+ per year on cameras, computers, and travel without blinking. Nature photography has changed, or probably more accurately, nature photography has become more popular within the wealthiest top 1%. What I see on some internet nature photography forums is a vast division between the people who love and study the natural world and people who have seemingly endless resourses of time and money to spend on digital photography. Digital photos do look prettier on the internet, but all hasn't come full circle yet. I think your excuse about not wanting to sort through slides is a mighty flimsy reason to go digital when considering the time and money needed to look through digital files.

 

Robert Royse

 

www.roysephotos.com

 

[ShunCheung]

We just went to a nearby National Park for a couple of days over Thanksgiving. I brought both my film cameras and my D100. While I thought I had plenty of film, yesterday, in the last hour and half while we were there, we suddenly saw a lot of pelican activities in a bay. In about an hour I shot my remaining 6 rolls of Provia 100F and I had to switch to the D100.

<P>

<IMG SRC="/photodb/image-display?photo_id=1151404&size=md">

<P>

Again, as long as the subject is stationary such as landscape or slow moving, like canoes, the D100 is just fine. However, among some 20 pelican action shots, only the attached one is critically sharp. The focus on the other ones are either slightly off or off by a lot. Since the minimum ISO setting on the D100 is ISO 200, even though the light wasn't great, I was using 1/500 sec and up, so shutter speed wasn't the issue. This particular image was shot with a 500mm/f4 AF-S lens, 1/500 sec at f5. I haven't sent my film in for processing yet, but I have little doubt that the F5 can AF accurately in most (e.g. 70-80%) of these images.

<P>

This image is about 80% of the original frame. I printed an 8.5 x 11 (216 x 279mm) on an inkjet and it looks just fine. So it confirms what I pointed out earlier. Today's "low end" DSLRs provide very decent quality at 6M pixels. Whether publishers are ready to accept digital files instead of transparancies is another issue. But the main drawback of these "low end" DSLRs is their AF speed. I certainly don't think they are suitable for sports or wildlife action. For weddings, landscape, etc. they are sufficient in a lot of applications. If you are willing to go up a level to the Canon EOS 1D (not 1Ds) or Nikon D1x, you won't have the AF speed problem.

[ShunCheung]

Here are the comments from my friend Carl Madson, who seemed to have trouble posting here:

 

I apologize for not being able to address the thread specifically (switching to digital for nature photography), but I hope I can add a few thoughts to those who are considering the move to digital. And pardon the length, but Bob and Shun can attest that I haven't posted for a while so I'm out of practice...

 

1. Scanning is a decent option for getting your best shots in digital form, but IMHO it's a stop-gap measure for most people. It's time-consuming and getting the setup right (including color profiling) is important for consistency -- i.e., to avoid more tweaking later. You can pay and wait for a pro to do the job, and I've opted for that on big (100-300 shot) jobs. And it's only as good as the scanner and technique used. You can imagine you'll go back and get better scans when better scanners come out, but you (at least I) won't. I have a bunch of (non-job) slides and negs in the queue to be scanned but they get pushed down the list. If you plan to only scan the best 10-20 shots per shoot, then a scanner could be workable.

 

Be honest with yourself if you're thinking about a scanner instead of digital. It may end up gathering dust because you didn't account for the time it takes to scan 1000+ shots and do it right.

 

2. Even if you're not sure about big-time digital shooting, you can ease into it with a P&S camera (something decent, like 2-3 MP). I used a small Olympus for a few years before getting a D1X, and learned a lot about how my shooting would affect the post-processing and what workflow would streamline the management of all the files. I even did some shots for pay using the Oly (with more than a bit of Photoshopping). But at least I was pretty well set up to handle a large number of images before I got the Nikon.

 

The surprising benefit of the Oly was that I carried it around all the time and didn't worry about film going bad, or that I was "wasting" film on non-art/non-pro shots. Suddenly I actually had shots of family and friends, and things that might have been ignored turned into good shots later. So I'd suggest getting a camera that is small enough and cheap enough so you're willing to carry it around without concern, but with enough quality to do the job. (I have a Canon s40 now to replace the Oly, which still works despite being run over. We'll skip that story.)

 

Do think about compatible image/data storage media, though, if you do have a high-end camera also in mind.

 

3. The other posters are correct about the reality of time in the digital darkroom. It can really enhance your shots, but as with film, the more you capture correctly at imaging time, the less you have to do later. I'd recommend working through a stage of image adjustments for a given shoot (such as cropping and color adjustment) and going back to refine the images in a subsequent pass. Your workflow should do something to account for those versions, even with just a file-naming scheme. You'll find that some jobs/clients (including you) will warrant more image tweaking.

 

The tools are vast in coverage and provide the temptation to spend a lot of time tweaking your shots. Fortunately, on a given shoot your images will require a common set of adjustments, and those can be automated.

 

The thing I like best is the quickest tweak, and allows me fast creation of various images: cropping. I can get the images in the PC and quickly try a bunch of different croppings, sometimes ending up with a vastly different view than I was originally shooting. You can do this with cropping Ls and film, or with scanned shots, but with digital I've found some nice images via cropping that I wouldn't have bothered to scan from film and play with. So there's a bit of a serendipity effect (for me at least) with digital and the electronic darkroom.

 

4. You can make very nice prints yourself for relatively low cost, and even archival printers can be had for well under $1000. I've made prints using an Epson 1200 that folks couldn't tell from standard print processes, so with care you can get there. Note also that the most impressive print was shot on 35mm film, scanned on a 2700 ppi 10-bit scanner, tweaked, and printed. So concerns about resolution fall by the wayside once you've seen a demonstration like that.

 

You can also have the pros make prints for you. Let the pros do the parts you don't want to learn how to perfect (or spend the money and time doing).

 

5. With digital images, you can easily put together image shows and write them to CD, making them available as items for sale or as porfolios. You may trigger some later sales of specific prints. The other benefit is the ability to propagate your work with minimal risk of image theft (since at least some slide show utilities bundle all the images up into one executable file).

 

6. If you're thinking about a high-end digital beast and you have an existing lens investment, I'd give serious consideration to full-frame sensor cameras. There are several out now, and I suspect more will be coming. As with Shun, I'd really like my 17mm to act like a superwide and not a 25mm.

 

7. As far as the faster obsolescence of the high-end beasts, I think that was more of an issue 3-4 years ago when the image quality just wasn't there. I haven't done quantitative comparisons with film, but in comparison to all the scanned shots I have, the D1X images are as good or better in terms of resolution, low noise, and color characteristics. I used to shot a lot of Provia, and switching to the D1X has been easy. (I actually prefer its controls a bit to the F5.) At this point if I can't get a shot that's printable as a 12 x 18, it's mostly my fault.

 

8. Usability: I haven't picked up the F5 for a while, and that was my previous favorite. I'm picky about user interfaces, and I'd heard there were significant issues with the D1, so I pretty much ignored high-end digital SLRs until the D1X came out and got really strong reviews. As far as I can tell, they were right about it. As for the D100, I only have Shun's word to go on, but I do hope we can figure out his apparently slow AF with it, because otherwise it's known to be a solid performer. My experience with the D1X is that the non-S 80-200/2.8 has faster AF than with the F5. I shoot bicycle races in very close quarters, so speed of AF and shooting is important. I find the AF to work well and the shutter response to be fast. I don't see the 3 fps limit as a problem, but then again I'm often waiting for the fill flash to recycle, which nature shooters generally don't worry about (except for catchlights).

 

My only problem area has been battery life, but I'm almost certain it's a battery and not camera problem.

 

9. Dealing with data: you'll have to face this no matter how you store your image data. Film and digital images pose different problems, and no serious digital image producer/user will tell you that image management and workflow issues disappear when you go digital.

 

However digital images do allow for streamlining your image handling. With very few steps, I can transfer all the shots from a shoot into the PC, identify that shoot, and from then on know where they are and generally what they are without any further effort. I don't have to individually label slides or negs, put them in pages, put them in the right file cabinet -- and when they're removed, make sure they are replaced correctly. I can then go back and add information for more directed searches, if I find that to be useful.

 

Ideally, you would figure out what meets your needs now and for the near term, and provides logical growth paths if and when you start dealing with thousands of images per month coming and going (and being stored, on top of the rest). If, for example, you set your cameras to uniquely number/ID your shots for each shoot, and you store your shoots using some unique number/ID, you'll be able to access any image with a fairly short descriptor.

 

As for storage, raw files can be around 5-10 MB each. That's maybe 100 shots per GB. Drives are now around $2/GB or less, so that means you can store about 3 rolls' worth (not quite 36 shots each) for less than a buck per "roll". If you include the PSD files, then you have to store closer to 10 + 30 MB per image, so you're up to about $3 per roll. Remember, though, that you'd have to store your scanned film shots anyway, so some of these dollars would have to be added to the film side of the comparison too.

 

If you decide to archive your originals and processed shots, you can fit about half a roll (16 shots) on a CD, at about $0.50 per, so that ends up at about $1 per roll. So instead of $3-8 per roll of film and $3-8 per roll for processing, plus whatever you use for slide/neg storage, you're in it for the amortized cost of your storage card and the archive CDs (assuming you already have a computer and decent sized drive for temporary storage). 100 rolls of film would be at least $600 for film & proc., or maybe $700 with storage. Digital images would cost $100 plus $100-200 for the card. So at 100 shots you're ahead, and it gets a lot better as you shoot more.

 

10. There may be a few times, even with nature shooters (?), when the ability to quickly get your shot to the local paper makes a difference. That's one of the obvious differences that digital provides, and it's already become an essential tool for many types of shooters (even wedding photographers, who assemble slide shows of the ceremony and show them during the reception). So that's not an issue for most of you, but if you happen to be in the right spot at the right time, you'll be able to get them your shot.

 

11. Canon vs. Nikon vs. ?: Unless you have a big investment in lenses from any of them, the same considerations apply as always. Features, price, appropriate robustness for the task, ability to rent compatible gear when and where you need it, etc. I leaned toward Nikon years ago when I was sick of camera failures (not Canon) and haven't been disappointed since then because the camera didn't work. But I sure noticed all the cool gear and features Canon (etc.) was developing in the meantime. I applaud Canon at least for their ability to force Nikon to improve, and at the time I bought the D1X, nobody else had something as good. So I bought with a (slightly pained) smile and haven't second-guessed it since.

 

12. As nature shooters, you shouldn't ignore the potential benefits to the environment of shooting digital. I say "potential" because I don't know how the production of image sensors, storage cards, CDs and hard drives compares to film production and processing exactly, but I believe the waste stream of the former is significantly smaller. Newer film processing techniques may have mitigated this difference, so I remain willing to be corrected. Just don't ignore it as an issue.

 

And when in doubt, Shun and Bob are correct.

 

YMMV...

[jay dougherty]

>>Let me inflame a lot of people by made a definitive statement: at the end of the day there isn't a dimes worth of difference between the two: the differences are imperceptable.<<

 

I use both Canon and Nikon systems, and I disagree totally. There's as much substantive difference between Canon and Nikon as there is between the words "dimes" and "dime's." Ahem.

 

Photos coming from Canon systems have a Canon look; Canon's IS lenses, especially the big glass, enable shots that the Nikon system cannot currently approach.