steve_braun

Is there a way around the Nikon/Adobe situation by just using a custom WB setting, or would that still be locked away in the NEF "as shot" netherworld?

Being an old film guy I need your collective help in moving into

digital. What I want to be able to do is perhaps set up the camera so

that it works as simply as my film ones do, but still be able to use

different ISOs etc. Is there any way to just set the camera so it

would emulate a favorite film and just be able to shoot TIFFs or JPEGS

that would require little or no correction and bypass all the

headaches of proprietory raw formats.(I would prefer raw if it was

DNG format or some other universal system) The latest Nikon/Adobe spat

has me also wondering about whether or not the veracity of my files

even being able to be accessed in the future should some major change

occur in technology. ( ie. Canon no longer supports D30 processing)

Also, is there any major difference between the BIG TWO that would

make this significantly easier to do with one vs the other?

When I was young (@15) and just starting I had only the 50 that came with my camera. Oh how I longed for a 200, then a 300 or even a 500! Alas my meager finances forced me to work only with the 50. I even rented a cheapo 400 preset a few times because I felt I needed it to "isolate" my subject, and simplify, simplify. Looking back at my old slides I am amazed at how few times I really wasn't able to overcome what I thought were limits of the 50mm.(my feet became my zoom mechanism) Then about age 20 I discovered two things that changed my photolife forever. I read an article where someone analysed the old master paintings and discovered a strange phenomena. The field of view most often contained within the borders of a painting was approximately the same as a 50mm lens, BUT the perspective used in the painting was closer to that created by a 100mm lens! (this was found by going to some of the same locations depicted in the paintings and trying to duplicate the painting on film) The other thing was seeing some wildlife photos by a Japanese photographer, who's name I can't remember, where he was able to get close enough to make the animal prominent but chose a normal to moderate wideangle lens to put the subject in context of it's environment. Because of these two events I began to see myself as a portrait photographer, regardless of my subject. I quit trying to totally isolate to get maximum enlargement of the subject and sought instead to include a little more. Today I use a 35mm as my normal and a 100mm as my telephoto. I no longer (at 53) wish to stand far off and record something I am not a close part of. I want it obvious that I was an intimate part of what I am recording, and not have the distortion of a wider or much longer lens overpowering the content. If I could find a 40mm for my old F1 I would switch to that in a heartbeat. As I get older my "vision" seems to be going back to one camera with a normal (40-50mm)lens. I think Bresson used a fifty simply because it's effects were so neutral in the picture that the content and context were amplified. He was able to show the world the incredible things we could all see if we only took the time to look. By using the same "normal" lens that most everyone has he showed that it wasn't the effects of some esoteric lens length that made it possible to "see" differently or better. It was something inside the photographer. And it gave us all the idea that anyone with even basic cameras could learn to see as clearly as he did.

My stand is this, whenever we put the camera to our eye we are seeking to record whatever has impacted us about what is before us. All Mike was saying in the article was to use what we have available to create the image we see in our mind. It doesn't matter if HC-B asked/hired the girl or not. He was a "people" photographer and not an architectural photographer, therefore he would want to make the stairs significant to the viewer because of the presence of a person in the shot. Sometimes we are presented with just the right scene in just the right light, but our emotional reaction is that there should be a human presence and interaction within the image. We then have a choice to make, do we recruit someone to be in the picture and add the element missing from our concept, OR do we chose to just stay there and wait(possibly a loooong time) for someone to appear just where we want them in the frame and hope the light doesn't change. The quality of light and the static parts of the scene we have relatively no control over, but the people in the scene we easily can. Either way you are still making a photograph of a person in the environment before you. Neither is dishonest or "dangerous", because it is fulfilling the vision of the photographer. What matters is , does the image convey to the viewer what the photographer felt and saw when he created it? Did the viewer feel what the photographer felt when he was there? It is the same for all forms of "realistic" graphic art whether it's photography, painting, drawing, or any other medium that represents our vision in a two dimensional format. I have a real problem though with composites done in p-shop after the fact, when elements are added into a scene that were never there at the time the photograph was made, and then passed off as if they were. That to me is where any "danger" lies.