ashleypomeroy

I'm not sure if this belongs in the philosophy forum or not, but I'm not really interested in the technical

nitty-gritty, more the way that digital images have shaped and reflected the news. For a very long time news

photographs were taken with film cameras, and I assume that this practice died off by the turn of the century,

but I am interested in exactly when, and what impact it had; not so much on the workflow, but on the way that we

relate to images.

 

I am writing a lengthy article for my blog about the pre-history of 35mm-format digital SLRs. The early models

were co-produced with Kodak and either Nikon or Canon, and were aimed at press photographers. They went on sale

during the early-to-mid 1990s were generally surpassed by home-grown Nikon and Canon SLRs during the first years

of the twenty-first century. The Kodak DCS models post-dated Tiananmen Square and the first Gulf War, and

pre-dated 11 September 2001. What iconic images were shot with them?

 

These years, roughly from 1994-2000, coincided with a period of relative world peace, at least in the United

States and Western Europe. There was of course the Rwandan massacre, but I do not think of that as a photographic

war; I have a visual memory of Vietnam, even though I was born several years after the US pulled out, but I do

not have a visual memory of Rwanda. Yugoslavia was ripping itself apart, but I think of that war as a video war.

When I think of the war in the Balkans, I do not think of still photographs, I think of video footage. Of Martin

Bell being hit by shrapnel, and those people on the bridge being sniped.

 

The visual record of September 11 seems to be a mish-mash of amateur and professional footage, digital and film,

35mm and APS. I assume the standard press camera of the time would have been the Nikon D1 or D1X, with perhaps

the later, integrated Kodak DCS 620/720 models.

 

This press photographer was carrying a D30 and two EOS-1 film SLRs when he was killed:

http://www.digitaljournalist.org/issue0111/biggart_intro.htm

 

I'm not really sure what point I'm working up to with this. I was trying to place the early Kodak DCS cameras

into their social context; nowadays they are shadows, they are not famous or feted as with other cameras. Their

brief heyday seems to have fallen in between two Olympic games, as well:

http://www.dpreview.com/news/0009/00091501digicamolympics.asp

The long tail in action. These cameras are old news nowadays, and this is an old thread, but I feel qualified to

revive it because I have both cameras sitting on my tabletop in front of me; they're attractive used buys in

their respective classes. In the UK, prices seem to be about £100 / £200 respectively, body only for the 350D/XT,

but you would have to pay a lot more if you want the 350D to match the S3's zoom. A Sigma 18-200mm DC OS would be

similar, wider at the wide end and shorter at the short end, slower at both.<br>

<br>

On the other hand, the 350D's image quality is noticeably smoother, less noisy, and generally more versatile than

the S3. You can shoot RAW, and alter the exposure post-shot, which is something you can't do with the S3. The

350D records darkness with clarity, whereas the S3 makes darkness look smudgy and smeary, and there's no way to

alter the noise reduction. On the other hand, the S3 has a few photographic tricks that the 350D doesn't have,

e.g. an intervalometer for timed sequential shooting, and a voice recorder (shades of the Kodak DCS 520). If

you're shooting JPG images straight out of the camera with no editing or processing, in good light there isn't a

huge amount of difference except for the size. The S3 has a lot of silly colour swap / colour accentuate options

that you'll probably never use. You will never ever be able to mount a thirty-year-old Russian portrait lens on

your S3, whereas the 350D opens up a world of zany glass.<br>

<br>

The S3 was subsequently replaced by the S5, which is slightly better in most respects and has a flash hot shoe,

which is a very useful plus point. It is the better choice. I bought the S3 for the simple and sole reason that

it was very very cheap and it does a lot of things. You can use it as a voice recorder, for example. It takes

decent but not HD movies, although sadly the higher-quality option requires a gigabyte of memory to store nine

minutes, and the camera won't record a file larger than a gigabyte (although it will record more than one file).

If you want to make a lot of movies of e.g. Morris dancers, you're going to need loads of SD cards and a big hard

drive.<br>

<br>

By coincidence I wrote about the effect that the different sensor sizes have on depth of field, with sample

images from both cameras, on my blog <a

href="http://women-and-dreams.blogspot.com/2008/07/blurred-backgrounds-postscript.html">here</a>.<br>

<br>

The S3 would have been fine for your parents, or as a walkabout, although I suspect a Powershot A710 IS would

have been a better choice, with the same sensor as far as I can tell. The A710 IS is smaller, more pocketable,

and has fewer buttons than the S3. The S3 is neither small enough to fit in a pocket nor large enough to really

warrant a camera case. It's probably tougher than it feels, but I wouldn't want to regularly throw it into a

glove compartment. The lens cap is a separate unit, and doesn't fit very tightly, and will fall off and get lost

(there is a strap to hold it on, but I can see the strap getting caught on things).<br>

<br>

The manual is long and detailed and awful, and the camera has a lot of controls, and lots of menus, indeed

separate menus for playback and record. I'm sure you could set it up for your parents, and leave it in P mode

thereafter. The ON switch is fiddly, you have to turn a rocker either left (to shoot) or right (to review).<br>

<br>

You have to explicitly turn on the LCD eyepiece. If you put the eyepiece to your eye without doing so, you will

see black nothingness. The LCD eyepiece is grainy and not ideal. You'll naturally want to cradle the zoom lens in

your left hand, but if you do so you'll probably break the camera eventually, because the zoom lens moves in and

out. Only a little bit, but it moves nonetheless.<br>

<br>

It might be decent as a sports camera. ISO 400 is usable. It has full-time manual focus and plenty of depth of

field. It seems to take indefinitely long JPG bursts at a good frame rate, it has image stabilisation, and

there's no mirror clack. It's heavy enough to hold quite steady, especially if you can rest it on something.<br>

<br>

Still, I wonder what you bought in the end. Nowadays it seems that Panasomic's DMC-FZ cameras are the trendy

superzooms, although from what I have read they're a bit noisier than the S3, and they're larger and more

SLR-like albeit with enormous zooms.

I would have the most expensive lens that there is. Then I would sell it, and buy some more lenses.

"Does it even make sense to buy this camera, when I can probably buy an upgraded 5d for just a little more $ within the next 6-12 mos?"

 

My feeling is that you should buy the used 1DS, and use it until the new 5D comes out. In that time the 1DS will not have depreciated very much - assuming that you don't thrash it to bits - and you can then sell it again. Imagine that you're hiring the camera rather than buying it, and there is always the possibility that you might like it, and decide to keep it.

Prices in the UK at least seem to have depressed a lot recently. On a leading auction site, I have noticed that the going rate for a 300D is about £170-180, and that surprisingly the 10D goes for the same price, perhaps because it doesn't take EF-S lenses. In fact the cheapest prices I can find at this very second at £150 and £159 respectively, with £10 and £6 postage, but of course they could both be scams as well.

 

I was seriously thinking about buying one of them as a backup body, which led me to some of Photo.net's old threads in which people debate the relative pros and cons of the two cameras. It's an odd experience to re-read heated arguments from 2002, although nowadays it seems a bit comical, like people arguing the relative merits of Wang Chung vs The Cutting Crew - which band rocks out harder? The lesson is that, five years from now, all the passionate arguments going on at the moment will also seem comically dated and inconsequential.

 

Having said that, I would go for the 10D, as it probably has more life in it. Bear in mind that the old version of the kit lens has a bad rep, and that the 70-300mm is nothing special either, and that this is the silver version of the camera. In the UK, the black version sells for slightly more but not much more.

And while I'm on a roll, the Nikon E2/E3 were not inspiring; they were early Nikon SLRs co-produced with Fuji.

They had a system whereby a lens in the body compensated for the sensor's crop factor, but from the samples I

have seen the image quality was unimpressive (not least because it vignetted like crazy), e.g:<br>

http://www.pbase.com/northqueenslandphotos/nikone3<br>

<br>

The E3 was particularly unfortunate, because it coincided with the Nikon D1, which was smaller, cheaper, twice

the resolution, more versatile, better-looking, etc.

As I understand it, the field of digital SLRs is still very small, with a short history, and the majority of recent models are much of a muchness. On an objective level they all work and take pictures without exploding or piercing the skin or causing tetanus.

 

My offbeat vote goes for the first Canon EOS-1D, although this is a very relative assessment; the camera was apparently superb in almost all respects, but the design team fixated on getting 8fps performance at the expense of image quality, and used a non-standard (for Canon) CCD sensor that was noisy in an odd way at high ISOs. It had a problem whereby the noise "banded" and was visually distracting, and also the noise profile was subtly different across the sensor area, albeit that the 1D's absolute level of noise was very low for the time, and it was a big hit.

 

Based on what I have read, and not personal experience, the Nikon D1 had a problem with magenta colour casts, but its operational characteristics can be forgiven based on its age and novelty. On the positive side, it forced Kodak to stop charging ﾣ12,000 or thereabouts for their contemporary professional digital SLRs.

 

The only out-and-out disasters I can bring to mind were the various post-DCS 760 Kodak models (the 14N and Pro SLR/C/N) and the Contax N Digital, all of which had botched press launches and some image quality issues that dominated press coverage. The cameras themselves have their defenders, particularly the N Digital and its lens range. Nonetheless I am wary of the whole "you just have to know how to use it" excuse.

 

Fuji got a lot of stick for describing their S1 Pro as a 6mp camera, when in fact that resolution was interpolated; but again the camera wasn't really a dud, it was fairly popular at the time. Sigma's ongoing saga with the Foveon sensor may, ten years from now, seem like a bad idea. That will depend on whether Sigma goes bust or not in the coming recession.

 

I'm in two minds as to whether the recent Canon 1000D is a good idea or not, not so much because of the camera, but because the digital SLR market is saturated, and it doesn't stand out from the crowd. The Sigma DP1 seems to have been a fizzle, but it's not a DSLR, so it's off-topic. Yoghurt is also off-topic. That is what I am going to have now. I am going to have a yoghurt.

"Using your logic Canon have crippled every EOS camera ever made other than the 10s" - it's worth pointing out that the Kodak DCS 520 / 560, also sold as the Canon D2000 / D6000, had a built-in intervalvometer. E.g:

http://www.modernimaging.com/kodak_dcs520.htm

 

It seemed fairly decent. Quoting from the site, "the self timer now allows the camera to be set up to automatically fire for X amount of frames, at X interval, with X start delay. Therefore, the camera can be set to take ten exposures, one every two minutes, starting in three hours, for instance. The time format is HH:MM:SS. The maximum frame count is 9,999."

Ancient thread, but I've just been watching the first Superman film, the 1978 version, on DVD. At about 49:00 we're introduced to the Daily Planet office. Jimmy Olsen takes a photograph of Lois Lane, and then we see him screwing a new lens onto his camera; it's a late-70s Praktica L-model! The director's commentary mentions product placement in another scene, so I assume that either Praktica had big pockets in 1978, or the camera was just lying about (I wonder what the film's stills photographer thought of Jimmy Olsen using a Praktica, though).