Mverick once bubbled...
Blanket snooty statement????
It's facts. Learn how to shoot. Don't just point it and blast away. That wastes just as much time. And pics. Sure you have 1000 pictures. With the shading or lighting off. But you like them. People need to slow down. And shoot what they want. Not just anything that moves.
That's the problem with Digital now. People don't think about what they shoot. They shoot and then think.
Amen. This has been a problem for years, and one well-known industry quote is: "the difference between an Amateur and a Pro is the size of their trash bin".
The other thing we need to consider while taking a bazillion photo's in a "Million monkeys typing Shakespear" -like attempt to accidentally get one good one is our photo's subjects:
Envision yourself as a little reef critter who is discovered by a photographer - - every photo causes stress, and digital photography now allows for an order of magnitude increase in photos if we're falling into the trap of being a Shakespearian Monkey Typist. From a photography ethics viewpoint, you need to limit your number of photos in due consideration of the subject's sensitivities, regardless of if your technology allows more. Pragmatically, this mandates the practice of good, careful composition to minimize your photography's effect on the natural environment.
FWIW, the exasperation of this problem from digitals has already been written up in various reports (IIRC, I think I saw it over a year ago on the UW-Photo LISTSERV discussion group).
But Right now. It's quality isn't what Film is. Not for the same price. Not even for double the price.
Previously, I've done my own research and have considered the performance cross-over between digital and film to be around 48 Megapixels. However, this does include some assumptions on my intended application (which is far beyond mere webpages or 4x6 prints).
Nevertheless, some recent reviews I've read on the new Nikon and Canon 11MP SLR's are claiming them to be equivalent to a high quality scan of film. Granted, we don't have to lose resolution of the film by scanning it -- we can go directly to print via traditional analog optical means, but it does tend to indicate that the effective digital equivalency to film is closer than we may have previously thought.
The catch is, of course, that the new 11MP SLR's aren't $500 or even $1000...figure $7K for the body, plus lenses, plus strobes.
The alternative is to take (keep) whatever 35mm system you like, and to go digital on your PC, make a choice:
a) Spend ~$7/slide at your local camera shop to have them scan it for you. At this price, you'll typically get the lossy .JPG format.
b) Spend ~$25/slide at your local professional studio services shop for a high-quality scan. This will be delivered in non-lossy formats (typically Photoshop).
c) Spend ~$250 for a 2700dpi USB single-frame scanner (various makes), and scan to your heart's content.
b) Spend ~$1500 for a Nikon LS-4000 film scanner with the 50-slide bulk feeder accessory to your home PC. The reason for the big price jump here is that the extra feature you're adding is the ability to set the PC up for unattended scans of multiple slides: at bedtime, you can throw a stack in, execute a macro and come back the next morning to review the work. Having scanned in dozens of slides one at a time, I can assure you that if you don't go this route, you will be very picky about what you scan...which per the above "trashcan" adage, isn't necessarily a bad thing!
-hh
