been awhile, back to taking to photos, have some questions?

well it been awhile, maybe the long winter, but its time to get back to railfanning.

Now I have my nice Kodak digital camera, that takes great pics.

I have my 35mm with a nice zoom.

Now I have never used the camera with 35mm slide film. Is there a difference between the two?

the digital is great for close up or a short distance...

 

Do you mean the difference between slide film and digital, or between slide film and negative film?

 

It used to be that slides were the preferred medium of "professional" photographers, (I think Kodachrome 25) due to its extremely low grain, durability, and ability to make good enlargements. I tried shooting slides a couple of times and the results were pretty good, but ASA 25 is really slow, good only for bright, stationary shots. Also, it was hard for me to enjoy my "pictures", so I switched to prints. I was not taking them for professional publication, just my own enjoyment (I'd rather look at a 4x6" color print than hold a slide up to a light bulb any day )
Another thing to consider is that slide processing is rapidly becoming harder to find (unless you strictly use mail order).
I am currently shooting with a 5MP digital and my pictures (when I have them printed) are extremely high quality and sharp, including the 8x10's that I have had done. The key is to always shoot at the highest resolution setting and lowest compression the camera offers.

Harold

Harold

 

My digital is a 3.1 megapixel and does a good job, have done some 8 X 10's and have come out pretty good... if I had to I could always use the 35mm for the bigger zoom....

 

How big is the zoom on the 35mm vs the digital? Most digitals seem to come with 3X optical zooms. Any digital zoom they advertise is worthless, just pixilates your photos. A lot of fans love using zooms of 300mm or more to "telesmash" their photos. It all depends on what you like personally.

 

My Canon A2E (film) SLR camera uses interchangable lenses, and I think it has a 28-135mm (I have not touched it in well over a year). My Canon G5 (digital) point and shoot size has a 4x optical zoom that is an equivalent 35-140mm. It has a digital zoom also, but your right, it just pixilates the picture into oblivion. (I say it is like making a poor copy of a bad fax )

Harold

 

Olympus C-770 has a 10X optical zoom, plus a 4X digital zoom, which gives 40X total zoom.

Canon Digital Rebel XT is a digital SLR camera that accepts all Canon EF and EF-S lenses, just like the Canon EOS film cameras.

And there are other manufacturers with excellent digital SLR cameras to choose from.

Please understand that the above are NOT the K-Mart Blue Light Special cheap point and shoot digital cameras. The C-770 runs about $500 and the Rebel will run close to $K for the body and a 50mm lens, and then you'll want to add some fun stuff. But if you want to have an excellent camera system with wide veratility, consider investing in one of these.

 

oh yeah a tripod!!!! *LOL*

 

If you want a digital SLR, Canon has dropped the price on their original Rebel (6MP) to $799 with lens due to the new Rebel XT (8MP). Best Buy has the Canon G6 point & shoot (4x optical, 4x digital) 7.1 MP for $539! Having a point & shoot digital means you can carry & store it easily.

Harold

 

Ahhhh..I can finally put the BFA to use….

For starters, the proper term for slide film is a TRANSPARENCY film. If you want to sound like you know something, you can also refer to it as a, “chrome”. Its primary use was for publication and projection viewing of the subject matter. Hence it was used for sales, product promotion and was *******ized into the classic vacation slide show. There have been two types of transparency film since the stuff came out in the late 20’s/early 30’s; Ektachrome and Kodachrome. Ektachrome is now known by it’s processing code E-6 (Ektachrome Film-6 steps to complete the processing) and is the primary transparency film on the market. Your Fujichrome, Agfachrome, Kodak E100 all have the processing code of E6 on the film can. Processing is becoming harder to find but is still available. There are also methods to do it at home. It’s not any harder than running B+W film at home, just less forgiving of errors. The image life if given PROPER storage is 25-50 years.

The other type of transparency film out there is one you all know, Kodachrome. Kodachrome is different from E6 film in several important ways. First, before the newer Fuji and other color, “enhancing” E6 films came out, Kodachrome was what you used when you wanted excellent color rendition, especially in the red/yellow areas. It had a bit more contrast than other film but this helped to enhance the overall visual, “punch” . Kodachrome has it’s own process, it’s called K14 and there are two or three places in the US that still do it. What Kodachrome rally has is long image life. Kodachrome images are good for 100 years or longer in proper storage conditions.

Now what was the use of these films? Well, aside from the vacation shots they were not aimed at the amateur or home market. Until digital really took over the professional market, all of the your magazine shots, all of your flat art, all of your advertising in all methods, all of your swimsuit issue models, etc. were shot on transparency. No real photo shooter used C41 film (print) for a paid assignment, unless the assignment called for multiple prints of an image (IE-wedding work). While you can make prints from slides using the Ilfochrome papers and chemicals, it is a very, very niche market. Besides, the point of shooting on transparency was generally for paid assignments that would have the images published. The transparency image was a 1st generation image, and when it was separated for publication, there wasn’t a massive loss of image quality. Prints from slides for general use was an after thought. Trying to publish an already printed image was never an option. A print from a negative (or slide) is already a 2nd generation image and has lost some detail. In order to get it into a magazine it would have to be copied again, and by this time a 3rd generation image that no publisher would pay money to print. On a side note, for those who remember when magazines would accept only slide images for publication, now you know why.

The advent of digital killed transparency use in the pro market. There are still some uses in that market, but they are limited. For the home user, I know many folks who shoot on transparency film, but then scan the image into their computer via a film scanner. If you already have a high quality film camera, a good computer and know Photoslop, look into one of the Nikon Coolscanners. Excellent product that gives professional results for around $300-$1000.

Now, I see a comment on ASA. ASA is industry code for film speed. Film speed is how well the film can see in the dark. The higher the ASA number, the better the film can see in the dark. However, there is a trade off. Higher ASA requires larger silver halide crystals to see the smaller amount of light. This leads to larger, “grain” in your negative and hence, your print. 400 speed is a good overall, unless you can get Fuji 800 speed print or slide film. Dat stuff is da bomb!!

Zooming. In digital there are two types, optical and digital. Optical uses the same method that all cameras/lenses have used since we started seriously making optics back in the 1600’s. A series of lenses are placed in an arrangement to compress the space between you and the subject (telephoto) or expand the space (wide angle). A lens that allows you to vary this sense of distance is called a zoom lens. You will ALWAYS have better images via optical zooming. Digital zooming simply cuts out a section already on the camera sensor and enlarges it. Much like trying to make an 16x20 of that old 110 negative you have, the results generally lack detail and look bad. But, good quality optical zooms lenses are not cheap. You will get what you pay for. That $300 zoom camera is not going to give you as good a quality image as the $900 model. It will work for general work, but when you want to get that last Penn Central 50ft box with the rare Smilex 8.5 panel door in it’s original paint that’s sitting 50 feet away, that extra $600 will pay for itself. As with everything in photography, you do not pay the extra cash for what you will get in, “normal” usage. You pay for it to get that extra bit when the conditions are extreme, and generally, you will be the only person able to get it.

Now, the great thing about digital is that you can shoot without worrying about running out of film. But you need to store the images somewhere, especially if you are in the filed for a few days without a computer. There are several portable hard drives and disc systems that allow you to download your memory cards (film cards) into a storage system, erase the cards, and reuse them. Keep this in mend. Also, you need to be VERY ORGANIZED when you get home from a day of shooting and now have 600 images that are all listed as:

12345678A.jpeg
12345678B.jpeg
12345678C.jpeg
etc……

This is known as back editing and generally takes up all the time you thought you saved by not going to the film lab or 1 hour store. A good place to research any digital photo questions concerning equipment is at:

www.stevesdigicams.com

They review all digital cameras and accessories and have user inputs to boot.

Lastly, yes Virginia, you do need a tripod. But, unless you have a cable release to go with it, your are compromising the tripod. Tripods are used to eliminate any camera shake when using slow shutter speeds. When you depress the shutter with your finger you are inadvertently shaking the camera so a cable release is needed. “OK Mr. Know-it-all..my camera ain’t got one of those release thingees to put a cable on…what do I do?”. That one is simple, use the time delay/shutter delay/blinking light thingee feature found on almost all cameras. Again, the key thing is not to be touching the camera at the moment the shutter is tripped.

Hope that helps,
Mark

 

I purchased a Canon A95 recently, along with add on Zoom and Wide Angle lens. It is a 5MP digital and has so many different shooting options I haven't even began to figure them all out. I love the ability to see what I have shot instantly and delete them if I am not happy with them. An added plus is never having to worry about getting a bad roll of film or the X-Ray machine at the airport wiping out your pics. All of my pics are digital now, and If I should want to use film, My wife has a very nice Canon SLR setup

 

Excellent analysis by Mark. The issue that I have with my digital P & S is that I miss so many shots due to the time that it takes for the camera to focus and find the correct aperture. By that time the subject ahs changed expressions or moved a significant distance. Do the high-end digitals have the same problem?

 

I don't have much trouble with mine finding focus, as long as I have it setup for high-speed continuous shooting. I can get off about 3 shots a second in that mode. As an added bonus I think it takes pretty darn good photos

 

I have both now, having had a G5 point and shoot and recently acquiring a Digital Rebel XT (SLR). The G5 has a 4x optical lens and 2.0-3.0 min. apeture, so it is pretty fast and can shoot in relatively low light. It's max was 8.0. It focused relatively fast, and rarely had trouble with moving trains.

I am still figuring out the learning curve on my Rebel XT. My last SLR, a Canon A2E had the eye controlled focus. For those of you who aren't familiar with that, the viewfinder actually tracked your eye movement and focused on the point you were actually looking at. It was lightning fast, too! The Rebel XT has 3 different AF focus modes, including a "predictive" focus mode for moving objects. I have not mastered that yet... but will keep trying.

Harold

 

Excellent piece by Mark!

I have a Nikon D100 SLR with three lenses: 12-24mm, 24-85mm, and 70-300mm. The D100 sensor (6.1 Mpixels) is about 2/3rds the size of 35mm film. This means a 12mm lens on the digital shows the same field of view as an 18mm lens on a 35mm film camera. What you lose in the wide angle, you gain in the telephoto: a 300mm becomes equivalent to a 450mm. A "normal" lens on the D100 is about 34mm, instead of the 50mm of a film camera.

Before we get too excited about this, remember that the image size on the backplane of both cameras is the same: the digital is just cropping the field of view. Nikon new digital lenses (such as the 12-24) don't have to cover the entire 35mm frame, so they are considerably less expensive.

Right now, the sensor size is probably more important than the number of pixels. 6.1 big Mpixels is usually better than 6.1 small Mpixels. I can see this when I compare images from a Nikon DX1 (4.3 Mpixels) to, say, a Sony DSC-W1 (5.1 Mpixels).
Frankly, there's no comparison: the DX1 is far superior in every aspect. The Sony has a 3X optical zoom: 7.9mm to 23.7mm. 7.9mm appears to be "normal." This tells me the sensor is pretty small--about one-fourth the size of the D100 or DX1 sensor or one-sixth the size of a 35mm frame. The lens is quite small also, and I doubt the quality of the optics is anywhere near Nikon's SLR lenses. Make no mistake: it's a great point-and-shoot camera, and quite adaptable for model railroad shots (small, so it's easy to put it on the tracks), but I wouldn't try to make a 13 x 19 print of the real Matanuska river valley from it.

The big versus small argument may go away as technology progresses, and different kinds of imagers are developed. But the quality issue will remain.

To answer David's question about speed of focus: the high end digital SLRs are very fast. But you have to know which focus mode is best for a situation, or you can get the same "hunting" as any other camera. I love to shoot birds and beasts with a long telephoto--the "spot" focus is very fast, while a "matrix" focus will hunt. These are the types of features that I need, so I pay for them.

I've found the tonal range (or dynamic range) of the D100 (and like) far superior to point-and-shoot cameras. This is incredibly important to me when I'm trying to capture a dramatic sky in Alaska or New Mexico, or even a leaden seascape.

For many years I shot with Nikon SLRs. Shooting my model railroad was cumbersome and expensive on chromes. Good scanners were very expensive back then; service bureaus did a marginally acceptable job that I usually couldn't control very much. Few magazines are published on digital presses today, so there is some loss during the conversion to plates for an analog press. Digital camera to digital press just blows me away in terms of sharpness, tonality, luminosity and fidelity: that's probably the future.