|
Traditional or Digital? (3)
I’m swimming... and the water’s nice and warm!
I also needed a very wide lens for a job that was coming up so inquired about the 12-24mm Nikkor (equating to 18-35mm for the 35mm film format)... but they were back-ordered for a couple of months in France. This is where customer service comes into play... the shop owner, also a Nikon user, had taken personal delivery of that lens the day before, and said that I could borrow his for a few days before making a buying decision. As it was new, and I couldn’t accept responsibility for leaving any marks on it, I talked him into selling it instead... I think I got a good deal, but negotiating in my second language was not particularly easy... and the dealer knew I wanted the lens!
Five months on and I’m only now finding the opportunity (two years after my original weblog article on digital) to publish a couple of images made with the Nikon D200... they’re not great images, but they have actually convinced me – a die-hard black-and-white processing and printing enthusiast – that the “immediacy” of digital can be an aid to my photography which has been in decline over the past couple of years or so. hat happened because I have a different life-style now and choose to do other things now rather than going into the darkroom, processing color transparency film and hours later scanning them, etc.
With the Nikon D200 I knew moments after the exposures that I had a couple of images to illustrate my thoughts, or rather experiences of the light this morning. The main image was of trees maybe half a kilometer away (the 500mm Nikkor equated to a 750mm focal length lens on the 35mm film format because of the D200 crop/magnification factor of x1.5)... and the second image made with the 12-24mm zoom (at 18mm) was directly behind me looking across the garden through more tree foliage towards the rising sun... light shimmering off the dew-covered grass. Two completely different contrasting scenes taken within moments of each other and perfectly exposed... a situation that, with film, would have required bracketed exposures to make sure that I had “keepers” when viewing them on a light-box hours later after the light had changed and gone for another day or so.
So, many years after digital arrived on the scene, I’m just starting to be convinced of its advantages... but really wish that the apparatus could be simpler. I don’t need all the options built into modern cameras... and am thus attracted by the new Leica M8 digital rangefinder announced at photokina recently. But before I tread that expensive path I’ll relate more thoughts and experiences with the D200 and see if it gets me back into being an unreserved and enthusiastic photographer.
...page 1 / page 2...
|
