I use a backlit viewer to view them myself and project them for others.
The slides can be digitized, then printed. As you note, much is lost when printing, so if you MUST make a print, the losses associated with digitizing the slide are not significant.
The result is at least as good as a image that was digital straight out of a camera.
The last time I talked with a National Geographic photographer was in McCarthy, Alaska in June of 1993. He and all of his colleagues relied almost exclusively on Fujichrome, pull- processed. ISTR they all used Nikons too. I fell into a meltpond with my N 8008s and had to go back to using my Nikkormat for a day or so. He remarked that the electronic cameras sometimes survived fresh water, but never salt water. Mine recovered after a day or so.
I'll buy that, if you work with consumer targetted print films like the Kodacolor series.. I gave up on print films a long time ago.
I'm doubtful that many who make their living by taking pictures (which I daresay is the most common definition of 'pro') are using cameras that cost less than $2k.
I suggest that it is an excellent reference point because it is all that I use.
Does 'raw' format give you the actual data numbers read off of the chip? Can you also get a dark current? (data numbers in complete darkness) If so, the camera can be used for photometry, which I would like.
My shooting partner has the Canon. I'll be buying one soon.
I'm not sure, and I believe it varies somewhat by manufacturer, each of whom has their own raw standard. I do know that Adobe is promoting a standardized "Digital Negative" raw format and trying to get the hardware manufacturers onboard. You might look into that.
My next experiment is going to be to figure out a way to mount the DSLR body on the back of my 4x5 field camera. There are such adapters made for Canon, at least for some of the full blown view cameras, but I'd like to play with the combination at my disposal...
Why always such a potty mouth? The term 'prosumer' was coined years ago to signify equipment that lives at the high end of consumer and/or at the low end of pro gear. It is the best of former and the entry level of the later.
And every pro uses only 22Mp? I don't think so. Nikon's highend full frame CCD camera (D3) is only 12Mp. Only Canon has a 22Mp camera in DSLR format ... well, that's not quite right if you consider the new Hasselblad.
Equipment is neither amateur nor professional. Marketing terms (by intent) don't convey the information about features that a purchaser needs and merely cloud the issue.
E.g. what is an amateur table saw, a professional table saw, a semi-professional table saw or a 'prosumer' table saw?
The General 550-T50 is perfect for that amateur who makes shelves for the church auction. And next time I am going to built 30 kitchen cabinets, a 8" table top will do just fine.
Prosumer. The term was originally applied to what are now called bridge cameras. (I agree: it made my skin crawl the first time I heard it, and still does.) Oddly enough, no one makes them any more because standard point & shoot digitals have caught up on some of the features, and low end DSLRs have dropped in price to the point where the "prosumer" is outmoded. I paid just under $1,000 about six or seven years ago for a Minolta D7i 5 MP prosumer. I did two books with that, and a couple of articles, but I was never happy with it--try shooting a horse race with a camera that has the kind of shutter lag P&S digitals are famous for. Car races are nearly impossible. So I went to a Pentax *istD, not quite five years ago.It is a 6 MP, but can turn out super 20x30 prints every time I get it right. I'm using that and a K10D now, with a 10 MP sensor, which has been the main shooting camera for my new book. I hope by year's end to see what Pentax's K30D is like. Currently, they have a 14 MP K20D as top of the line. I don't expect the new CMOS sensor to be changed, but there are a couple of features I'd like to see improve before I drop another $1,500 or so on a camera body (the K20D has just now dropped to about $1,150 at top dealers; the K10D is under $600 in some places, which means I may buy a back-up K10D body and sell my *istD).
For my type of pro use, the advantages of digital are obvious. I shoot some vintage sports car races; I shoot many cars, vintage, hot rod and custom; I shoot woodworking in several forms. I also fool around and shoot pleasure shots around here, though not as often as I'd like. I doubt I'll ever be able to justify anything larger than a 14 MP camera. That's an APS-C sensor, not 35mm full frame. The 21 and 22 MP full frame sensors are far too costly for my work, as are most of the Nikon and Canon offerings, though some of their bodies would do better shooting races than either of my Pentaxes. Of course, I was shooting motocross back around '70 or '71 with a Canon F1 35mm, mostly using a Canon 135mm lens, and Tri-X pushed to 800 on dull days. I used a motor drive and bulk back with some frequency, and often shot more than 500 frames on a weekend. Now, I go to a race and shoot about 1,200 frames a day. I don't have to endure the red glow and hypo stink of a darkroom, making my already sore knees hurt worse. It takes me less time to process and examine 2,000 shots on-screen than it ever came close to doing developing 500 shots and printing out 14 or 15 contact sheets, which then had to be examined minutely to see what was and wasn't sharp--no AF in those days--and then have prints made, and on. Now, I sit here, pop the images up on a viewing program, delete those that didn't work, convert those that did to JPEGs (about a half second process), and type in a short caption. That goes on a DVD or CD and goes to the publisher. The mailing cost today for 50 photos to one publisher is just about the same as the mailing cost back then was for
50 5x7 and 8x10 photos, but the envelope's a lot smaller and lighter.
Oh, yeah. If I blow a shot, get it a couple, three stops off, I can work with it in Photoshop or Paintshop Pro. It can nearly always be saved. Same if the color is off.
Another point: my lead camera (a K10D) offers ISO speeds from 100 to
1600. I can change 'film' speed with just a quick twitch or two, and save some scenes that might otherwise not be possible at all in 35mm. My *istD offers ISO speeds from 200 to 3200. Some of the more costly new cameras are said to offer speeds upwards of ISO 25,000.
Where did I state that every pro used a 21 or 22 MP camera? You made a statement about a 10 MP being state of the art. That's nonsense. At the moment, 21-22 MP is, in 35mm sized frame. APS-C champ is 14.2 MP in the Pentax K20D. Medium format is about 39 MP, IIRC. AFAIK, only Canon has bodies with sensors that exceed 20 MP. I'm not sure, why Nikon chose to stop at 12, but I do know it has a 64 frame buffer, so you can literally keep shooting until your card is full. Canon's big shooter lets you change back to about a 12 MP level to get the immese buffer. With a 16 GB card, that's a lot of shots. I get 976 raw+JPEG out of my 10 MP Pentax. I don't bother to learn much more about theCanons and Nikons, as they don't fit my plans, now or ever. They are far too costly, and the lenses are almost as murderously expensive as the bodies. Too, I'm still trying to figure out how they coordinate the 51 AF points in the Nikon D3. Sometimes I wonder if maybe just one easily movable point might not be better. Put it where you want the focus and shoot. Startling. A great similarity to the old split screen/microprism collar days, something I miss.
I dunno about the D3, but the D80 has the ability for you to decide which of the focus points you want to emphasize (assuming you don't want the camera to choose). You can also decide whether that point is statically focused or whether the camera will follow movement to keep a subject in focus as it moves across the frame or you move the camera across the subject.
Various films, including K64. All this vewrbiage about transparency color brilliance and small grain is true, but the only way to make it visible at a reasonable size is to have the slide run through to produce a dye transfer print, IIRC. Even then, it doesn't match the look of the original, and an 11x14 dye transfer print costs well up in the hundreds of bucks range, probably about half as much as I paid for my Epson 1800 printer--that only gives a top of 13x19, but does some wondrous things with 11x14. Affordability is another reason for the success of digital: My photos have improved more in the past decade than in something like 45 years of shooting before, for a simple reason: Neither I nor my clients had to front the costs for testing new films, different lighting set ups, different filter effects and so on. Now, I can test a camera, and get used to it, by shooting 500 frames, if I feel it necessary. Before, that would have cost a fortune, or at least the film and processing costs on 14 rolls. Today, the cost is my time (which was a cost anyway), plus wear and tear on the camera (which was there anyway).
I believe Kodak has discontinued dye transfer materials production. There may be a few people still doing it with old stock, I dunno, but it is pretty much the case the dye transfer is more-or-less done and dead.
The color fidelity of K25/64 is inarguable, but it's pretty much theoretical. You have to magnify and print it or project it for others to see the image. At that point, a good many of the Kodachrome virtues vanish, blemished by the magnification process. I long ago gave up transparencies for this reason. In practical use, C-41/RA-4 gave just as good/better results for a lot less time/aggravation/cost. For me, this was never much of an issue since I never much cared for color as an expressive medium. But I have colleagues that shoot (did shoot) a LOT of color and they too left the transparencies long ago (well, except for the pros using E-6 as preferred by some magazines and other publications).
I do not shoot color for anything other than snapshots, but it is interesting to me that the current crop of Epson and HP inks with modern inkjet papers are now *more* archival than the best RA-4 papers ever were. This is one area where digital is clearly better (at last) than traditional chemical color prints.
Not to mention that fact that you control your own workflow. One of the great frustrations of color for me was the large variability in color balance from lab to lab. Even the best pro labs I worked with had a considerable variation in what they thought a neutral balance should be. With digital color, I can calibrate my workflow from beginning to end to give me consistent results. This is so satisfying that - for the first time in decades - I am being drawn back into shooting color for creative work.
No, the best way is to project it. That is how slides were meant to be seen, just like movies. After all, 35 mm photography originally used leftover 35mm movie film.
Another way is to dupe the slides by copying them onto print film. Vericolor was the standard for that, but I found that Ektar was better for landscapes.
.> Even then, it doesn't match the
That is one of the reasons (cost) why most amateurs I know shot slides before converting to digital. Much cheaper than prints.
For 4 x 6 I had good results duping kodachrome slides onto Ektar
25 using a slide copier. No more Ektar though.
For black and white, I doubt that digital can hold a candle to 2415 developed in Technidol.
But in terms of throughput, there is no doubt that you can crank out hardcopy fast with digital, and for a low unit cost too, after the equipment is paid for.
Those are factors I refer to as convenience, as opposed to quality.
Folks at my photo club typically project their images to show them to the club. Compared to Kodachorme slides, the digital slides are dull as dirt.
Yes. Once you've bought the equipment, you shoot a crapload of photos cheap with digital.
Most amateurs around here shot negative film, but, then, it sometimes seems as if shooting half a roll and leaving it in the camera a year or two was the norm. Most of my editors, those who wanted color in those days, wanted transparencies.
I'm trying to remember the ASA of 2415. I used to have charts on all of those, but they went along with the darkroom gear.
Shouldn't be. They won't be as good as Kodachrome, but...
In constant dollars, the $722 I paid for a Pentax K10D body last year is well under what I paid for a Canon F1 in '70 or '71. In fact, so is the price of today's K20D, currently at around $1,200 street. My *istD cost, IIRC, about $1,700 someting like four years ago, but with a
16-45 lens that was pretty decent. If you jump on the top of the line Canon offering today, the body costs about $8,000. That's probably double what the F1 cost (I seem to have $415 banging around in my memory, which may or may not be true) in constant bucks, but you also don't have to worry about a bulk back and a motor drive, so, again, digital is little more, if any, expensive even for the high end gear...until you get into Hasselblads and Phase 1 backs, where it gets rough enough to scare even GWB. I had both the bulk back and motor drive eventually, but hated to use the back because it was so bulky and added a loss of balance as well as weight. The motor drive was fast enough to create a problem with rolls of film. Something under 10 seconds and reload. So it wasn't worth much without the back.
Loved that camera, got some great shots with it, but I don't miss ANY of that.
HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here.
All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.