Photography has been something I've been interested since I was a kid. Back in middle school
I used my dad's Canon AE1, I think that's what it was anyway. I didn't do much at that time but later in high school when I started getting into biketrials I picked up that camera again, with its same battery no less and shot with it for the next 5 years. Upon graduating from college I was given a Canon Elan 7e. The Elan was my first exposure (you bet pun intended) to a fully automatic camera and it was great. For some reason I had trouble with focusing the manual with the speed required for biketrials. The quick focusing on the Elan was a great help.
Basically since I got into photography I have been digitizing the photographs to publish on the web. First I was borrowing flatbed scanners until I got a Canon USB scanner which was pretty nice for my budget in college. I moved on to a Minolta slide/negative scanner which was worlds better in terms of sharpness, color, exposure range, in short in every way. That worked well for three or four years until I realized that it was time to buy a digital SLR.
I had purchased a super cheap point and shoot digital back in 2000 or so. I quickly saw its usefulness in that the feedback loop was nearly instant. However I have no idea how I put up with the quality. It was just terrible. About that time I realized that quality versus quantity was more important. When I got back to my film camera I used this ethos and as a result you'll see much less photos per photo event. Anyways back to my digital SLR.
I was burning tons of time and to a much lesser extent money on film and processing for my photographic needs. I was tired of the workflow. Take the shot, wait till the roll was finished (don't want to "waste" pro quality fim!), develop, wait for it to scan, clean the stupid amount of dust from the scan, color correct and finally post to the web. It was exhausting.
I had been asked on many occasions why I didn't switch to digital. There were two primary reasons.
- megapixels
- magnification factor
My slide/negative scanner would scan a roughly 12 megapixel image. Even now (beginning of 2007) that size is available only from pro quality cameras. Sizes are quickly approaching that by consumer point and shoots though. The second reason was the magnification factor. Much of my trials work is using wide angle lenses. I'd lose much of that wide angle by switching to digital.
Somewhat impulsively I purchased a used Canon 10d from Ebay. I have been very happy with it so far. It will serve as a stepping stone to a 5d once prices come down on those. The 5d solves my two reservations of going to digital by the way.
In short I'm now digital and learning all of the really cool things I can do with it. I love the feedback loop on what the image looks like. Especially for flash photography. I expect to continue photographing stuff for a long time to come.
