When did digital become good enough for you?

droj said:
In the light of the thread title it seems slightly odd that all the talk has been about cameras alone, and I haven't noticed anyone mentioning a hybrid workflow
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I suspect that few have done that. I had access to scanners in the 90s, but the files were so large by the standards of the time that working on them was quite painful. By the time data throughput was adequate film was out of favour.
 
My use of scanners came after I started using digital cameras. Before that, the only digitised shots I had were scans that came with D&P films which were 300 dpi scans of the enprints - OK for sharing but not really worth too much processing and could just about turn out a 5x7(1/2) print.
 
woof woof said:
I nearly drop kicked my S602 over a hedge so many times. The focus was IMO next to useless for anything but nailed down static shots. Glad (but amazed) you liked yours but for me this was such a disappointing camera.
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The film SLR's I had were not auto focus cameras, so that a digital camera had any auto focus was a plus. ;) Add the the 5ps, more than 36 frames, and then change film. It came with, I think, a 16Mb Smart Media card. It could save as a Tiff, which one image couldn't fit on the supplied card! :oops: :$ :thinking: :LOL: That was the reason I also got a 1Gb Microdrive, for £150. :oops: :$ :LOL: The largest Smart Media card of the format was 128Mb.

I have a few pics of skateboarders in a half pipe that are still some of my favourite pics, so certain sports didn't rely on auto focus.

The S602Z Pro could apparently do 10,000th of second too.

I had my original S602Z Pro stolen, and went and bought a replacement last year, for the nostalgia, for £20. I was surprised at how large the camera was in the hand than I remembered. I also had a Fuji F31fd stolen, and though I would also like to replace that, they are going for crazy money used. :oops: :$
 
I tried prefocusing and MF/hyperfocal with the S602, that was the only way I could capture moving things with it. I suppose it was par for the course or even good for camera of that type at that time.
 
droj said:
In the light of the thread title it seems slightly odd that all the talk has been about cameras alone, and I haven't noticed anyone mentioning a hybrid workflow. I got a Nikon Coolscan film scanner in 2001 that produced about 9mpx from 35mm, and along with that continued using a film slr until 2012.
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My film processing was done with the help of my local chemist who then posted it all off somewhere :D

I wish I'd shot raw since the beginning of digital as every time I've changed software I've got better results and have always gone back and reprocessed some of my old pictures.
 
woof woof said:
My film processing was done with the help of my local chemist who then posted it all off somewhere :D

I wish I'd shot raw since the beginning of digital as every time I've changed software I've got better results and have always gone back and reprocessed some of my old pictures.
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I'm thankful I started shooting in RAW early on, (just looked, and it was 2005 on the Nikon D70) as what can be done now with as file is like night and day as the technology has advanced.
 
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droj said:
In the light of the thread title it seems slightly odd that all the talk has been about cameras alone, and I haven't noticed anyone mentioning a hybrid workflow. I got a Nikon Coolscan film scanner in 2001 that produced about 9mpx from 35mm, and along with that continued using a film slr until 2012.
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Further to my earlier post...

The editior of the magazine I contributed to regularly, which relied on reader submissions of words and pictures, told me that when (mostly compact) digital cameras became commonplace the usuabuilty of pictures increased dramatically. Even over/under exposed jpegs could be tweaked to reproduce better than the over/under exposed high street prints they used to get - even from decent SLRS. If you start with a crap print you're still gonna get a crap scan.

Anglers used things like Canon G series compacts and bridge cameras at the time - some are still using them. Sadly most now use their phones and a lot of the pictures I see in the few remaining fishing mags that use reader contributions has gone backwards. They're well exposed, but horribly pixelated at anything approaching a full page, sometimes even less.
 
ancient_mariner said:
I suspect that few have done that. I had access to scanners in the 90s, but the files were so large by the standards of the time that working on them was quite painful. By the time data throughput was adequate film was out of favour.
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I bought a Minolta Dimage 5400dpi scanner around 2004/5 or so; the files it produced were too massive for my G3 iMac to handle more than one scan at a time. The app would crash if you tried doing multiple scans. It did work ok on my next Mac, a Mac Pro, but I found the software flaky at best. Then Sony bought Minolta and promptly dumped any support for any Minolta products (one reason why I'd never now buy any Sony photographic products), so it just stopped working as I updated my OS. I had to keep a legacy OS (Tiger I think, OSX 10.4 or something) on a HDD just to be able to continue using the scanner. I bought a Silverfast scanner app to use with my new M1 iMac, but that software is a bit crap really. I ended up buying a Nikkor 60mm macro lens and slide copying adapter, to quickly 'scan' loads of negs in. And then I got bored and gave up. I suppose I should start that up again; a little bit at a time, should only take me a couple of decades...
 
Harriers9 said:
That was a stunning little camera until one day in Barcelona I fell in love with a 450D that the shop owner allowed me to use around the shop for 30 minutes and then printed out a couple of photos from it. Bought it on the spot and smuggled it back home through customs
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That brings back memories of the day I bought my Nikon D70, we'd booked a last minute holiday in Gran Canaries, on the way out I was reading the review of it in the AP, never thought anyone about it, until we found a Camera/electronics store, they had just had the D70 in stock, he gave me the camera and told me to go outside to try it out, he didn't even come with me.
 
Abdichoudxyz said:
I bought a Minolta Dimage 5400dpi scanner around 2004/5 or so; the files it produced were too massive for my G3 iMac to handle more than one scan at a time. The app would crash if you tried doing multiple scans. It did work ok on my next Mac, a Mac Pro, but I found the software flaky at best. Then Sony bought Minolta and promptly dumped any support for any Minolta products (one reason why I'd never now buy any Sony photographic products), so it just stopped working as I updated my OS.
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Same thing happened to me, although it was a Windows update, I ended up selling it, and lost quite a bit on it.
 
Resolution-wise, I'd say about 2007ish (so about 10-12mp, Nikon D3/D700 were just launched then) for 35mm, in terms of colour/tonality I'm still not really satisfied with digital aside from the Fuji S5 Pro which is magic - I still have that body actually. Handprinting just results in colours and tones that I like and I get there so much faster. I shoot a lot of medium and large format as well and none of the current options on the market are exact replacements for the film kit.
 
For me I think it was a Kodak pro14 something like that. Great big lump in Nikon fitting. Great in the studio with tons of light, not so clever in poor light. But then we were not use to cameras that shot high iso without some grain, tri-x pushed in microphen etc. But the speed and being able to see what you'd got at the time of shooting whas a blast.. Grim compared to a modern pro dslr. Think I've still got the strap.
 
Managed to get some (still) impressive A4 prints from the Canon EOS 20D, my first DSLR. Have an A2 print from it hanging on the wall at home. I still have it, but haven‘t used it for a year or two now. I think this and the Nikon D70S were game changers for the prosumer segment.
 
swanseamale47 said:
But then we were not use to cameras that shot high iso without some grain, tri-x pushed in microphen etc.
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A big difference is that film grain doesn't detract badly from the image, where as digital noise generally looks unpleasant.

A quick addendum to this - having recently looked at some of the old photo books I have (instructional - not famous photographer books) I'm struck by how low image detail is. The pictures are fine if you don't look close, and your imagination is required to fill in the gaps.
 
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swanseamale47 said:
For me I think it was a Kodak pro14 something like that. Great big lump in Nikon fitting. Great in the studio with tons of light, not so clever in poor light. But then we were not use to cameras that shot high iso without some grain, tri-x pushed in microphen etc. But the speed and being able to see what you'd got at the time of shooting whas a blast.. Grim compared to a modern pro dslr. Think I've still got the strap.
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Yes, I had one of those, I agree, great in the studio at ISO 80, and the lack of an anti-alias filter produced great resolution for its time. But useless outdoors, especially in poor light.
 
First things first , comes with someone's age and this is for those started with film . For casual photography a 36 roll film is more than enough for a usual promenade . As mentioned there is an amount of time needed to process a film / films and it goes equal for those spending the same amount ( or greater ) of time for the post processing procedure .
Time is moving on of course but the triptych is always the same no matter the means .
First you have to develop the way you see things , then you must find the suitable lenses covering your point of view ( aesthetically ) and last but not least you need a camera body film , digital or whatever that might be .
 
The arrival of the Canon 40D was the game changer for me.
 
ancient_mariner said:
I'm struck by how low image detail is.
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That will probably be largely due to the book printer.

The half tone process introduces a number of limitations, the major one being the number of dots that can be used per linear inch. The more dots, the more detail will be retained in the final print but the more dots, the more critical "inking" becomes, which is a constraint imposed by the press technology in use. As offset litho took over from letterpress, image quality improved because there are fewer constraints on the making of lithographic plates than on the making of letterpress halftone "blocks".
 
I never liked film for the finality of it and feeling like I had to be very careful with each shot I took, I never had a film camera myself and only used a film camera occasionally. When I bought my first digital camera, the Fuji 1400x (a 1.3MP camera with 3x zoom) it completely changed photography for me as I could take lots of pictures, immediately see what they were like and make corrections so I could much better learn how to use a camera. I could also take lots of everyday images without worrying about wasting film as well so while the quality wasn't as good as a film camera, I was a convert early on.
 
AndrewFlannigan said:
That will probably be largely due to the book printer.

The half tone process introduces a number of limitations, the major one being the number of dots that can be used per linear inch. The more dots, the more detail will be retained in the final print but the more dots, the more critical "inking" becomes, which is a constraint imposed by the press technology in use. As offset litho took over from letterpress, image quality improved because there are fewer constraints on the making of lithographic plates than on the making of letterpress halftone "blocks".
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You are forgetting gravure printing where each dot differed in both size and depth and . And when uses with stochastic screening and under colour removal and the seven colour process, resulted in astonishing quality, colour gamut and lack of a visible dot structure.

Stochastic screens and under colour removal can also be used with both litho and commercial digital printing with wonderful results. I was involved with such litho printing some thirty years ago. So it is nothing new. But is more easily and more directly achieved with today's digital tools. Which can image plates directly on the press without the use of intermediary film setting.

Even back in the 50's the highest quality fine art books were produced with fine screen letter press of 160 lines or more.
Kodak produced a professional limited distribution fine art quality magazine in the 60's using such processes. As a relative was director of publications at Kodak UK. I found myself on the distribution list for a number of years.


You might see old copies of the old BJ Almanac. The central insert pages of photographs were always printed by gravure on art paper, to ensure the highest quality and tonal depth.
 
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Terrywoodenpic said:
You are forgetting gravure printing where each dot differed in both size and depth and . And when uses with stochastic screening and under colour removal and the seven colour process, resulted in astonishing quality, colour gamut and lack of a visible dot structure.
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Indeed.

But that was the top end of the market. The vast majority of general publications: newspapers, magazines and books, were made down to a price, using the least expensive paper, ink, typesetting, blockmaking and machine time available. Even when litho began to displace letterpress, few publications took advantage of the improved technologies.
 
AndrewFlannigan said:
Indeed.

But that was the top end of the market. The vast majority of general publications: newspapers, magazines and books, were made down to a price, using the least expensive paper, ink, typesetting, blockmaking and machine time available. Even when litho began to displace letterpress, few publications took advantage of the improved technologies.
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Most of the long run high quality glossy magazines were printed in gravure. Many around the centre of gravure printing around Watford north London. It was a leading printing town for many years.

I caused something of a battle between the print unions when I wanted some page backgrounds printed litho, and the type and images printed letterpress for a glossy catalogue, in the early 60's. Selwin press did it for me as they had both the latest Heidelberg cylinder letter press and litho machines. Many years later I bought a Heidelberg cylinder machine with the entire ink unit removed to use for die cutting and creasing header cards and the like.
The old papers for letter press often had a relative high acid content, where as this would soon remove the image from litho plates. The advent of litho generally improved printing paper quality as it was less forgiving.

For a long time you could get punchier and crisper images from letterpress images than you could from litho. To day letterpress printing has become an art and craft process, along side engravings and wood and lino cut printing. Much in the way various forms of film photography is becoming.
 
Terrywoodenpic said:
Most of the long run high quality glossy magazines were printed in gravure. Many around the centre of gravure printing around Watford north London. It was a leading printing town for many years.
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Indeed.

However, they made up, at a guess, a fraction of 1% of the UK market, or indeed the world market. The vast majority of publications were printed as cheaply as possible, as a glance at any newstand of the time would have made obvious...

International newspapers on stand in St Johns Wood CAN_3845.JPG
 
All the talk and info above re film and printing is fantastic and thank you Terry and Andrew and others for these insights.

I suppose I should have cared more in my film days but I didn't. I mainly used ISO 1,600 film in my SLR as a lot of my pictures were taken indoors in low light either getting ready for or attending music events and the film was just dropped off for developing at the chemists or occasionally Jessops. I suppose that one of the differences and perhaps one of the significant differences between my film days and now is that I care more about the processing. Even with digital it's only in more recent times that I've tried to put more effort in and when I look back at some of my earlier efforts with APS-C Canon DSLR's a lot of them have needed reprocessing both because modern software is better and also because to be honest I didn't really put much effort into learning how to get better results from that older software.

Image quality wise I suppose I'm dropping off a bit these days as I'm more willing to use less good lenses, for example cheap Chinese lenses have caught my attention lately.
 
I missed out on film althogether, apart from a pocket 110 camera when I was a lad. I used to love the anticipation of taking a used film cartridge out of that camera, popping it in the envelope, with a cheque or postal order. Then the wait for it to come back, 7-10 days I think it was.

For what it was, it took me some decent photographs.

I lost interest though, fast cars and girls becoming my thing. :LOL:

So we move on to 2003. My Brother in law loaned me a digital compact. I took some photos of my dog at the time and some flowers. That was it, I was hooked. I went and bought a Canon Powershot A40, all 2.1 mp of it. I loved that camera though. Still have it, in mint condition, fully working.

I say 'hooked', I was but it never really took off for me until about 2012, when I moved onto DSLRs.

I did buy a Canon EOS500 a while ago. It's very similar to my Canon DSLRs, although it is film. Even my EF lenses will work on it. I love the challenge of film but I've only put 1 1/2 rolls through it so far, I'm not sure my remaining film is any good as it's over 3 years old. I take my film camera with me on landscape outings, but they are few and far between atm.

I digress a little, this is more how my journey has unfolded but 2003 was the year I discovered digital photography and that camera was good enough for me and what I was doing and my level at the time. As I progressed though, I wanted more and my purchase of a 40D, was when I subconsiously accepted digital as the go to format. The 40D was a very nice camera. with a lovely sensor too.
 
AndrewFlannigan said:
Indeed.

However, they made up, at a guess, a fraction of 1% of the UK market, or indeed the world market. The vast majority of publications were printed as cheaply as possible, as a glance at any newstand of the time would have made obvious...

View attachment 392898
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Probably a majority of those news sheets were printed on rotary letterpress machines as used in fleet street. They had a quality limit of around 80 lines. wish makes the dots easily visible. This is not surprising when you think that the rotary printing stereo shells were cast from paper flongs impressed from the original flat bed formes. These processes were optimised for speed not quality. But were only cheap when the run length was taken into account.
 
Terrywoodenpic said:
This is not surprising when you think that the rotary printing stereo shells were cast from paper flongs impressed from the original flat bed formes.
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When I first worked on local newspapers, there were occassional arguments about flong faults. So the most junior member of the advertising department (me) would be sent alone into hostile territory (the setting room). There I would be assigned an unoccupied table with a bunch of pressings thrown in front of me and my Sherlock Holmes magnifying glass. Inevitably, the tests would all be fine, so when a full page advert came out with a fault, it was entirely down to the office scapegoat (me, again).

I was told it was character building! :wideyed:
 
The minute I realised I could pack all the darkroom gear in the loft forever never to be seem again. Heaven, sitting in front of the PC big screen music on and happily playing and scanning. And if it all goes *** up just reset and start again. If only it'd come 50 years earlier I'd have had a much happier and less frustrating life!
 
I've never been a film user (apart from holiday snaps in the 80's and 90's) but this thread reminds me of my first ever digital camera from around 2003.... It didn't have a memory card and when you turned the camera off you lost the 20 or so photos that you had taken. You had to keep the camera switched on until you had downloaded the photos. It cost around £40 and had something like 0.5 megapixels.
 
The thing is, it was good enough for me until it wasn't, and I missed the feel of film. But then film wasn't everything, and now I find neither quite pushes the button.
 
droj said:
In the light of the thread title it seems slightly odd that all the talk has been about cameras alone, and I haven't noticed anyone mentioning a hybrid workflow. I got a Nikon Coolscan film scanner in 2001 that produced about 9mpx from 35mm, and along with that continued using a film slr until 2012.
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I bought a Canon scanner and printer around 2000, just after I bought my 1st PC. It still took me 5 years before getting a digital SLR, I did contemplate a Nikon D100 when I believed that the moment you could get a decent A4 print from a digital image that was the time to make the jump. As I was solely invested in the K-mount at the time I waited for the price of the Pentax *ist D to come down to reasonable levels before buying... (I'd only just bought an MZ-S prior - I liked the MZ-S more).

I still have my Pentax film cameras (Z-1p and P50).
 
My first camera was 110mm cartridge film camera which I use to seek in to gigs & concerts. It had a slide button to go from super wide to almost eye view i.e 50mm
Next was Minolta X700 35mm which was a big step up and I loved it. The deciding factor to go digital and buy canon 450D was paying for 5 rolls of 36 exposure film in Boots and in 2005 it cost me over £50 !

For me I think I arrived when I purchased the Canon 7D as it was build like Pro body, decent button, good ergonomics, i.e 5Diii, fast AF. I used it every where, loved. On some weekend breaks I would take well over 1000 images and all I had at the time to view and edit was Google Picasa !
 
Don't remember the year very well. I was shooting a Nikon FG and a Nikon F5 I'd just got. Decided to give digital a try as I could get a computer and printer and print my own. First digital, Nikon d70, first computer, don't remember which one and first printer, H&P 8 1/2" printer. Been hung up on it ever since.
 
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