Stymied by all the buzz about megapixels, dpis, ppi's, and what-have-you? Should you use a digital camera? Or shoot film? And which is really better? Well, yes, it's a veritable jungle of competing facts, pseudo-facts, and ideologies out there. Then there is the obsolescence factor. As someone who bought a Nikon F Photomic in 1968, a Linhof 4x5 in '70 and proceeded to use them for the next three decades with little concern they might become passe, the prospects of investing in the latest piece of digital techno-wizardry only to have it relegated to the status of a Model-T by the end of the year is a bit daunting.
Although I have been deeply involved in black and white fine art photography for more than 30 years, before that I had an abiding interest in color. Indeed, I began shooting Kodachrome and Agfachrome slide films in the '60s and was enthralled with their luscious colors. Ultimately photography is a print medium, though, and when I began converting those transparencies into prints in the mid-'70s, I was rarely happy with the results. Only dye transfer prints did them justice, but those were either very expensive to print commercially or extremely tedious to produce oneself. Eventually I put color on hold for 25 years—until now. For me, the answer to my color printing needs arrived along with digital.
New Mexico Rainbow: Next to the fleeting shadows on the landscape, rainbows are one of nature's more ephemeral phenomena. They can disappear in the blink of an eye, thus quickness is primary. It can also be raining at the same time, so a small camera that can be shielded with a hand or the brim of a cap is very helpful.
Besides my interest in color, I also have been intrigued with the pictures people are taking with digital point-and-shoot cameras only slightly larger than a deck of cards. For years I've lugged bulky cameras fastened to sturdy wooden tripods all over the Southwest, bags of lenses and/or film holders slapping against my side as I trod canyons and mesas in search of a moment of truth. I achieved many striking results and attained wide recognition for my work, but in recent years I have begun asking myself if this is really all that photography
is about.
Uban Street Scene: Neo-classical meets urban cubism. The visual impact of the time green pedestrian walkway is incalculable. Cartier-Bresson built his entire career on the Leica camera and a 50mm lens, I just happen to prefer the 35mm. In street scenes like this, spontaneity is everything
More and more it has not been fun, but drudgery. And if I am shooting 4x5, then others are shooting 8x10, 11x14, 12x20,
etc. Bigger is always better. What I have wanted is a recipe for enjoying myself. Five years ago I bought a Contax 645 medium format camera, and suddenly things changed. It was my first automatic camera: autofocus, exposure, film advance, etc. But more than that I rediscovered the joy of just taking pictures. After years of shooting everything (even 35mm) on tripods, I soon found myself getting great shots with the Contax— handheld!.
Then, two years ago I bought myself a true point-and-shoot camera, an Olympus Stylus Epic. This $80 camera (with case and battery no less) does not have a zoom lens, just a 35mm f/2.8 fixed lens—but a critically sharp lens, it turns out. It has automatic exposure, focus, and film advance, both averaging and spot metering, something like five different flash settings, and does acceptable close-ups down to 14". But what it really excels in are pictures in the 4 to 20-foot range. Pictures in this "middle distance," as I refer to it, come out with an awesome clarity. All this from a camera that costs 1/100 the price of a Canon EOS-lDs Mark II!
Pelican Frenzy: Again, this is where spontaneity counts. My wife and I were walking down a waterfront Mexican seaside town when we came upon this feeding frenzy at a truck where someone had left a bucket offish parts in the back. It only went on for a few minutes, but was great while it lasted.
So what does this have to do with digital? Well, the Olympus is not really made for black and white. There is no exposure compensation and its clamshell on/off design makes using filters awkward at best. Knowing color negative film has a broad exposure Latitude, which makes it perfect for point-and-shoot exposures, I began shooting what turned out to be a gem of a film: Fuji Reala. While the majority of photographers shooting color these days are using chromes such as Fujichrome Velvia or Kodak VS100, you rarely hear much about Reala. Even people at the photo labs where I have it processed ask me where I get it because they rarely see it. Indeed, many people think it was discontinued years ago.
Now we'll get back to my color trail. My initial purchase of an iMac G5 and Konica Minolta DiMAGE scanner was intended to handle years and years of color transparencies. However, I began by scanning the Reala negs I was shooting because the images were fresh and people (myself included) were blown away by the clarity of the Reala prints I was getting from the labs. Reala has saturated, but believable color, also very fine grain (il's ISO 100), and scans well, so I gave it a try and it turned out to be a perfect combination.
Construction Scene: New space age materials make many construction sites an unexpected source of stunning color phoeots these days. An advantage of small point-and-shoot cameras is they make you very moblie and a lot less intimidating. People pass you off as some tourist, not a serious photog who may make a pretty penny off the image.
While any new piece of gear requires a learning curve, the DiMAGE scanner was fairly intuitive, plus had some features that helped greatly in the process. One of the most appreciated was Digital ICE, which automatically cleans up dust and minor scratches. It also offers Digital GEM and SHO, which help control grain and contrast. My years of labor in the darkroom paid off here, as the scanner software allowed me to make very precise adjustments to the highlights, shadows, and contrast of my images. Photographers with little or no darkroom background will appreciate another option: Pixel Polish. This simplifies things by giving you a set menu of corrections. Upon selecting Custom, you have three categories: Color, Brightness/Contrast, and Object/Scene. The 12 choices they provide between them will allow you to make a satisfactorily corrected scan. This comes in handy until vou gain more experience.
Whichever course you take, the resulting scans will provide good starting points for image adjustments and/or manipulation. For that I am presently using Photoshop Elements 3.0. If you think this is just Photoshop lite, don't be fooled—for myself and other photographers it offers all the functions necessary for adjusting images at a fraction of the price of 7.0, CS, CS2,
Last but not least is the printer. There are a number of good printer brands out
there, and you can spend lots of bucks for the latest and largest models. My initial choice has been the little-known Epson Stylus C86, which uses a basic three color plus black (CMYK) DURABrite inkset. It only prints to 8 1/2 X 11, but does an outstanding job, and at $99 (there is often a rebate available) is within everyone's budget. It will definitely allow you to affordably experiment with inkjet printing.
Butterfield Stage: A simple looking picture, but one where mobility was key. To get close and high enough to fill the frame, like hail to stand on a narrow cinderblock wall white withstanding a 30 mph wind that was raking the street. Piece o'cake.
So there you have it: my solution for high-quality (albeit not huge print) color digital photography for about the current price of a good, but not great, digital SLR, with little fear that it will be obsolete before you get itout of the box. Just one word of caution--since you are depending on the C-41film as the source of your file, save yourself a lot of fustration by having the film professionally processed. One-hour photolabs may save you a few bucks up front, but you may suffer for it long after the satisfaction of the low price is gone. And how about my fine art black and white work? For that I'll stick to the darkroom thank you.
William Davis is a fine art photographer and teacher based
in Taos, New Mexico. His work is represented by the Fenix Gallery in
Taos, New Mexico (www.fenixgallery.com).
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