I find this discussion interesting as I dabble in both film and digital. I
own a Kodak DC265, which is a pretty good digital camera, close, but not
quite as good as the Olympus 2500. The main reason that my Oly equipment
was in the closet was that I had gone digital. The quality was pretty good
and I have the right equipment to produce very high quality 8x10 prints that
most people could not distinguish from film. The computer became my
darkroom and I could manipulate the images in ways I never could have
dreamed of before. Of course, I still mostly took snapshots of the kids,
but what I 'could' have done.
Then I hit the wall. Digital is just not ready for everything, even if I
had a Nikon D1. Well, maybe if I had a D1, but at $5K, it's just too
pricey. And that's without lenses.
The biggest wall I hit was speed, in more than one way. The autofocus was
just plain slow. Try taking a shot of a running seven year old, dribbling
up court. AF just didn't cut it. Now I don't have experience with a good
AF SLR, but I doubt it would be able to do an adequate job either. That
part, however, was easy. Close the lens down, guess at the focus, set the
focus manually and things are ok, except...... That's when you run into the
old ASA100 equivalent problem. In the gym where my daughter played, it was
just too dark. Even with ASA1600 in my OM-x (depended on my mood), I could
only get 1/250 at wide open on the 50/1.8 or 85/2. The digital was
worthless. Panning left some interesting effects, but not useful photos.
Now, it's unfair to compare the Kodak to a good OM-4T. The Kodak is closer
to a Stylus or other P&S, but even then, fast film is necessary.
Now, do I believe digital will get there? Sure. Eventually, film will be
unnecessary, as we'll all go digital. I think it is a long way out.
Now, the previous comments about getting the CCD and grafting it to a back
interested me and got me thinking. Seems like an easier way to do it would
be to take a working digital camera, disassemble it and use the CCD with the
associated electronics. That way, you'd have a working camera, just in an
OM back. If you could get the CCD positioned properly, why wouldn't it
work. The 'film' area is smaller, but I would think that the image spilling
over the sides would be ok. Your 50 would become your 85, or something like
that, but I could like with that. I, for one, would have no objection to a
manual focus, SLR bodied digital camera. Even with the limitations of the
camera that you 'stole' from.
If there are any engineers on the list willing to collaborate on the
experiment, write me privately. I'm just stupid enough to sacrifice a back
and buy a cheap used digital to take apart. Probably end up with expensive
parts on the table, but......if it worked. John, perhaps with your skill
and experience fixing everything we break, you'd like to take on the
challenge. I'll supply the parts and you.....
Would be fun.
Tom
> I guess your right, you could do that. I know the Canon body was like
> $10,000 a couple of years ago. (digital body) I heard Nikon produced
> a$5,000 digital body and Canon matched the price. (this is what I heard
and
> could be furthest from the truth.)
>
<snip>
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