Olympus-OM
[Top] [All Lists]

[OM] Re: Why go digital??

Subject: [OM] Re: Why go digital??
From: Stephen Scharf <scharfsj@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Tue, 16 Mar 2004 21:47:19 -0800
>
>Date: Mon, 15 Mar 2004 14:17:49 -0800 (PST)
>From: Donald Shedrick <shedridc@xxxxxxxxx>
>Subject: [OM] Why go digital??
><BIG SNIP>
>So.....help me out.....why is there so much excitement about digital?
>

Don (and Ali...)

There as likely as many reasons to go digital as there are users, but 
for me there are two or three compelling reasons:

The first is instant feedback. My photography has improved so much 
over the last year or so shooting with a pro level digital SLR 
because the instant feedback means instant learning. You find out 
right away what works and what does not, and you can make corrections 
in your photography that translates immediately into improved 
results. This results in your learning curve going straight up.

The second is that it is more cost-effective if you're doing anything 
resembling pro photography. You can create and deliver product faster 
and in a broader range of formats with less effort than with film. 
Let's face it...most people do not break out the slide projector very 
often anymore; a lot of people are much happier viewing their photos 
on a computer...it's easy to do, and it makes it way easy to share 
with family or friends. You don't worry about whether the lab is 
going to screw up or lose your film; and if you're a pro that set up 
a shoot that cost $3,000, that's a big concern. I read about pros all 
the time that say that they don't have to re-shoot a shoot anymore 
working with digital...they know when they have the image.

You can change ISO on the fly from frame to frame. BIG advantage.

Last and not least, is that if you shoot in RAW, you have incredible 
control over your image. Consider the RAW image to be the latent 
image of a photo taken on a piece of film. It isn't developed yet, 
and depending on how you process the film, you can obtain an entire 
range of different results, but only once. With digital RAW, there 
are no limits to the no. of times you can process your "film",  but 
with yet more control. In addition to pushes, pulls,  you have 
control over correcting white balance, contrast, sharpness, tonality, 
and color balance-all within your control working with a RAW image, 
something you could never do with film. With respect to latitude, 
with RAW, you have two full stops of exposure control over your image 
in EITHER direction, for a total of four stops. Moreover, you can do 
a curve pull and adjust exactly the contrast you want in a specific 
and exact tonal range of your image. You can't do that with 
film...whatever processing you do to affect contrast affects the 
ENTIRE image. Once you've processed the film, it's set in stone. But 
with RAW, you have control of any of a number of ways of getting 
exactly the output you want as many times as you want. And this is 
before you actually get the image into Photoshop to control how you 
want your print to look on paper! Have you ever been able to burn and 
dodge an area exactly the same way twice? With Photoshop, once you 
get your image exactly the way you want, you can create a virtual 
photograph. To create originals, all you have to do is hit PRINT on 
your inkjet. Every print is exactly the same as the other assuming 
you have your color management act together. How many burned and 
dodged enlarger prints are exactly the same?

-Stephen.
-- 


2001 CBR600F4i - Fantastic!

The olympus mailinglist olympus@xxxxxxxxxx
To unsubscribe: mailto:olympus-request@xxxxxxxxxx?subject=unsubscribe

To contact the list admins: mailto:olympusadmins@xxxxxxxxxx?subject="Olympus 
List Problem"

<Prev in Thread] Current Thread [Next in Thread>
Sponsored by Tako
Impressum | Datenschutz