Digital or SLR -no contest!

[dave_h]

Now as i am new to digital cameras i recently purchased, well not quite i have the luck to have a wife who is a manager for a big retail chain and i experemented with the works digital one to trial before buying and i have to say i am not impressed!

I can understand the advantages of one - adjusting the picture before taking, deleting unwanted ones etc etc etc, but too me theres only one thing that matters QUALITY OF PICTURES.

This camera i had was a well known make and had 3.1 million pixels and costs around £300

A Average SLR will cost about the same (I already have one so i have saved there) and have been told that a digital camera would have too have atleast 8 million pixels to come close,and while you can take your film to boots and for an extra £5 they will put it on disc aswell as your prints.

I am sure i will get some feed back on this(I hope) but if like most people i use 2-3 films on holiday and 1-2 films the rest of the year i estimated that £11 a film (Thats prints and cd and free film with processing)thats £44 a year for QUALITY pictures AND cd's now that beats £300+£50 for your memory in one payment for poorer quality.

When i catch my first 40lb pike it will be on a SLR i hope(Thats if i can stop shaking enough)

Anyway it works out even cheaper because i will borrow the works digital for all the silly shots on holiday anyway i think handing it back on a monday morning smelling of a "rotting herring"

will not be looked at kindly but too buy one no i think not.Maybe one day they will have the same quality but not yet! in the meantime i will continue to take my morning shots on my SLR.

Cheers Dave

[RobStubbs]

There are very expensive digital SLR's that are very good quality and I believe used by pretty much all photo journalists nowadays. However these are well out of our range and obviously have additional benfits for journalists.

 

I will use a digital camera as it is perfect for pics that go onto the net.

 

The other point is that we don't actually need the resolution we get from ordinary films, that is only required if we enlarge our prints (or slides).

 

And another thing; Most people actually want to see prints rather than look around a computer screen. Sure you can mail images but then you can scan prints anyway and high res digital images take up a lot of memory.

 

Rob.

[bikenut]

Well I love digital. Yes I know the resolution isn't as good, but you can edit, delete, show them on TV, retouch. and all within seconds of shooting. I set my PC to show a slideshow as screen saver, so get to see my pics, yes I have hundreds, fairly regularly. I can back them up, keep copies at work. all in all I am well chuffed. Slides are a pain, but photo prints are nice, however the old C41 process is probably down on quality compared to my 2.3 megapixel digital camera.

Its a shame that all the photos of my record fish were lost in a magnetic storm. 19lb Barbel, 70 lb carp, 3 lb minnow.

Honest!!!

Bikenut

[PH]

No doubt about it, digi cameras are the future.

However, there will be times you wish you had your old SLR. Picture this. You're out on a boat and the fishing is great. You're taking pictures of everything you catch. Then you catch a big one, or you see some dolphins doing their stuff, or you see a sea-monster! You want to take a picture but you can't! Your memory is all used up! And you don't happen to have your PC all setup on board and you certainly don't want to delete any of the images you have already, so what do you do? Nothing. You can do nothing. Right you might have an extra memory card, but those babies are expensive. And it will be times like this that you wished you had your old film camera.

OK, so you could run out of film as well, but your probably less likely too. Because everybody has a couple of extra rolls of film handy. They're cheap as chips and you can buy them almost anywhere?

[dave_h]

Come on lads!! that lovely quality glossy photograph nothing beats it!!

And you can still have them on youre pc by downloading from your disc that you were given, so you can STILL mail them too your mates or to AN

I knew i would be in the minority!

Theres too much fast service and rushing around in life today were has all the quality gone.

Digitals are like M'cdonalds fast,efficiant,but crap!!

Give me a good old quality bit of stake and chips anyday and give me a Knife and Fork to eat it!!!

[rabid]

Well said Dave!

I had the the good fortune of trying out a £5000 Nikon through work and the results were CRAP compared to my Nikon 801 which cost £150.

So if the results are poor from a five grand camera I would love to the results from a £300 camera

Yes I too think digital cameras are the future for journalists because they can send images in seconds and you don't need exceptional quality images for a newspaper but if you want a crisp image which can be blown up to whatever size you want which canstill be edited on your computer and will last for decades then you can't beat good old film.

 

[ 21. August 2002, 05:07 PM: Message edited by: rabid ]

[Guest NickInTheNorth]

Hi Dave

 

send me your snail mail address if you like and i'll post you 2 images 8x6 glossy prints. One SLR one digital (2.3 mega pixel) I'll send you a fiver if you can tell which is which.

[Guest NickInTheNorth]

rabid:

but if you want a crisp image which can be blown up to whatever size you want

In taht case you really need medium format, SLR starts to go a bit fuzzy larger than about 12x10.

 

It's true that digital does have draw backs from a quality perspective, but if you get hold of a 6 mega pixel digital and compare a 12 x 10 print from that (shot at either best quality JPG, or TIFF or RAW formats [increasing in quality]) with a decent SLR and lens you will be hard pressed to tell the difference.

 

I would be very interested to know what camera / settings / lens you used which gave such crap results.

[Richard Harvey]

I got my first digi cam about 6 months back. A cheap and cheerfull one £80 ! It takes 128 photos and has a flash too. It also doubles as a web cam.

I snap away at anything that moves then save or delete when back at home.I snap birds ,scenery, wildlife and friends fishing etc. I'm happy with basic photos that remind me of days out etc and take loads more pictures than i ever would on film.I also carry a little Canon 35mm auto focus incase a special snap is required.I will stick with it for now until the prices of better digi cams comes down a bit more.

If the attachment on this post works , it will be with thanks to Gray for his help.It's my new P.B. Chub from Monday at 4lb8oz.I know i cut my head off using it on timer on a box, but i was by myself and wanted to get it back in the water .

Richard.

 

[ 21. August 2002, 06:10 PM: Message edited by: Richard Harvey ]

[chesters1]

it depends on the film ,if you use a 200 then the pictures wont be very good if you enlarge ,if you use a 1000 then boots wont touch it ,with film camera`s its grain size with digital its pixels ,costs a fiver in boots to have your film on cd if you have a cd copier it costs 40p ,my finepix 4800 on full res takes a picture 34" x 24"without enlargement to get that on a film camera you have to enlarge ,its all swings and roundabouts both have good points both bad ,my 128 mb memory card will store 72 pics at full resolution ,a film is 36 ,you pays your money and takes your choice ,i have given my old camera`s away and remember if you run out of memory, camera shops will treat it as film download it onto their pc and give the media back ,you could ofcourse use the puny 16mb one that comes with the camera as a spare.printers have media slots so you can print of the memory ,film will become the same as b&w film is now ,used by a few diehards for quality shots

 

[ 21. August 2002, 07:15 PM: Message edited by: chesters1 ]