Ever since I got my first instamatic camera, taking pictures has been one of my
favourite hobbies. At first it was most for fun, but as time passed by my interest
for composition and picture quality grew stronger and stronger. I soon realized the
best way forward would be to invest in a SLR camera. This way I would get more control over
exactly what was captured and how it was done. It was with great interest I investigated how
the different settings for aperture, shutter and film speed could affect the end result.
After the Practica MTL-5, the next SLR camera I bought, was a Canon EOS 300 with auto focus
and automatic exposure, as well as all manual of course. This new camera was a big leap
forward in terms of user friendliness. Unlike a professional photographer, I didn't have all
the different camera configurations in my head at any given situation or light condition.
So, the choice was simple; buy a camera where at least the focusing was done automatically by
the camera, and then manually adjust the exposure with the controls available. And this was
when I discovered a small button on the camera which enabled me to force the metering to only
a small area in the centre; spot metering! Very smart feature indeed. The ability to partially
read the light intensity can really make a difference in surprisingly many situations. Now I simply
cannot do without it.
Another benefit with this platform was of course the possibility to mount a great variety of different
lenses to the camera body. The EOS 300 came with an EF 28-80 kit lens, and with an additional 80-200
zoom lens I was well prepared for the future of amateur photographing.
The arrival of digital cameras was kind of
troublesome. On one hand I appreciated the many advantages this new device would give, but
on the other hand I wasn't impressed at all with the image quality on the early models. And
that's very important to me, image quality. But over the years things improved and prices
on DSLRs got lower and lower, until it all was right when Canon released the 300D. I was very exited
when I came home with my newly bought digital wonder. Having read many promising reviews beforehand,
my expectations to the performance of the camera was very high indeed. I already had one foot inside
the world of digital photography with my Powershot G2, but the 300D was such an big leap forward
with all the benefits of an SLR. And after several test shots, my conclusion was clear; I've become
fully digital, and I like it :-).
RAW vs. compressed JPG.
In my opinion, the picture taken should reflect exactly what is seen through the lens at the time
of the shot. The challenge then is to capture exactly what is supposed to be captured, at the right
exposure settings. On many digital cameras today you can choose to shoot raw or jpg (or both). This
option presented me with kind of a dilemma, because if I choose raw files, I have to process the files
on a PC later on. This is not good, because in my opinion, the art of photography is all about what
you can capture with the camera alone, not what you can do with the picture files on a PC with photo
editing software. But choosing jpg isn't much better as those files are processed and compressed
by the camera according to the camera settings. Either way, I need to moderate the word exactly
to as close as possible in my bold statement above.
On a film based camera, there was very few ways to influence the result (on the film), other than with filters
on the lens or simply by replacing the film. This suited me and my principal just fine. But nowadays, apparently
this has become more complicated on digital cameras where the picture information has to be
processed one way or the other. So the golden rule must be less is better, which means I've
chosen the jpg setting over the raw setting because the jpg setting requires no more work on my side,
and the finished picture files can be downloaded from the camera.
Video has also captured my fascination the last few years. But it wasn't until prices on video editing
hardware and software for digital video became acceptable I went out and bought a video camera. And
again, since image quality was (and still is) a very important criteria, the choice fell on a 3CCD Canon
camcorder. This was a relative expensive camcorder, but the reward in shape of image quality was amazing.
But when capturing the footage was relative straight forward, editing it on a PC was quite a different story.
When video editing software first became available for ordinary 'household' computers, the DV card wasn't an
integrated part of the PC. So you had to buy it separately and plug it in to a free PCI slot on the main board and
hope it would work. In my case it didn't work well at all. I spent hours and hours trying to make it work, but ended
up more and more frustrated. Here's the short version of my trial and error terror; first I tried to shuffle the DV
card around and test it in all the slots, and at the same time changing up and down the IRQ settings for the card.
Then I bought more RAM, formatted the HDD several times over, bought an extra HDD and then some more formatting.
And one time, as I was installing Windows, the lights went out in my home! Just for a few seconds, but of course
it was more than enough to ruin my installation. So I had to start all over, formatting the drives using fdisk
on a FDD, and then install Windows again. But half way through, the power went out again!!! Bad luck, or cursed?
And this was all done on a new powerful PC which was supposed to be more good enough in the first place. So, when I got
the advice to switch to SCSI disks, I simply gave up and bought a Mac. Finally! What a relief. Everything worked
as a charm on my new Poweook, and all my frustrations was a thing of the past :-).
TS, October 4 2007 (last edit)
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