photography

[sev]

For quite a few years now, people have been asking me when I'm going to go digital. Depending on who's asking, I've got a couple of different answers.

"When they make a digital camera whose quality is up to what I get with film + my film scanner" -- this is the "not quite when hell freezes over, but close" answer. Digital photography evangelists who aren't polite about their preference get this one. When 60 -- yes, 60 -- megapixel digital cameras come out, with the same or better dynamic range than negative film (that's the ability to get detail in both the deep shadows and bright highlights of, say, fire or streetlamps in the dark of night), with reliable color reproduction and with no chromatic abberation, then they'll be able to go toe-to-toe with my film scanner.

This answer is somewhat disingenuous, as given that the film I generally use doesn't always stand up to a 60MP scan and there's dynamic range in the negative that exceeds that of my photo paper. When I'm shooting slide film or high-quality low-speed film, I can really wring performance out of the scanner, but when I'm doing my typical low-light shoots, there's too much film grain to merit anything larger than 15MP. But if I want to access the detail that's in the negative, I can dodge and burn in the darkroom, or I can make the 64MP scan, very carefully twiddle the extremes so the details are accessible to print technologies (preferably without increasing the contrast of the film grain), and then print (or, as it turns out, pay somebody else to print; digital print technology is a whole 'nother can of worms). And that detail isn't there at all for me to play with on images that come directly from a digital camera. Not yet. They make CCDs with that kind of dynamic range, and any day now they're going to put them in cameras (instead of just in surveillance systems).

At the other end of the scale is "I'll buy a cute little digital camera to play with when I need to replace my beloved backup camera, the Minolta Freedom Zoom Explorer, which I've had for seven years." (I've got the original one; that link goes to a pretty shiny silver one that I believe is a little newer, but seems to share the same featureset.)

That time is now. My poor little Minolta gets halfway through a roll of film and then starts chewing on it. Poor camera! It went to burning man for five years in a row and now that I'm threatening to take it back, it doesn't wanna go.

However, I've become tempted to spend the $50 to another (film-using) Minolta Freedom Zoom Explorer. I've done due diligence with the digital-camera hunt. I've reduced my standards. I am willing to replace my MFZE with a digital camera that does not do the equivalent of 28mm zoom (wide-angle). The MFZE is 22 cubic inches in volume and weighs less than nine ounces; I can consider things that aren't that small (though it's gotta be smaller and lighter than my SLRs; this is the backup-camera.) I'm willing to deal with something that doesn't do the equivalent of ISO 1600, as that's a film I don't shoot so often that not having it would be a crisis (I generally shoot one roll out of ten or twenty at 1600). However. I shoot ISO 800 Very Often. It's my preferred "shoot at night" film, which means more than half the film I consume is that sensitive (or I've pushed it to that sensitivity). And that limitation reduces the field of available digital cameras a *lot*.

The ISO-800-equivalence isn't really something I'll bend on. It'll be nice to get a camera where I don't have to store the film in the 'fridge (remember where I said I did low-light photography? The film I use really wants to be kept out of the heat, or it'll get even grainier. In the last year or so, I've fallen out of the habit of climate-controlling my film, and it's been obvious. Anybody want some over-grainy 800 speed film? You can have it for free, but don't expect great results out of it.) Anyway, that's the current most-annoying-thing for me about film photography -- having to keep my film refrigerated. And I'm not buying a digital camera that doesn't address that problem for me. I'm not going to buy a big, expensive digital SLR to replace my little point-and-shoot. I'm not buying an SLR-sized digital camera, either. When I buy a big full-featured digital SLR, it'll be because I'm ready to start using in places where I'd be using my big, full-featured film SLR. I want a compact camera, one I can use with one hand (and I do not have large hands!). I'm willing to go as low as 4 megapixels, but no lower (I generally scan my film at 5megapixels, and use the higher resolution less often). And I'm not willing to resort to cameras that use interpolation to get that resolution! I can interpolate better on my desktop computer, and that's still not high enough quality for me.

I found the camera. I really did. I didn't just pick this camera so I'd have an excuse not to buy a digital camera! But it appears that it was never available from anybody but the manufacturer, and they don't make it anymore, and nobody I trust has got one for sale (actually, for this camera, it appears that nobody at *all* has it for sale). Dammit.

I found another one. This one's not available in the US yet; the only previously-released models from that manufacturer either use interpolation to get above 3mp or don't do ISO 800. Dammit.

Fuck this. I'm taking the Holga to burning man as my second camera. And any picture I would have needed my MFZE + ISO 800 film to take? Well, those will just have to be missed shots.