Reconsidering Digital Photography
--From an Analog Background

By Reagan Andrews 
November 2003

I've been puttering around with digital photography for the last two and a half years after being presented with a digital camera on retirement from the VA Medical Center at Dallas.  For the most part, it has been a love-hate relationship.

This last was entirely my fault, well, maybe a little bit the camera's fault too.  Mostly it was trying to move from one conceptual basis to a totally different operational style when using the "new" camera.

On Seeing

There several approaches to "seeing" available to the photographer.  A straight forward record photo, "See Aunt Jane smiling at the camera" perhaps with a scenic background such as a vacation location is probably the most common.  Baby shots, the new car, a new home, soccer team shots, etc., tend to fall into this category.

A second approach, attempting to interpret some idea or transmit an emotion via careful attention to composition, lighting and shadows, and expression is another.  It's the stuff of photojournalism and an art in itself.  I tend to place this in two categories—monochrome (black & white, sometimes sepia) and color.  Using either involves training the eye to "see" appropriately for the medium in use.

Nothing wrong with "Aunt Jane"

From the standpoint of the typical user, doing a "See Aunt Jane smiling at the camera" shot in daylight, most digital cameras are appropriate—depending on the desired results.  For more serious users coming from a heavy film experience background, most inexpensive digital cameras are questionable—unless the user intends to do nothing more intensive than the photo at right with them.

If the user wants acceptable 4" x 6" prints and lower resolution shots to send across the Web, 2 megapixel digital cameras are adequate.  Increases in desired size and quality mean moving to higher resolution and much more expensive cameras.  More on that later.

I learned this in a hurry with the digital camera.  Where I had used various exposure and developing techniques, filters for color balance with film, I had to set the digital camera's White Balance, sharpness and ISO ratings before shooting anything.  Where I had control before, I had to struggle with software camera settings and auto-focusing when using the digital camera, often in opposition to my "internal" analog settings I would have used with either my current Olympus or Nikon SLR's.

If I used the camera's ISO settings at equivalent of ASA 400, I was faced with the aspect of CCD (Charge-Coupled Device) "noise" introduced by the solid state device.  I was accustomed to the "grainy" negatives when I pushed Tri-X too far, but considered this "arty" and made use of the effect.  Results in digital were not so arty and far less pleasant.

Available darkness was further rendered a casualty since the camera didn't allow manual focus and often didn't focus where I wished in low light conditions. I did discover that the digital camera was very, very appropriate for "See Aunt Jane smiling at the camera"—unless I used the camera's built-in flash.  Then, because of the flash unit's proximity to the camera lens, "Red Eye" was a very common result.  That meant lots of time working in Adobe PhotoShop to bring the subject's eyes back into reality and out of the demon mode.

One good feature of the camera was a flash synch outlet.  A lacking feature was absence of a flash "hot-shoe" connector on the camera body itself.  Direct flash works OK with exception of "Red Eye" in "See Aunt Jane smiling at the camera," but bounce flash is much, much better indoors for both people and objects in general. This can, of course, be assisted by a small white card affixed to the flash head that will direct a small portion of the flash unit's light output directly to the scene to fill-in shadows produced by the bounce flash.  This particular camera allowed use of the (weak) built-in flash to accomplish the same effect, but far too much "Red Eye" was a common result.

You can approximate this by attaching an appropriate bracket and synch cord, and strobe to the camera body (if there is a tripod screw available on the bottom of the camera), but  does add significantly to the bulk and weight of the camera in such use. A "hot-shoe" would be much better.

Best of both worlds?

Several vendors, Canon, Olympus and Nikon, do offer digital camera models that feature "hot-shoes," manual focus and other amenities, but at a substantial cost to the user. This usually appears as a $900+ camera when

combined with 5+ megapixel resolution and a decent optical zoom lens. (Avoid, when possible, use of the digital zoom feature of the camera, since this greatly reduces resolution of the resulting image.)

How much resolution is really required?

If the user wants to do "decent" 8" x 10" prints with good gradation and sharpness, 3+ megapixel resolution is recommended. I have done decent 11" x 14" prints from a 3.1 megapixel camera, but this was after considerable "tweaking" in PhotoShop.  (Yes, the PhotoShop filters can be very, very useful.)

Here's a hint and an accolade to Canon.  Several Canon cameras use a somewhat larger CCD or CMOS image capture chip than other vendors.  While the resolution of the CCD chip is supposedly the same, lens resolution requirements are somewhat higher for the smaller CCD chips to produce the "same" final image quality.  That means a larger CCD chip doesn't require as high lens resolution capability as a smaller CCD chip does.

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About the photographs in this brief article: All of the photos, with exception of "McMansion," are from scanned negatives or transparencies.  The street scene on the beginning of the article came from a scanned 35 mm Ektachrome transparency and required a lot of re-balancing in PhotoShop as a result of 40+ years of storage neglect.  The Eagle was from a 6 cm x 6 cm transparency which was scanned on a H-P 600 dpi scanner courtesy of Marsha Drebelbis.  Photo of Connie Andrews "Watermelon Rinds" was taken on our honeymoon in 1966 and was also scanned at 600 dpi.  Since I forgot to turn color off (this is a B&W negative) resulting file was approx. 35 M from a 6 cm x 6 cm negative. Both of the other monochrome images, the Berlin Airlift "Hunger Rake" at Tempelhof, and the ladies tending the grounds in Viktoria Park in Berlin were scanned from 35 mm negatives on a 1200 dpi H-P scanner (in monochrome mode this time.) All of these will produce very nice 8 x 10's or  11 x 14's in an Epson Stylus Photo EX ink jet printer.  "Watermelon Rinds" will also do a respectable 20 x 24 print before grain begins to exert much impact from the original Tri X negatives.

Low-end Digital v. Throw-away

Again, the usual inexpensive digital cameras are probably best suited to use similar to the throw-away cameras available from Kodak and Fuji. Question for the user is when it is more economical to go the digital rather than the throw-away route.  Once the digital photo is on the PC drive, any number of copies can be made at relatively low cost compared to film and prints.  It's a balance between the cost of the cameras, cost of film, cost of developing and printing, and cost of ink jet cartridges and paper.

If all the user wants is decent shots of the kids and family members to send to relatives over the Web, a low cost digital camera may be the best choice.  If the user wants studio quality, archival prints of important subjects, I'd still choose film in a good medium format or 35 mm SLR.  Big and archival prints are another story than Web-bound shots across a dial-up connection.

Why Film over Digital?

Average 35 mm negative or positive (transparency) is 1" x 1-1/2" in size, and similar 6 cm x 6 cm negatives or transparencies are 2-1/4" x 2-1/4" in size.  Currently available film scanners operate at 1,200 - 4,800 dpi resolution and can produce files ranging beyond 40+ MB in size. Resulting prints can be astonishing in terms of sharpness, gradation and balance. To achieve the same results with a digital camera, you're looking at several thousand dollars today.

Do the math.  A 6 cm x 6 cm, monochrome negative scanned at 1600 x 3200 dpi will result in a 26 megapixel rendering while a 35 mm slide or negative will give the equivalent of a 7.7 megapixel rendering.  Note that I didn't give file sizes.  These can become huge when shot in color, depending on the color depth used.

I still do a few "Aunt Jane smiling at the camera" shots in addition to more serious work.  Recently did a number of shots of Lakewood "McMansion" shots that were perfectly appropriate for the digital camera, one of which is shown in this brief blurb. 

Will I make a large print of this?  Don't be silly.  It was only because I'm disturbed at the change in the character of the neighborhood—and envious of anyone who can afford a $650,000+ house.

-- Reagan Andrews   

Reagan Andrews is a Managing Editor/Publisher of the North Texas PC Users News..
He may be contacted by e-mail: Click here to contact Reagan Andrews