I hate digital

[Fastfashn]

So, I figured I'd give it a try, sold all my film gear, got an Oly E500 dual lens kit.

Oh... Error. Error. Error.

The lens quality, after years of Contax, is making me nuts. I hate the buttons, the screen that gets dirty when you rub your nose on it, the stupid 'finder, the placement of the white balance button and the exposure lock...

I can't get the rez I want at over 200iso 'cause the chip is noisy.

Stupid digicams.

I also hate all these RAW conversion programs, each independently trying to figure out what the image is supposed to look like.

Give me slides!!!

[Erl]

You have lerned a great lesson, for yourself! The way forward for you is crystal clear. Just do it and be happy again.

Some of the best decisions in life can be a little painful.

Cheers,
Erl

[jlw]

Sounds as if a more appropriate thread title would be, "I hate the Olympus E500."

And what would you expect? It's (bleah) an SLR!

If you ever get a chance to try out an Epson R-D 1, or eventually a Leica M8, you might be happier.

[nemjo]

Hi,
AFAIK the contax glasses are useable on the 4/3 system via adapter...
At least I use manual Nikkors on my E300 and am happy with the results.
I changed the focus screen to a microprism aided one - very comfortable.
Why bother with WB button if shoot RAW?

But if you feel your decision a mistake, you're probably right...

nemjo

[sf]

I don't hate digital.

But, I can't seem to find a decent digital camera anywhere. It seems there are none to be found. The Ricoh GR Digital, Leica C-Lux 1, and other such cameras are generally reviewed as being sub-average. Or really, quite average.

We need a GR style body, but manual focus, NON retracting lens, optical viewfinder, larger chip (CMOS), and aperture, white balance, and ISO controls accessible without entering menus (dials or buttons). Dials are preferrable.

so, I guess I do kind of hate digital because it can't please me. I love the concept, but hate the products.

[ChrisN]

And you forget to mention the small viewfinder.

Do try a Pentax *istDS with some classic pentax glass. That's as good as it gets without spending the big bucks for an RD-1 or the soon-to-be M8 and Leica glass. And forget about RAW, at least until you have the basics under control.

But first, get your basic film kit back together so you are happy again making photos, and to give you a reference point.


Edited to add: by "as good as it gets" I means compact and rf-like to use, especially with a pancake lens attached!

[nrb]

I don't hate digitals, but I'd agree that the future of film belongs to the rangefinder system. Also rangefinders don't travel well without it...

[Gid]

Horses for courses.

The only E system camera worth buying at the moment is the E1 - I have 2 of them. The first I paid around £1500 for when it first came out and the second I bought a couple of weeks ago for £499 including the battery grip that used to cost > £300. They can't compete with RF for size, but they have their place and they are supremely ergonomic and very very quiet.

[Nachkebia]

Digital SUX, what ever you say or how ever you say it, until the time when you have to spend 5 hours in photoshop to make flat lifeless digital file look like the one shot on film, digital is awfull (owning D200 with top notch nikon glass)

[Gid]

Digital has its place. It will be interesting to see how many folk think it sucks when the digital M comes out

Ultimately if you want something that looks just like film, then shoot film

[Nachkebia]

Exactly, digital has its place but it is eating film space to! film is getting expensive and it is hard to find places to develope slides...

[Gid]

Tell me about it. I have to get all my film mail order unless I want Fuji Superia or Kodak gold and to get that its a 20 mile round trip. As for developing slides and C41 that's also mail order - the local lab, which wasn't very good anyway, just went to the wall. When it comes to B&W, there's nowhere local I can buy it. Its the way of the world

[Gid]

Nachkebia,

By the way - some really good images on your photo.net site.

[Socke]

At least you tried

I didn`t sell my Contax gear when I bought a used D60 and now borrow lenses and stuff from my PJ friends. I`ve had some experience with some borrowed Canon D30 and D60 as well as a Nikon D100 and a Fuji S2pro and decided to go Canon because I know more people with Canon gear and so I have access to great range of equipment from a 16-35L to a 400\2.8 as well as flashes and and and.

So I`m a happy camper in the digital realm but still shoot slide and B&W in my Contax Gs, when traveling the Gs are the first thing to pack and only when theres some space left I consider the dSLR.
The Contax G is just more fun to use than every SLR, wether digital or film, I shoot differently with a RF than with a SLR which leads to different results which I like better.

At the moment I have 150 digital files, two rolls Elitechrome 400 and one roll Ilford HP5 to process, pretty balanced use of both, isn`t it?

[ernie]

I can never understand the restricted thinking that comes across in these threads; we have all types of cameras and use as many of them as we can.

Most weekends see us out and about with a whole passel of vintage rangefinders and my loved Bronica 645RF. Not only do we enjoy using them but there is the added pleasure of developing the film after.

However one of my favorite subjects are tropical fish and there is no way I can shoot the photos I want these days with a rangefinder; and the results I get from a digital SLR far surpass anything I ever got from a film camera. I started photographing fish over 35 years ago so I have some idea what I am doing.

There are other subjects too where the modern digital SLR is unbeatable; see how many pros use them !

So for me all aspects of photography are enjoyable and the camera is a tool to be used. As such we should use the best tool for the job and embrace all new technical developments.

Recently I have posted a couple of photos on the forum taken in cathedrals; shot with a Bronica 645RF; hand held in low light . However as good as they are they are not in the same league as the ones Jenny took with her Canon 1DS Mk2.

[Nachkebia]

Thank you!

Originally Posted by Gid

Nachkebia,

By the way - some really good images on your photo.net site.

[Chuck A]

Originally Posted by shutterflower

I don't hate digital.

But, I can't seem to find a decent digital camera anywhere. It seems there are none to be found. The Ricoh GR Digital, Leica C-Lux 1, and other such cameras are generally reviewed as being sub-average. Or really, quite average.

We need a GR style body, but manual focus, NON retracting lens, optical viewfinder, larger chip (CMOS), and aperture, white balance, and ISO controls accessible without entering menus (dials or buttons). Dials are preferrable.

so, I guess I do kind of hate digital because it can't please me. I love the concept, but hate the products.

These are my sentiments exactly.

There are a few digitals that can actually be viable for high quality images. It's the stupid camera designs that are killing me. The viewfinders are horrible on all but the most expensive cameras. I just sold a Canon XT because I couldn't stand the viewfinder any longer. (The image quality was ok, though not quite up to films character.) I have tried a dozen different digitals and have yet to find one that I like. ( The LC1 was close though.)

They make them way too complicated to use intuitively. Too many menus and features. They are just small computers and they get in the way of photography. IMHO. That is what is great about the film rangefinders. They enhance the photographic process, not kill it.

[Nachkebia]

technical quality of digital images are far super to any 35mm film in any aspect, but technical quality is not he only quality...

[Socke]

Originally Posted by Chuck A

They make them way too complicated to use intuitively. Too many menus and features. They are just small computers and they get in the way of photography. IMHO. That is what is great about the film rangefinders. They enhance the photographic process, not kill it.

That's the argument I don't understand. Why do they get in your way? Besides size and weight that is.

I have my dSLR for some time now and I just preset it to something sensible and then stick to that. Just like choosing a film with which you have to live until it's finished.

And to size and weight, very early this morning I ended up for a Mojito in a bar and a guy saw my D60 with batterie grip and Sigma 17-35 and said "This looks like tenosynovitis"

[humanized_form]

i started with digital and migrated to film. i probably won't go back to digital in a meaningful way for anything else but the Digital M.

one of the main issues for me with digital is the generally bad design of the digicams and the dslrs. most are compromised in a variety of ways. i own the pentax ist ds and that is one of the only acceptable econo dsrls with a decent viewfinder and a relatively small sized camera body. when considering the rebel, nikon d50/d70, olympus models etc, it's almost as if manufacturers expect everyone to use autofocus so the viewfinder size and quality doesn't really matter. no thanks. i recently sold my Panasonic LC-1, because after using an M7 for some months the digicam seemed incredibly slow and frustrating to use.

once i started shooting color slides and saw them on a light table it was over for me. i love that the the slide is the final image. there was no way i was going to go back to the drag of post processing and making pictures. a drum scan makes for an incredible print. a home scanner is suitable for web use. the slide itself is the archive. it's beautiful and simple and i'm fortunate that i can still get three hour processing done same day.

i think the Digital M is really the best hope at this point. i really don't want to use big computer box dslrs so i'm hoping Leica gets this done right.

[spysmart]

I am going to wait another couple of years for digital to mature a little bit more .. and for the Zeiss Digital RF. None of the cameras on the market, or those expected this year, seem to hit the right spot, though Pentax's 21/31/40/43/77 lens line did catch my attention. The M8 will be too expensive and unproven.

I tried the Ricoh GR-D and was underwhelmed - full manual control was nice, but the results I get from my GR1s with NPH and NPZ are far superior. The real killer with the GR-D was the 15 second write time (during which the lens will not retract). Shutterflower's GRD mkII specs sound just right to me.

I sold the GRD after 2 months and just picked up a s/h M6 0.85, a ZM50 lens, two bricks of Tri-X and some Rodinal - so affirming my committed to film.

[jonasv]

Originally Posted by Nachkebia

technical quality of digital images are far super to any 35mm film in any aspect

I'd have to disagree - what about the people who shoot b&w and prefer the look of grain over noise? What about dynamic range? And a really good 35mm film still beats the lower-end DSLR's as far as resolution goes (let alone the digital compacts).

Not trying to start something anti-digital, I am using film now but I would use digital as well if I could afford it because for some of the work I do (not all, but about half) digital would be a better medium than film. I just don't think it's right to generalise.

[amateriat]

Well, even a dedicated film shooter like me can't see dissing digital that much. Having gotten very nice results from such sub-megabuck "prosumer" (ugh...still hate that word) cameras as Olympus' C8080, I would say that you're setting your sights rather low with your choice of digicam. I also think you were likely a bit rash in junking your film kit for the digital New World (you can have both, unless finances are quite strapped, in which case you should hang on to what you've got). And people here who have gotten hold of Epson's RD-1/1s can't stop talking about how great those cameras are. They aren't hallucinating, even if I choose not to get one. :-)


- Barrett

[ywenz]

Originally Posted by Fastfashn

So, I figured I'd give it a try, sold all my film gear, got an Oly E500 dual lens kit.

Oh... Error. Error. Error.

Looks like you learned the hard way. The Oly E500 is an average or below average performer in the digital world. Had you gone with Canon or Nikon you would have felt differently..

Chuck A: My 20D + alien bees kick ass. It is capable of extremely high quality images.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ywen/17...7594157125670/

[Socke]

I too don't like the viewfinders in affordable dSLRs besides that one in the Pentax *istD which was too small for me. To be true, I don't like the grips on all new fangled SLRs. In this regard I like my Contax RTS best.
That is probably the reason why I didn't feel tempted by any of the D60s successors, they didn't improve on what I feel is important, the viewfinder. Higher ISO with less noise, more frames per second, more AF sensors etc.pp are not important to me. Ok, I'd like to have higher ISO with less noise, yesterday I didn't take many usefull concert shots since I brought the wrong lens and nothing to bounce the flash from into a badly lit club with a black ceiling
And to add insult to injury, I wasn't there for the first time so I should have known.

I don't bet on digital rangefinders anyway, the R-D1 viewfinder is probably much better than the D60 peephole but it doesn't accomodate my wideangle needs. The Leica M8 will be far out of my financial reach and so I stick to film as long as I can get that somewhere, which will be a couple of decades, hopefully.

On the other hand, I feel no need for drum scanned slides, first of all my computer would be hard pressed to handle that amount of data, a 150MB 48bit tiff would just crash the maschine. And the prize for drum scans is absolutly prohibitive for an amateur like me.
At that prize point I just give the slide I want to have printed realy big, say more than 11x17, to a specialzed lab and don't care how they print it as long as the result is to my liking.
When my D60 breaks some day, I intended to allow it one shutter repair but don't think so anymore, I might just get the 5D, which is some 2000 Euro cheaper than a Leica digital M will be, or whatever Canon has in this class then and use it with the 50/1.4 and 35/2 I already own.
You can have my Contax Gs when you get my cold dead fingers from them