Good New Days!

[rain_gryphon]

I bought a new memory card for the DSLR (Canon T5) today. It cost me $11. I can store more than 1k pictures on that (1G if Fox is measuring), and a 7M digital file seems to me to be comparable to Kodachrome 200 in resolution, if not in that absolute fidelity to colour and shadow that Kodachrome had. I'm sure a 24 frame roll and processing would be over $20 today, and with the DSLR, I can see results immediately, *and* I can bang away like a staffer for National Geographic, and not worry about how many frames I'm wasting.

The downside? Not much, really. The Olympus OM-1N had the very best macro lens I have ever owned (I'm hanging on to that gear in case there's ever a way to convert that to digital). I had a Kowa SeTR body and lenses that I loved so much for it's weird, complex Seiko cyclic shutter, which had seven blades that spun around so that the aperature was fully open at the middle of the shot at all speeds, which meant that I could synch a strobe at ANY speed. This made fill flash incredibly easy to calculate, the moreso that I had one of the first variable-output strobes (not true variable output in the modern sense, though - it employed a "quench tube", a second, hidden flash tube unseen inside the unit, where the excess current was shunted - that seemed *so* high tech at the time, and it ate batteries like candy). The Canon will calculate my fill for me, and, since it doesn't possess an actual shutter, per se, synch is never an issue. A battery will last all day.

Ye Goode Olde Dayes were fun, but honestly, the stuff we have today is *so* much better!

Comments

[moonhare]

“...I can see results immediately, *and* I can bang away like a staffer for National Geographic, and not worry about how many frames I'm wasting.”

Back in the day... I worked in a photo lab with a gentleman from New York who used to process film for “the professionals.” What impressed me was that many of his clients shot dozens of rolls at events by holding their cameras toward subjects and then just holding the shutter button and letting them take multiple frames without regard to composition. All the ‘work’ was done in the darkroom where he would develop the film, print proof sheets, and finally work with these folks to take the best subjects from images they liked and make these into photos. So much cropping! So much waste! Such great results :D

[rain_gryphon]

Oh, yes! My first real job was with Spieth / White Squirrel from Olney, IL. We were a Kodacolor lab (C-41 was the process then, IIRC), and additionally did wedding and other on-location photography. Mainly, I was the guy who sat in the dark opening up all the 135 cans and 126 cartridges and spliced them on the roll for the big Pako processor, then printed the results on a matching Pako printer. We did free work for the police too - the officers had point 'n shoot cameras for ordinary stuff, but for serious documentation our boss would go shoot for them. I ended up printing several sets of dead people (all accidents, IIRC), although nothing too horrible. Sadly, the place went bankrupt after I'd worked there about six months (not my fault!), and that was the end of that. I really enjoyed myself while it lasted, though.

[c-eagle.livejournal.com]

I could never get my Olympus digitals to auto-focus too well... ;/

[xolo.livejournal.com]

Auto-focus has also gotten better over the years. I used to avoid it. Now I use manual only rarely.