Poll #5 and a bit of photography talk, please
Poll #4 was a tie – Spring and Fall both had the same amount of votes. I guess more of you need to come by and vote so there will not be anymore ties. The new poll: which photo format do you prefer? film or digital.
I have very mixed feelings on this matter. I absolutely love film. I am a bit old fashioned about I guess. I secretly want to have a dark room some day and develop my own photographs. Why don’t I, someday? It’s like this. We have to choose our battles and our dreams sometimes and I just do not realistically see this happening for me. Mainly, because it is a very expensive hobby. That makes it rather more of a dream hobby than a future hope. OH, I do not see me writing it off completely, but most likely. For me there is something for me that makes film more real, more tactile, more permanent, more there. I think of film as being here longer than the digital format. Not in the sense that it has, but the film I take today will be here longer than the photos I take in digital format.
The reality of digital photography is closer to home though. I like that I can shoot off a few hundred pics of my children playing outside and not feel guilty about the need to pay a ton of money to have the equivalent number of rolls to be developed just for the few good pics I will really ended up loving, printing, and keeping. Right now I have 37 rolls of film (37, People!) that I need to develop. I have a great SLR camera that we bought quite a few years ago. We splurged on a camera, a lens, and a good remote external flash. Somewhere along the way digital photography proved that it was here to stay and continue to improve in its abilities and quality. From it’s first inception at a wee 1.2 megapixel camera to it’s now awesome forms of 12.1 and greater it has proved itself.
Every year we try to do something fun, non-adult-like, not-so-much-responsible with a portion of our tax return money (yay six children! ;) ). We could be totally responsible and use every stinkin’ bit of it on only and totally responsible stuff. (More on this later, worthy of a separte post.) But, nay! I say. Get away form me you foul thinking responsible people with your bad responsible thoughts. So this year’s fun portion went to buying me (OK. Us) a new digital camera for my birthday (a wee bit early). A DSLR. I’m thrilled! I’m excited! I can’t wait to get up some really great pictures and really do what I want to do with photos now. For a couple of years I’ve been drooling over the Nikon D70 (now D80) and the Canon Rebel XT (now XTi). Once I knew we were actually going to bite the bullet and do this I really started looking around and reading and talking to people, camera people. A few weeks ago I stumbled (thanks to a friend) upon the Sony Alpha 100. It is in the same class as the Nikons and the Canons I’ve drooled over, but it doesn’t get much notice. Sony is new to DSLR and gets a bad rap by some people. The bigger picture (no pun intended) matters way more than my desires in this case. The Sony Alpha 100 is acutally a Konica-Minolta with Sony’s name one it. Sony acquired the DSLR division of Minolta last year. Here’s a short a sweet write up without too much techy talk – basics only; do a search and read up on it. Here’s another one.
The point of my big picture comment is that the film SLR we have is a Minolta. How does this benefit me? I can use all the same lenses, flashes, and other product specific accessories on the Sony A100.
Now forgive me as I need to disappear and play with the configurations on my new Sony Alpha 100 for tomorrow Bairno will be baptised and I need to take pictures. I will leave you with one picture of the front panel of the gown I made.
