| Introduction | I have made this experiment with borrowed Nikon D300. Experiment was about gain experience when capturing images with digital camera. Not only capture was part of experiment. I wanted to see whole process or as somebody may say what change will use of digital camera bring to my work flow. |
| Nikon D300 experience |
When I decided to borrow Nikon D300 i made that choice based on
assumption that this would be camera I would purchase if I will move
to digital capture.
After few hours using this camera I realize that there is no fundamental difference in using it comparing to my F100. Even the crop factor seems as absolutely no problem. Only size of viewfinder is smaller, but there is noting what can be done about it as far as size of the sensor is smaller than film frame. The only difference is amount of options which are available to choose from on this digital body. Especially the D lighting which lowers the contrast (I realize that is is useful to use it only on contrast scenes). Very nice way of exposure bracketing I rarely use din film seems to be very useful and handy here. The fact that I can preview captured image in black and white on back LCD while still capture full color raw image. All these options give one hand full of possibilities to make the exposure and composition the right way. I have to say that in this regard I see absolutely no problem comparing with Nikon F100. I can use one or other interchangeable without even thinking much about it. If I would move to digital this part wouldn't make me any problem |
| Faster response |
The fact that turn over time between taking a capture and seeing
result on screen of the computer is shorten by using digital capture
make it very attractive for me. The usual way in which I am taking
pictures now is prepared scene. It is extremely handy if I can see
set of images I made after a session. It
reminds me the way we worked with band back in my study time. We recorded
song or part of song. Sometimes only on instrument part in one of
two songs and than at the end of the day we replayed it and decide
to record it again, to change something or leave it as it was. Very
often new idea comes on surface while listening what was recorded
over the day or half a day.
I expect that this possibility will same way improve my work when capturing images. I did not experience any need to see image on back LCD right away when I was using this camera for four days. There has been some exception to this in tricky lighting situations, where I liked to see the result right away. Than I could adjust camera settings, retake image and see the effect immediately. |
| Post Processing |
Another part in which I was interested to see the difference was
post processing. The very important issue was also question of
archiving.
These days I do use film based Nikon F100 and using Fomapan 200 exposed at 100 or Fuji Neopan 400 films. I currently developing films in Fotospeed FD10 than I do preview scan of each frame at 600 dpi. This gives me preview images around 900x600px size. I use these images to organize my negatives in IMatch and than using IMatch I make selection. Selected images are scanned at 5400dpi directly in black and white 16bit per pixel resulting in 72MB big TIFF image. I use this image as my raw file. I work on it and produce final image mostly the same size named master-print and possibly some burn, sharpen, blur or dodge masks in pgn format. I use this image and masks to produce final image for printing. When using digital camera I do shot RAW files only. Each raw file contains the preview image originally displayed on back LCD of the camera. Introducing RAW digital files into my scanned film work-flow brings some challenges. One of them is specific software needed for handling raw files. One need it to have preview image from raw file displayed fast, same as I use preview image. This image is used for initial checking and evaluation of the image. I am currently using older version of IMatch which has problems with fast extracting preview image from raw file. This is a challenge which I need to solve very soon. For editing the image itself I do use Picture Window Pro. I am very happy that this piece of software is simple to use and powerful in features. It can read and convert raw images directly as well. I still believe that the best way to convert raw image is to use direct software delivered with camera. Problem is will I be able to access these files ten years from now? Therefore for now my plan is find solution for evaluating and handling preview images (lightroom seems to be as a nice solution, but expensive one, I actually need only library functionality of it). IMatch is temporary as preview of Nikon D300 raw files is limited to very small image or in some cases getting preview image is too slow (5-20 sec on my P4 2.4GHz). Using Nikon software for converting raw to TIFF and Picture Window Pro (pwp) for editing these TIFF files and possibly also for converting raw files. |
| Archiving |
Next step is archiving. Currently I am storing preview and work
files (huge TIFF, print TIFF, mask files) on external NAS storage
device with daily backup as well as copy monthly on CD media.
For film image I do scan in high resolution only the selected images. Digital camera will give me raw file for every image I take. Even the scanned film image is around 72MB and raw image from Nikon D300 is around 13MB the amount of raw files creates soon problem related to the disk space required. I expect that I will store majority if not all raw files. Than for selected files I will do conversion using Nikon of pwp software and than store also those files together with their versions for print and masks as I do now for scanned film images. This really will require not only disk space but certainly very good visioning and managing software for all images on NAS and CD/DVD. As my primary background is software design and architecture I have several ideas for my own solution, but problem is in time limit and already available options (lightroom). |
| Color to Black and White |
As far as I do have image in pwp process for editing, storing,
printing is the same as with my scanned negatives except that image
for editing is in color.
So the next challenge for me was color image conversion to black and white. First I had feel that this is rather complex problem. After I have got black and white image it feels as very flat not contrast boring image. Not that nice punchy bw film scanned one. After a while I realize that having those extra color information does give me more options to get from the image what I want. I can create now masks and selections based not only on shape or intensity but also on color. It is more work, but also does give me more freedom to adjust images the way I want and to achieve the result I am after. I now know that color is advantage and not a limitation for black and white photography. Only one item brought by my friend Dirk still left in my mind. And it is the fact that these digital files are all too clean and all too much the same ;-) I believe, but I didn't prove it to myself completely, that I just need to take image my specific way and that I will get all these characteristic on image which I purely my specific. |
| Summary and Conclusion |
To summarize few important lines:
I feel almost comfortable with moving to digital, just to solve a problem of managing my images without extreme costs. |
