I'm going on a bit of a photo trek in the Caribbean and South America and I'm desperately trying to decide between a digital kit and film.
The digital images I've seen in photo mags seem to lack the colour intensity and sharpness of similar slide images. Faces lack detail and the images, while noise-free, have a plasticky smoothness to them.
However, plenty of mags run digital shots and I'm told this is "the future".
I'd certainly appreciate the convenience of digital (tiny cards vs. bulky cartridges) but even high end digital lacks what a cheap SLR and a roll of ISO100 slide film can produce.
Am I being too picky? Does anyone else notice the difference?
FYI it's basically come down to D80 vs. F80 (N80 for you Yanks). I'd be using Nikon's 18-35 and 35-70 f2.8 on the film camera and 12-24 plus 35-70 on the D80. I'm well-versed in Photoshop and I can make good prints.
Any help would be appreciated. It sounds to me like you already made up your mind that film is better than electronic. I personally view my electronic photos on screen, not prints, so I don't need huge resolution. I've printed out my 6 megapixel photos on 4"x6" paper and can't tell the difference. I say it depends on how your going to view the images. If you're going to view a slide show, you might as well shoot on slide film. One of our top answerers (and one who I have the greatest respect for) has just gone off on a world tour with his D200. His wife bought a D80 for the trip. He has considerable film background, too.
I hear what you are saying about the film advantage, but if you are good in Photoshop, I'd say that the convenience of digital offsets the hassles of travelling with film. You are going to be going through multiple airports and, even at low levels, enough passes through a scanner will fog your film.
You know how I feel about shooting at the largest file size in the best resolution and I think that if you do that, you will not be disappointed with your photos. I have a few D200 photos up on Flickr, but no people, since I don't have model releases. See what you think. The D80 should be quite comparable. I know you've seen a thousand sample images, but here are a dozen more. http://www.flickr.com/photos/samfeinstei... Okay, I guess there's one with people, but they are all friends so I doubt they'd sue me! See http://www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=... If I recall, this is a box-stock image without any Photoshop at all, not even unsharp mask. Maybe I touched up the levels a bit, but not much.
I have had to alter the way I perceive digital pictures. It's much like comparing slides to prints. What do you want to do with your images? Slides have that "snap" because they are not viewed with reflected light. The whites are whiter and the brights are brighter. It's the same with a monitor. I think you loose a bit when you print as compared to when you view it on a monitor, but what do you do with your pictures now-a-days anyhow? Sure I print a lot of my stuff, but much of it is just viewed on the monitor like a slied show in the olden days.
Do you have a D80? If not, maybe you can borrow or rent one for a week and shoot like crazy to see what you think before your trip comes upon you.
Anymore, I wouldn't travel with a film camera if I was going to be gone for more than a day. And truthfully, for a day, I wouldn't bother. Anyone want to buy a Pentax camera with a couple of lenses??? I don't think I've used it in five years now. Last year at about this time I was in the Caribbean for nine and a half weeks.
Equipment I carried with me.
Nikon D100 with MB-D100, a charger, a 12-24mm Nikkor zoom, 24-85mm Nikkor macro zoom, 70-300mm Nikkor zoom plus 1-4GB cards, 4-2GB cards and 2-1GB cards.
I brought my notebook computer with a 300GB external drive and 15 blank CD's
I brought back over 18GB (over 4,400 images) of images shot in the fine/large jpeg mode (only a few RAW shots and only as a test). Film wise that would have been about 120 rolls of film. Keeping all that film cool and dry is a problem. With film you will either have to carry conversion filters for shooting indoors with daylight film or filters for shooting tungsten film outdoors. Film ISO's can also become a problem for you unless you carry a couple of 35mm bodies |
