
Originally Posted by
drjuice
Hi, John (aka Shadowman) -
To start, I used film for 30 years before I got my first digital camera (a PnS Canon Powershot that recorded things on a teeny disk). I now have more than 20 years under my belt with six different digital cameras (first two were Canon, third was Kodak 215, then Sony V-1, W-90, and now my Sony alpha700). I think I've mentioned before that the reason I went with the alpha700 was because I could use my kit from two Minolta Maxxams with the Sony which would save having to buy several thousand $$ worth of flash and lenses.
The chief difference I see is that I spend much more time on framing and otherwise paying attention to what's in the picture, including things like making sure people aren't blocking each other, no untoward shadows are showing in the image, people are smiling or not (as appropriate), hair isn't freakishly flying around, nobody's dribbled on his tie, etc. I also find that, in spite of the fact that I basically don't have to buy another roll of film on which to record my results, I'm taking fewer pictures of higher quality. And, finally, though I always try to compose in the camera, I am learning a bit about my photographic equivalent of a darkroom (PED) which does not include Photoshop or any other members of the Adobe creative suite.
For example, when our lab team got its annual picture taken, I needed to be in the picture so I gave the camera to another person. Of course, I couldn't look to see what I had framed up. One short person was standing "out of the light" because a quite tall person was standing to her right. So, I needed to mask out all the surrounding folks who were find so I could lighten up the short person so she didn't look like somebody who got pasted into the picture!
I'm jes' sayin'....
virginia