Anybody into (digital) photography?
I have a nice, but ageing Olympus at 2.1 megapixels, which keeps on
working, so I can't justify replacing it at present. (Which is a Good
Thing (tm) because I can't afford to replace it anyhow.)
I've never much been into prints, since I bought the camera to take
digital content for use in electronic environments (web, e-mail, burn to
CD, etcetera) but I recently had a go with a big Kodak machine when I had
to print hard-copies for a digitally-challenged elderly relative. I was surprised at the results and later, did some additional prints of my own
to see how they turned out.
I printed a number of 4x6's and a smaller number of 5x7's and had a look
at them. Remember -- only 2.1 megapixels. A casual but close look, and I could see *nothing* wrong with them. I passed them around to a few
friends, telling them to look closely, because the photos were digital
prints. Everyone said they looked fine! I eventually got a strong
magnifying lens and looked really close and I could see some virtually imperceptible artifacts, but without the lens, even knowing where to look,
I couldn't see them. (My eyes aren't perfect, but there's nothing wrong
with my glasses!)
In the photo-shop, I ran into a former neighbor of mine, who is a long-
time professional photographer. He was carrying a state-of-the-art Nikon Digital SLR camera that he says he had to get a loan from the bank to pay
for. (I wish I could remember the exact model for sure, but I can't. I
only /think/ it's a D70 which you can see here:
http://www.nikonusa.com/template.php?cat=1&grp=2&productNr=25214
but I'm probably mistaken.) The guy looked at my photos and started
asking me what camera I'd used. and so on, and when I explained that it
was only a little, "PHD" camera for casual/home snapshots he congratulated
me on the quality, which was excellent for that purpose.
I've not tried 8x10 or 10x12 or 12x16 sizes, and expect the image quality
to go down as rapidly as the price goes up. But some of the photos were actually slightly cropped versions of the original 2.1 megapixel original
JPEG files that the camera produced, and I certainly have no complaints at
4x6 and 5x7 sizes.
Anyone got any experience with digicams in the 4-ish megapixel range,
printing with a proper photographic printer? My experience leads me to
think that any average-Joe amateur photographer who wants to send pictures
of the kids to Gramma would be perfectly satisfied with what I'm getting
here. And at the considerably reduced cost of operating without film.
With higher rez. cameras, it can only get better.
I can't honestly remember anyone who recently (last two years) bought a
*non* digital camera. Has the tipping-point been reached? Is the day of
film over, for casual photographers taking snapshots?
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