Articles

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(January-2019)

   Shutter Tester Using Arduino
(December-2018)

   Replacement Battery for Yashica Rangefinders
(April-2010)

   Battery testing on Canon film cameras
(March-2008)

   LED Ring Light
(A cheap alternative December-2006)

   LED Lamp
(January-2011)

 

I've been a shutterbug for a long time. I remember looking at my dad's Contaflex when I was little and peering through his Kodakchrome slides at those tiny images imprinted on the celluloid. My first camera was a Canon 110ED - a fancy 110 film camera that was later stolen. I replaced it with a Canon AE-1, one of the popular 35mm film cameras of the golden age of film. I still have that camera and it still works. But I shoot mostly digital today.

The dawn of the digital camera for me was in the early 1990's. My job at the time allowed me to play with some of the latest toys and one of them was a freshly minted digital camera. I think it was a Casio. It produced an image with a whopping 640x480 (VGA) resolution. To get images printed, I sent my image files to Seatle Film Works. An entire camera's worth of pictures fit on a single 1.44MB floppy.

Over the years, I've traded in one camera for another, one brand for another. Ebay is wonderful for such things! It's been great to see the technology improve dramatically in digital imaging yet at the same time, it's sad to see the dwindling use of film.

For me, film offers a different way of picture taking. I'm not one to praise the grain or special mythical property of film. No, for me the most useful feature of film is that it forces me to take the time to compose and control the exposure for each shot. Digital imaging offers a near endless supply of memory and for some reason, I'm just not as careful on a per-shot basis as I am with film.

But digital imaging has so many advantages. For me, the most useful is color consistency from print to print, re-print to re-print. Film has too many variables almost all of which are outside my control as an average user (professionals have more control in their own labs). But I haven't given up on film nor on those old cameras - many are mechanical works of art that will outlive any electronic camera. So I shoot both - film and digital - because at the end of the day, a camera is just a tool. Good tools are always better than bad ones but knowing how to make the most of the tool is what's important. And having an eye for the picture, that's something no amount of electronics can replace.

02-January-2010


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