Part 3 - Peace in our times...
Before any of you start thinking we must be related to the "Onassis" family let's put our cards on the table. A major fear of ours, as for most amateurs, was that the move to digital was going to cost the proverbial 'arm and a leg'. . Surprisingly, however, this move to digital has not actually cost us a penny! It has been funded entirely by selling all our old and unused equipment.
Over the years you change gear, you change format, you change back, you end up with mis-matched stuff - it all ends up back in a cupboard gathering dust, but EMPTY YOUR CUPBOARDS CHAPS, it can be worth a lot more than you think!! Try advertising it on ebay (the Internet auction site), someone will often want it. For example someone in the USA bought our Pentax 17mm fisheye, out of production for years, for over 4 times what we paid for it ten years ago!!
One factor that still does worry us is the depreciation of the digital equipment and its general longevity. Our Nikon F100's were bullet proof. One bounced off the rocks on Stanage Edge when the tripod blew over but it carried on regardless, one drowned out in the Lakes but after a night in the airing cupboard, it worked perfectly - will the S2 based on an F80 body be as robust?. Not a chance! It isn't too delicate, but it's definitely not up for abuse. Water is a complete no no! On the depreciation front, you really need to be sure that the camera you buy is one that you can live with over a reasonable period because the value will go down like a used Skoda as new models are introduced. Anyway, so far so good, we've taken it on three trips abroad and on various outings locally, with no hiccups. Even better, no hassles with customs men about hand checking film.
Still, enough about the gear, what about the results?
We have already enthused over the amazing lack of noise (grain) and the general definition but another real plus over film is the contrast handling. Whilst we have always been Velvia fanatics, its one real pain is contrast handling, the price for those punchy colours is often burnt out highlights and deep shadows. The S2 handles high contrast subjects better than any tranny film. Just set the exposure to make sure that the highlights don't burn out, if necessary using the histogram review, and the rest will take care of itself. Its easy to lift the overall brightness and contrast in the computer later. Shooting in RAW format, NOT compressed JPEG's, and converting in the computer later, means that you can even recover some over or under exposure! The colour rendition is also clearly more accurate than Velvia - its difficult to see via the web but check out the aubrietia in the picture above, this kind of colour was always a struggle on film.
Monochromes also look great from the S2. The camera's b&w mode is really very good or you can desaturate on the computer later. It's probably not as good as a top b&w film but it's a heck of a lot better than tranny film converted to monochrome and a lot of people out there are already getting great monochrome from Velvia.
Our last big beef is that Nikon still haven't delivered the 12-24mm lens so that we can get back to real wideangles, but hopefully by next month we will have the whole outfit finalised - until the next new press announcement anyway!