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2003 was a year of enormous change for us. We decided early in the year that technology was moving so fast it was innevitable that we would be capturing images digitally eventually. Rather than hang on to the "old technology" we decided to get in early and so for most of the year we shot digitally using the Fuji S2 Pro. It was a rollercoaster ride, although we have never regretted the move. In fact it seems inconceivable in 2007 that we would still use film. When they learnt about our decision, Practical Photography magazine asked us to write a series of articles about our experiences. This ran for most of the year in PP and we actually wrote the articles and shot the pictures in real time each month. Sometimes this meant that we contradicted ourselves in later articles and occasionally said things which we later regretted! However, the complete set of articles are reproduced here in largely the same format as they were originally published in PP. Sometimes the writing is a bit cheesy but that's what a monthly photo magazine needs to sell. We hope that you find them interesting and useful. We are about to write a new article with our current thoughts on digital to be published on these pages in the near future

Part 5 - Chimping at the bit

Stoer lighthouse North west Scotland
Stoer lighthouse North west Scotland
Digital has created a whole new language and its not just TLA's (that's Three Letter Abbreviations for the uninitiated!). Digital photographers 'chimp'. A new verb? - ' to chimp' - to take a 'sneaky peaky' at the pictures on the LCD on the back of the camera. It's all those oooh oooh oooh noises heard when there's a great picture on the screen. You might prefer the alternative TLA of IPS - 'insecure photographer syndrome'!

But let's be serious for a minute - chimping can really improve your pictures.

It's a big advantage to see each other's pictures and interpretations instantly. You can bounce ideas off one another, try them, if they work - fantastic, if they don't - press the delete key. Seeing the picture instantly often gives you new ideas for better pictures. It's best for pictures containing movement but its great in lots of other situations. Low light pictures for example. Walking back past Stoer lighthouse in the North of Scotland last month, we noticed the dramatic sky after the sun had set. We wanted to see if we could capture the lighthouse beam with a milky sea effect and the brilliant sky. The only problem was that it was so dark that we couldn't see the foreground, the sky had very bright highlights and we had no idea if we could really capture the beam. With film, this is the time to head for the pub and get a pint in front of its roaring fire! With digital, its time to chimp! On the LCD we could see the histogram and check for burnt highlights, see the foreground detail, check the movement in the water and gauge the effect of the beam. The result - another hour on a freezing cliff, stubbed toes and a twisted ankle!! But also a great pic. This picture still needed the double RAW conversion technique to capture the whole contrast range (convert one picture at the taken exposure and one at +2 stops to improve the shadow detail, then recombine them in Photoshop using the technique we described last month).


But it's not all plain sailing. Digital has its own drawbacks and last month we promised the low-down on a few important ones. The first is more of a misconception than a problem but it leads to a lot of negative comments about D-SLR's. The pictures still need some level of manipulation and processing in PhotoShop, just like scanned film, to produce the best results. Out of the camera , they often look flat and fuzzy. This is a learning curve; digital photographers just need to get up the curve - fast! Other more basic drawbacks are difficult to avoid. The Fuji S2 Pro really suffers from sudden death batteries - one minute you're happily chimping, the next, without warning, the camera is completely dead with no displays at all. It sometimes seems reluctant to power up again even with new batteries. Dirt on the CCD is also proving a problem. Some "spotting" in PhotoShop is always necessary and having done nearly 3000 frames, one of our cameras has developed some spots that can't be blown off. The choice is either a £70+ bill for cleaning from Fuji or taking your chances with sensor swabs. A degree of chromatic aberration (colour fringing on high contrast edges) also seems to be present on some pictures. This is not really a fault with digital, it is just that we can now see the defects in our lenses more clearly. Flare with some lenses is also more of a problem on digital then film - it almost seems like reflections from the CCD itself causing bright spots on the image.

But after this catalogue of problems would we change back to film? Not on your life! We have already saved £600 this year on film alone and the quality of our pictures has never been better. Happy chimping chaps!

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