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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 8 - Test of Faith

Lauterbrunnen
Lauterbrunnen
Just occasionally (and only occasionally, thank God!), something happens, when you're reviewing pictures, that really makes you sit up and take stock of what you've done recently and this month it happened to us! We had been looking for competition entries by trawling our tranny files and digital CD's for suitable examples, when one overwhelming fact struck us right between the eyes - the slides were just stunning quality, so bright, saturated and contrasty. We had a real moment of complete and utter self doubt and wondered, have we spent the last six months leading PP readers up the garden path with our tales of digital quality?



We have used 35mm Velvia slide film for many years and have extensive files of pictures compared to just a few months for digital but we still have plenty of material for comparison. At first glance the digital shots just didn't have quite the same kick as Velvia. It was a real shock, because our switch to digital equipment has been total and we haven't used film or a light-box for months. However, despair not, we've worked out a couple of reasons for this difference. Firstly, viewing slide film on a light-box gives the best possible view of an image - the moment it's projected, printed or viewed on a monitor, some of that punch is lost. Since we can't view our digital images on a light-box they have an immediate disadvantage. Secondly, because digital can capture a wider range of contrast than Velvia, the raw images produced from the camera actually tend to show less contrast and saturation (more like images from negative film). Now, we can easily correct this in PhotoShop, but it's often surprising just how far we have to push the contrast to match that of Velvia. Nevertheless, this usually works to our advantage, as it is always possible to increase the contrast of a "flat" digital picture but it is impossible to recover detail from those dark shadows on a tranny

Phew, we're safe! Digital is still our flavour of the month, but we're a little wiser now about the amount of 'after-shooting' effort required to produce the best results. Now we're pondering if it's worth having trannies written from our best digital files, as they will always have more impact when viewed on the light-box.

This comparison of film and digital technique has made us think about a couple of rules of thumb we've regularly used for shooting film. One is the "1/f" rule which says that the slowest shutter speed it is safe to hand hold is given by the reciprocal of the focal length of the lens. Would this still hold true for DSLR's where the"effective" focal length of the lens is multiplied by 1.5? We decided to test this rule by actually shooting a test subject at different shutter speeds. The unfortunate result, is that the rule no longer applies - with digital you have to divide the minimum shutter speed by the 1.5 factor, so when shooting with a 100mm lens for example, 1/150th is the minimum shutter speed which you should handhold. The "rule" becomes 1/effective focal length. This led us to question another major effect on image sharpness - what about depth of field? Will we get more or less using a DSLR? Now this one really had us scratching our heads and reaching for the calculator. We have worked out DOF for the same size finished print and suffice to say, that after much button pushing, we concluded that for a lens of equivalent angle of view, a DSLR will always give more depth of field than a 35mm camera. Not surprisingly - 1.5x more! This means it's great for landscapes, but can be a real drawback if you want to isolate a subject by throwing the background out of focus. Now, I bet it doesn't say that in the instruction book for your DSLR!

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