[BUGS] making photos and toor access

[Rob Hurle]

Hi Jonathan,

> i've been a keen photographer all my life, i am now looking to move to the 
> digital world, from my old analogue pentax and mamiya slrs with range of lens, 
> std format and some med telephotos for teh spotmatic and teh (really nice) 
> mamiya z. if it means anything thats what i am trying to reproduce, because of 
> my neurological disfunction i have difficulties with most of teh "small" 
> digital cameras and my hands have learned how to function in the 35mm handheld 
> slr realm.

I've also messed about with photography for quite a while - very happy with 
Olympus SLRs, Pentax SLR, Mamiya C330, etc.  A while back I moved to digital for 
some archival work.  Digital photography is changing so quickly that anything 
that anyone says now will be out of date tomorrow.

 	I tend to think that sticking to one brand/system is best with digital 
because, if you swap horses you may need to change lenses, cards, software, etc, 
etc, and that can be expensive.  IMHO Nikon, Olympus, Canon should be studied. 
Fuji Finepix has proven a problem for us.  Right now I use a Nikon Coolpix P5100 
for "point and shoot", and it's a great camera - on "auto" the pics are quick, 
excellent quality, battery lasts ages, etc.  For more careful and critical work 
I use a Nikon D80 SLR, which gives a superior picture but there's much more 
mucking about and the camera is bigger, heavier, etc.  Both seem to give best 
pics on "auto" for some reason.  I upgraded the "point and shoot" from an 
Olympus mu because my eyes are cactus and I need a viewfinder - very few come 
with a viewfinder these days.

 	That's only the start of the story.  The cameras have amazing picture 
processing capability inside them and, if you want total control, you need to go 
for something that just saves you the bits for later processing (and a pretty 
smart head to know what you're going to do with the pics).  Nikon has this 
option, but then you run into another problem.  The formats all seem to be 
proprietary and unpublished.  So Nikon "raw" format needs Nikon software (for M$ 
only would you believe!)  Of course, version "n" is not compatible with version 
"n-1" but, not to worry, $$$ will fix this.  I'm not a professional photographer 
so I just go with the flow and accept the JPEG format (lossy compression but, 
what the hell) so that I can process using The Gimp.  Cards are another problem. 
They are getting faster and faster with more and more bits.  The latest one I 
bought was a SanDisk SD (Secure Digital) 4GB card, but no card reader I owned 
could handle it.  Fortunately it came with a card<->USB reader so I didn't need 
my card readers.  If you buy generation "n" then you can be pretty sure that 
generation "n+1" will use an incompatible card.  Such is life.

 	When I started photography an old guy who taught me pointed out that the 
photograph has to be made using light, and that all the light has to go through 
that bit of glass in the front.  The bigger and more accurate the lens was, the 
better the picture - that's where to spend the money.  4MB, 5MB, 10MB, 12MB or 
whatever the camera advertises is rather negated if the lens is not up to it.

 	Just some random thoughts.

Cheers,
Rob Hurle
 	-----------------------------------------------------
 	Rob Hurle	       Australian National University
 		 		   Research School of Pacific
 					    and Asian Studies
 	Home address and contacts:
 	  PO Box 4013			 Tel: +61 2 6247 2397
 	  Ainslie ACT 2602	     Cell phone: 0417 293 603
 	  Australia		e-mail: rob at coombs.anu.edu.au
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