Innocent said
<font color="0000ff">"I have read that it is possible to produce a fine pix of 20'' x 30'' prints by upsizing the images with special upsizing softwares."
This is indeed true of pretty much any digital camera. As the print is made larger, viewing distance increases. Our eyes are a reasonably low resolution device, allowing very large prints to look very good.
As a test, I scanned an ideal medium format negative to 5"x 7" at 240 dpi - the requirement for my photo printer. Without changing any settings but the resolution, I also scanned it at 120 dpi - one quarter the information. I printed both at the maximum quality of my printer, side by side on a sheet of Premium Glossy paper. At reading distance, the difference is striking. However at arms' length it takes a little concentration to see the difference. Beyond that, they look identical.
An octogenarian friend was much taken by a portrait I took of a magnificent blue and gold macaw I know, and wanted a 24" x 36" print of it. However, I shot it with a 3.34MP Nikon CP990, so tried to discourage him. He insisted, so I did the best job I could of upsizing it. I delivered the file on a CD for him to get printed locally in the city where he lives, but really did not expect much.
A couple of months back, I was in his city and visited him. The print was framed and hanging in his living room. From anywhere in the room, it looked magnificent. I was really quite astounded. More pixels are certainly desirable, but resolution obviously is not everything. I don't do photography for the terminally anal twit who carries a loupe in his pocket and leaves nose oil on my prints. I expect them to be viewed at an appropriate distance to the size of the print.
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Another thought occurred to me. The Nikon D70 might be well worth considering as well. Film camera technology goes back about two centuries, with a flagship camera appearing about once a decade now. I recently sold a Brooks VeriWide 100 that had served me for decades, and others before me. It was built in the late 1950s. Linhof, Horseman, Alpa and others still build cameras that are functionally identical to it. I would have gained absolutely zero by trading it for one of these. This type of superwide medium format camera, simply had no need to evolve. I never felt the slightest need to update my F3 either.
Now to let you know my bias before I go on, I am not a camera buff - I am a photographer. My cameras are tools that I respect, but have no affection for. When a camera buff came up to me and started admiring my camera, it took a moment to understand what he was getting on about. Same sort of reaction if one came up to a construction worker and admired his jack-hammer. I realize there are people who buy Leicas and never take them out of the box. I also know that people buy cameras to wear as jewelery. I simply can not relate to this, To put it politely, my Leica M3 is "battle-scarred".
So I am looking at your situation from a purely function viewpoint. Digital cameras are incredibly good. When I bought the CP990 four years back, 35mm photography effectively ended for me. I may or may not shoot another roll sometime in my life, but the chances are pretty slim. When the CP5000 came on the market, it answered the weaknesses of the CP990 and felt like Nikon had read my mind and built a camera system precisely for me. I have not been disillusioned, it has served me beyond expectations. It is just that good. However, if Nikon were to come out with a CP8000 this fall, I would trade in a flash.
While film camera technology proceeded at a glacial pace for the past two centuries, digital camera technology is thundering along at a blinding pace. Time Magazine named the CP990 as "Machine of the Year" when it was launched. I was astounded at the progress made in the two years leading to the CP5k. Not only did it have more pixels, but everything just worked better. It is more a matter of subscribing to subsequent editions, than buying a camera for life as with many of my film cameras. A 30 year old film camera may still be near the state of the art, while a ten year old digital camera barely exists.
It makes sense to keep the investment moderate, and trade frequently. The D1X was the state of the art when it was launched, but now been eclipsed in pretty much every way save build-quality, by the D100 and the D70. Since one buys for the short term, build quality is simply not a major consideration with digital. If you are in pursuit of
photographic quality, you will trade long before the camera ever even begins to wear out. It is a whole different mind-set from film camera ownership.
This is not planned obsolescence as with cars in the 1960s where a bit of chrome was shuffled around and the car was declared new and improved. A long time back Gordon Moore, co-founder of Intel, postulated that every two years the number of devices on a chip would double. He later revised that to 18 months. This became known as "Moore's Law", and it has been extended to every aspect of digital technology. The camera announced at Photokina 2006 will be dramatically better than those announced later this month - and will cost no more and probably less.
With current cameras being so competent, it is impossible to imagine what they will be like in five or ten years. Light, cheap, mobile, incredibly fast in response, giant buffer and able to shoot the quality of an 8x10 view-camera I would imagine.
A top of the Coolpix line is perfect for me. Inexpensive enough that I can trade every few years. A SLR is great for commercial work or when an editor demands chromes, but I would not think of using one for personal photography except in the rarest cases. For people photography, it is cruelly intrusive. I am processing a shoot I did last Saturday - all people shots - and in over 250 exposures, there is not a single shot were the subjects behaviour is impacted by the presence of the camera. However in the past, whenever I raised the big cyclops eye of the F3 or Bronica, everyone was fixed upon it.
So where it made some sense for an enthusiast to buy an F5 for the long haul over an entry-level camera, it makes little sense for the digital enthusiast to sink that sort of cash into a camera. While an entry-level Nikon takes identical pictures to the F5, its build-quality dictates its use by working pros and heavy shooting enthusiasts.
A number of friends bought the Canon 1Ds and found it paid for itself in a few months. It would be a most foolish purchase for anyone other than a busy pro. I fully expect the superb image quality of which it is capable will be available in under $1,000US bodies announced in the 2006 Photokina.
larry!
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