Lighting

[hotrats49]

Well, I'm afraid some of us traditional types do get it! I for one use digital imaging in my employment and can see the benefits for that and other purposes, but I would not jump to the conclusion that it's any better than film. I prefer film for my personal 35mm photography. We can see the real danger of the new digital equipment in some of the previous messages: a lot of talk about jumping ship to another brand over this or that. Who will benefit from this? Not the general photographer, I can assure you (Tom Steffan made a good point about this). And..."for those without basic photograpy skills" any form of photography can be disappointing. Probably a bit pointless to get too excited about this line of discussion anyway, digital vs film, as they both have advantages and disadvantages. I just think everyone should enjoy their photographic experience and try not to get caught up in the consumerism bit!

Cheers

 

[lodaniel]

Greg,

It's great that you prefer film. I still shoot some film too. But, I have decided on digital printing rather than darkroom. The digital camera saves me a lot of time by not having to scan. Scanning has its problems, too.

I've been doing this for 25 years, shooting slides more than prints. The minilab is not correcting for my mistakes. One of the advantages of doing your own B&W and color printing is that it's you that corrects for any shooting mistakes. That encourages you to stop making them. The same is true with digital.

The issue here is not film vs. digital. Crummy design is not "a danger of the new digital equipment". It is the fact that Nikon's engineers didn't know what they were doing when they came up with d-TTL, or they didn't care. They devised a system with limitations that didn't exist with their film cameras, even cheap ones. This isn't a liability of digital. It's a liability of poor engineering. (I am one, BTW.)

If the F100 had come out with such a limited flash system, followed by the N80 with a vastly superior system, I'd be raising h*ll over that had I invested in the former.

If Nikon couldn't handle flash with DSLR's of that generation perhaps they should have stayed out of the market until they employed some people who could handle it. Fuji managed to get TTL working in the S2 without DX and d-TTL. I think they ruined the S3 by including it, unless they have improved upon the D1/D100 implementation.

Lloyd

 

[peke]

Jorge - you may want to check out www.bythom.com - he has a Nikon Flash Manual listed - I don't know if its still available but I do know he's publishing a CD version of the manual soon. I have his D100 Manual and found it to be very helpful - I will get the flash manual as soon as it's available...

 

[jrr]

Mike:

Thanks for the tip. Lots of good information at that site. I'm getting the manuals.

Jorge