Professional Digital Photography

Digital Times - Professional Digital Cameras is the first of a 6 part series on Professional Digital Photography. Here are the titles of each week and a very short quote from each to give you a taste.

Part 1 - Interesting Times - 'We are indeed living in interesting times, although some may feel blessed rather than cursed. Things are moving fast in digital cameras, and the best pro models are now widely accepted as being able to outperform 35mm film in terms of sharpness, resolution and colour quality. Film perhaps still retains some advantages.'

Part 2 - Digital Changes how Photographers Work - 'Film costs were never a very big factor in work for the press. Coming to the end of a cassette at a critical moment was more of a problem than its cost. Photographers got into the habit of shooting off the last few frames of a roll and reloading in quiet moments, so as to be ready to shoot when something important happened. We used two bodies and made sure there was always one with film ready to use. Telling the editor you were changing your film when an assassination occurred would be very much a second-best!'

Part 3 - Why Use Professional Digital Cameras? - 'Here is one field where size really does matter. Consumer cameras use small CCDs, with the pixel sensors closely packed. This means the individual light receptors are small compared to those in the larger sensors used in professional models. The smaller size results in each receiving less photons for the same exposure.'

Part 4 - Available Professional Digital Cameras - 'I've included in this feature cameras that have been announced and should be available in the next few months. Some models that are available are in pretty short supply and you may have to wait for one. Recently some of those listed - such as the Canon D60 - appear to have been withdrawn as new models are expected shortly, but some suppliers may have stock or they may be found secondhand'

Part 5 - Camera Listings - Alphabetical by Manufacturer - Cameras briefly reviewed include:
- Contax N Digital $7000.00
- Canon EOS-1D $3800
- Canon EOS-1Ds ($7,999.99)
- Canon EOS-D60 $2,200
- Nikon D1X $4,650.00
- Nikon D1H $3,650.00
- Kodak DCS 14n (available end of Feb 2003, $4,995 estimated street price)
- FujiFilm FinePix S2 Pro $2,399.95
- Nikon D100 $1,999.95
- Sigma SD9 ($1500)
- Sinar M (available April 2003 - modular system)

Part 6 - Digital Designs - 'Impressive though the current crop of digital cameras are, the conviction still remains with me that they are a kind of hybrid beast. What we are seeing are basically 35mm film cameras converted to digital rather than cameras designed from the ground up for digital. I suspect it will not be too long before we see the first of this new generation.'

Posted by Darren in our News category on February 13, 2004

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