Dec 29 2005
Digital
I remember the time when automatic light exposure was introduced to professional photography. None of my colleagues at the illustrated weekly seemed to be very happy with that. They kept walking around with their Gossen light meters around their necks, looking like avant garde film directors.
I have always appreciated progress and I never protested any added functionality to cameras that could make my life easier.
The same overall resentment was felt when auto focusing was introduced. Needless to say that one can have heated discussions today with professional photographers who cannot let go of their beloved film.
Well, when the first digital Nikon came out, I switched immediately, because I had already worked with video still camera’s like the Canon Ion. That worked fine for me, but the resolution of the pictures was hopeless if you had printing in mind.
However, after five years of digital photography, I still find myself comparing the old negatives with the RAW or TIFF pictures produced by my D100. The quality is good, as good as any 200 ASA film in a conventional SLR, but it often does not feel like the real thing. So my judgement on digital photography is based on convenience, more than on quality gain.
Two days ago I changed that attitude. I was on my way to Amsterdam’s Nieuwmarktbuurt to take some photographs, when suddenly the sky darkened and I was forced to go into a restaurant. I thought I remembered something about a setting of the camera that could automatically assign an ISO value depending on the availability of light and I found it in the menu after pushing some buttons.
I kept looking outside but it was getting darker and darker, so I decided to call it a day and to head home instead. Crossing Dam Square I looked over my right shoulder and I was struck by two shadows on the wall. Not enough light I thought, but I pressed the button anyway.
While uploading the photos I did not even expect the picture to be more than a black thumbnail on my desktop, but here I was looking at a correctly exposed image.
Okay, a bit grainy in texture, but to make the same picture with a traditional SLR, I would have been forced to push the film up to at least 800 ASA to get the same result – with a lot more ‘noise’.
A friend commented cynically that I should appreciate the limitations of traditional photography to be prevented from making more pictures like the one I was talking about. Maybe he is right; the photo below is certainly not the kind of picture that I would have normally shot. Still, I am happy with it because it is a reminder of the day I stopped comparing techniques.
And I like a good tearjerker too, so why not have some Christmas sentiment in my work, for once in three decades of ‘the blunt approach’.
