In Search of a Digital SLR
July 7, 2010
The search for a digital camera (probably an SLR) continues. I’ve been a diehard slide film shooter all of my life. Only once or twice did I stray and shoot actual negative film – and I regretted it each time. I have a fondness for slides and slideshows.
The computer era, however, has changed me. I still like slides and I’d prefer to shoot slides, but I also want to have my images on a computer. And to do that, I have to scan the slides. This isn’t hard to do. Any company that can still process slide film also has the technology to scan the images at the same time. It costs more, of course, but that isn’t the real problem. The real problem is that the scans never even approach the quality of the original image in terms of light and color (and everything else).
I ended up scanning my slides myself. I purchased a fairly high-end scanner – a Nikon Super Coolscan 5000 ED – and got quite good results. However, the technology involved is a bit overwhelming. To begin with, you have to master a lot of software to get a good image out of a scan. There is the scanner software itself. I use the Nikon software that came with the scanner, NikonScan. There is third-party software, such as SilverFast, but I’ve never heard compelling arguments that it is any better. You also have to use something like Photoshop or Lightroom to tweak the image after you get the scan. Photoshop was WAY too much for me, and I’ve been using Lightroom.
However, even becoming a master at NikonScan and Lightroom doesn’t really do much for you if your computer monitor isn’t calibrated. To do that, you need some hardware and software and you need to learn how to use it. All in all, it’s a bit of a technology jungle, and I hacked my way into it and emerged on the other side with little mastery but at least some useable results. However, I could never get a really professional scan out of a slide. To most people, I’m sure the results were excellent. But when I went back and forth from looking at my slide through a loupe or projected on the screen to the image on the computer monitor, the result was disappointing.
I would probably still continue to shoot slides except that slide film is getting progressively harder to come by, and it is also getting more and more expensive. It also leaves you with a physical object – the slide itself – which has to be stored and shipped and cared for. Digital images can be stored on the Internet and be accessed and enjoyed from anywhere in the world, and you never have to worry about physical storage. It’s all up there in the clouds, and I like that idea these days.
Which brings me to my opening point: my search for a digital camera. I’ve done a lot of research, so I’m fairly clear on what my options are. Oddly enough, image quality – the most important factor in photography – isn’t something that I’ve worried about very much. Once you jump above the point-and-shoots and the compact cameras with their tiny sensors, every camera and camera line I’ve looked at gives excellent image quality. When you read reviews comparing a Canon and a Nikon, you might get some opinions about which gives you a better image, but these are generally “out of the box” images shot with the camera’s default settings. Those default settings are simply choices made by the manufacturer. So an image shot with the camera’s default settings on one might be a bit soft compared to the images taken with the other. But that doesn’t mean one camera is better than another. You can tweak the default settings (I’ve read this, anyway) and bring them into line.
In any event, I’ve seen fantastic results online (the good ol’ Flickr test) with Canons, Nikons, Sonys, Panasonics, and Olympics. For my money, the digital images aren’t as good as a properly exposed slide. However, they are definitely as good as or better than the scans I’ve made of my slides. With image quality sort of out of the picture (this is with the assumption that I can’t afford any of the cameras with a full-frame sensor – a very good assumption), my choice of a camera comes down to a host of other factors: price, size, weight, ergonomics, battery life, auto-focus speed, LCD visibility, and viewfinder brightness and magnification.
I have to admit to a certain prejudice at this point. I grew up with Nikon and Canon cameras competing head-to-head, while Olympics, Pentaxes, Konicas and a few others were sniffing around the edges. I ended up buying into the Contax camera line because I loved the bright viewfinders and because at that time, I could put a Zeiss lens onto a Yashica body. Yashica and Contax made a deal to have the same lens mount. I couldn’t afford a Contax body, so I got a Contax lens with the good Zeiss glass lens and put it on a cheaper Yashica body.
Unfortunately, Contax quit making cameras after a half-hearted attempt at joining the digital revolution. That leaves me with the two giants Nikon and Canon. I can’t help but have a certain prejudice in favor of these two. I’m sure the Sony digital SLRs are every bit as good, but I just don’t have the same feeling for them as I do for Nikons and Canons.
From that point, my choices get a bit easier for the simple reason that Canon cameras don’t feel right in my hands. I think they’re fantastic cameras, but somehow my hands don’t fit them. I’m not sure what it is exactly. It might be their height combined with the button placements. My fingers don’t fall on the controls naturally, particularly the shutter button. I have to bend my finger awkwardly to find the shutter button. At least that was my impression months ago when I was trying out cameras in the stores.
Nikons, on the other hand, fit me like a glove. They simply feel right in my hands, and my fingers fall exactly where they are supposed to. I particularly like the placement of the shutter button. It feels solid and responsive, too. The little rounded black shutter buttons on the Canons feel understated to me. I don’t feel as confident doing a half-press on them to activate the auto-focus. And that’s besides the fact that I have to search to find it.
Once I tried out the cameras and realized that the Canons didn’t fit my hands, I stopped looking at them and started looking seriously at Nikons. That I still haven’t purchased one speaks to how much I enjoy doing the research and shopping for cameras, but it also speaks to how tough the decision is. In terms of features, the Nikon D90 has long been the camera I liked the best. I’d have purchased one long ago except that it is an expensive camera, and it also strikes me as large and obtrusive and complex. This last observation is not specific to the D90. I find all digital SLRs surprisingly large. With those big indented grips, they have an almost square shape. And the lenses are huge. Even small zooms and primes stick far out from the camera body making the whole unit quite bulky. My current film camera, the Contax Aria, is incredibly slim and compact by comparison, even with a lens on it.
Digital SLRs also all strike me as very expensive. In the old days, $300 got you a very good camera body and one that would last for ten years or twenty years or even thirty years. You can still buy Canon and Nikon cameras from the seventies that are still working fine. I don’t think anyone can say that about digital SLRs. These days, people are expected to put down $800 to $1,500 on a digital camera body with the expectation that it will last a couple years at most. And even if it does last that long, chances are it will be so outdated that you’ll want to or have to upgrade anyway.
If I can digress a moment, I’ll say that this concern extends to much more than digital cameras. I’ve always been a fan of quality. I’ve generally been willing to pay more to get a better quality product. I’ll pay more for an MP3 player that delivers better sound. I’ll buy a better quality set of earphones that delivers better sound. I’ll buy a better quality DVD player that gives you a better picture. However, most manufactured items are not designed to last anymore. It’s one thing to spend $150 on a set of Shure earphones that give amazing sound. It’s quite another to spend the $150 and then have those earphones give out in four months. Same thing for DVD players, cell phones, computers, and anything else you can imagine. From the point of view of things breaking down in a year or a few months, those prices start to seem even higher.
Anyway, I’m looking at Nikon digital SLRs for the most part. I had a chance to use a D40x last year, and I really liked it. It was small and light and fast and fun. I’ve heard very good things about the D40 as well. They aren’t part of the current Nikon line-up anymore, but they can still be found used and new. They’re surprisingly expensive, though, for older cameras.
The D60 replaced the D40x, I believe. Then there was the D80 – a very highly regarded camera – and now the D90. Below the D90 currently are the D3000 and the D5000. The D3000 is Nikon’s cheapest and most basic SLR. It strikes me as a fine camera, but it doesn’t have a video mode. I don’t absolutely need to shoot video, but it’s a nice option to have. The D5000 is an attractive camera because it has the same sensor and auto-focus system as the D90. It shoots video and does pretty much everything the D90 can do. One big difference is that it has an articulated LCD. It is smaller than the D90’s and has 230,000 dots as opposed to the D90’s 920,000, but it is kind of handy to be able to twist it around in different directions. I had that feature on a Canon point-and-shoot camera, and I used it all the time. Unfortunately, because of the button layout on the Nikon cameras, they have to put the screen’s hinge on the bottom instead of on the left side. Having the hinge on the bottom makes the articulated screen less convenient and less useful, but it can still be handy.
There’s no point making a list of all the things that the D90 has compared to the D5000 – it’s a long and complicated list – but the two things that appeal to me are the brighter and larger pentaprism viewfinder and the larger and higher-resolution LCD screen. These added features, however, come with an increased price tag. I think there is around a $200 difference between the D5000 and the D90. To be honest, I find that price difference to be too little. It’s difficult to justify buying the D5000 when for $200 more you can get the D90. I find the D5000 to be overpriced by a fair bit. (Well, I find all digital cameras to be overpriced…)
All that being said, the last time I held a D90 with the 18-105 kit lens in my hands, I found it to be, as I said near the beginning, large, bulky, and obtrusive. I have plans to do some traveling in the future and I have to wonder what it would feel like to pull out such an ostentatious piece of camera gear and take pictures in village markets and such places. The camera looks so high-tec and so glamorous it is a bit much. I know that a dumb white guy on a bicycle is going to stand out in places like Africa and Asia no matter what, but it would be nice to be able to take some pictures without it looking like you are shooting for National Geographic.
My other concern is about the durability of digital SLRs. They are essentially computers with lenses, and it seems like there are hundreds of more ways these cameras can break down than old film cameras.
In the end, I guess it is a simple choice, because there really is no choice. I prefer the bigger sensor in the SLRs. And those digital SLRs just are what they are: kinda big and bulky.