Re: Digital Cameras

[glennl@easystreet.com]

In article <9mdo9skr6aqpj72jgsfugilsm9me4heda9@4ax.com>, Andrew Price
<aprice@mail.dotcom.fr> wrote:

> Can anyone advise me on a replacement for my excellent twenty year-old
> German single-lens reflex camera, which has become unusable because
> the battery it uses is no longer manufactured.
>
> I had thought of purchasing a digital camera, but I was told by
> someone who bought one about a year ago that although it sufficed for
> his web-site needs, the image quality was not brilliant.
> 
> Have digital cameras improved since, or would it be better investing
> the same money in yet another SLR and a slide scanner?

Since you are posting to misc.transport.rail.americas it is obvious that
you would be interested in how this applies to the railfan way of using
cameras, rather than for "conventional" photography.

Keep in mind that there are certain things a digital camera, or even a 35
mm fully automatic camera for that matter, are incapable of doing simply
because of the automation involved in them.

For example, suppose you are track side waiting for that steam powered
excursion  train to appear.  With a 35 mm SLR, you simply compose your
shot beforehand, get the focus all set up, and wait.  A digital camera
really isn't that great for trying to photograph stuff that is in motion,
because it does autofocus just befoe the photo is taken.  Sitting and
waiting for the train to come, the camera will more than likely slip into
a "sleep mode", or some other state during which the previously focused
shot is lost.

The older SLR cameras are neat because the only thing in them that
requires a battery is the light meter.  You can leave them turned on for
hours and not have to worry that much about not being able to take any
more photographs.  In fact, if the battery goes dead in one of these 100%
mechanical cameras, you can usually continue to photograph and simply
guess about the shutter speed and aperature setting (though you depend
more on luck than anything if you aren't really that good ;) ).  If you
leave a digital camera turned on for hours you have a hunk of plastic.

There are some neat photographs you will miss completely with a digital
camera.  For example, suppose you wanted to take a night shot?  Good luck
doing that with a digital camera.  With a 35 mm SLR camera, you simply set
the shutter speed on "bulb" and hold the shutter open for 15, 20, 30
minutes, maybe even several hours depending on what you want to do.  You
can't adjust the "shutter speed" on a digital camera because there isn't a
shutter to adjust the speed of.  Sure, the digital cameras come with a
flash - but the range of a flash is very limited, and is therefore pretty
much useless for most anything that a railroad photographer would want to
use it for.

Suppose you had a shot that turned out extremely well, and you wanted to
blow it up?  Again, this is something that is not great with a digital
camera.  The resolution is acceptable for maybe 8"x10" photographs, but
even then only just barely.  Don't expect to be able to blow up digital
camera shots to 16"x20" poster size and still have something you would
want to hang on your wall.

Even in the computer industry magazines, photographs are not taken with
digital cameras most of the time.  Instead, they use good old fashioned
film cameras and a $100,000 drum scanner to capture every single minute
detail.  The railfan publications are no worse - they want at the very
least 8"x10" photographs, and prefer 35 mm or larger slides so that they
too can have the best possible quality when it goes to the printing
press.  Digital cameras simply can not scan an image fast enough to have
that kind of quality.  They are good for newsletters and small newspapers
and so forth where economic operation is king and the print quality
doesn't need to be the best.

Along with that speed fact comes another unfortunate reality with digital
cameras: don't expect to be able to play around with 1/1000th of a second
sutter speeds with a digital camera.  If you are on the northeast corridor
and have an Amtrak Metroliner coming at you at 120 mph, reach for an SLR,
not a digital camera.  It can take 3-5 seconds for a digital camera to
focus and expose.  By then you would be looking at the trains rear marker
lights.  I never realized how hard it must have been to get some of those
neat snow-spraying NEC photographs that show up in Trains Magazine every
once in a while until I saw a 16+ car train become visible, pass through a
station, and disappear all in 7 seconds (it was summer, so unfortunately
no spectacular cloud of snow behind it either).  It will be years before
decent photographs of moving objects like that will be possible with
digital cameras.  Branchlines with trains moving at 30 mph?  No problem,
but nothing high speed.  Not yet anyway.

It depends on how you use your camera.  If you are just taking snap shots,
then a digital camera is probably OK, but expect to pay $300 for a camera
that is basicaly the equivalent of a fully automatic 35 mm snap shot
camera that you could probably buy in a department store for $50. 
However, I doubt very much that someone seriously interested in railroad
photography will be wanting to replace their 35 mm camera with digital
anytime soon.  They simply are not flexible enough in terms of lens types,
shutter exposure time, and various other settings that can be done.  Don't
get me wrong - I've used digital cameras and they are great for some
things, but when I go out on a trip to photograph trains, I take my 38
year old 35mm SLR camera instead.

-Glenn Laubaugh
member & web site editor:
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Pacific Northwest Chapter of the National Railway Historical Society
Portland, Oregon
http://www.easystreet.com/pnwc