Posted by Chuck Tribolet on March 17, 2005 at 16:36:34:
In Reply to: UW photography: questions on film & digital equipment posted by Dick Analog on March 17, 2005 at 14:55:33:
First, to put this in perspective:
I've probably been doing digital imaging longer
than anybody here (32 years next month). I shoot
nothing but film UW (I have two Nikonos RS systems),
BUT, if I was starting today, I'd go digital. For
ME, it would be a couple of Nikon D2X's, but for a
newbie, I think Chris's suggestion of a Nikon D70
system (or the Canon equivalent (EOR Rebel D?)) would
be the place to start with that budget.
What stops me from switching? $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
It would be a $20K investment to switch to the D2X system. And I
already own most of the Nikon lenses I'd need.
I'm not
ready to do that. Yet. When the RS's get
unmaintainable, then I'll go. And the megapixels
aren't there yet (Film is at least 22 megapixels).
But if you want to start now, go digital. The
quick feedback and zero incremental cost cuts the
learning curve.
I do have a Nikon D70 I use for surface stuff, and
it has replaced my sixe Nikon surface SLRs.
The prosumer digicams drive me nuts. Push the
button, they take the picture a half second later,
and can't take another for five more. The D70
takes the picture NOW, and can do three more NOW.
Start with one strobe if the budget requires, but
two is MUCH better.
Digital in 1973? One bit per pixel (BLACK or
WHITE, no grey, no color). High res, uncompressed,
was about 467.5K bytes. We thought we were doing
really well to compress that down to 80K. It took
a whole mainframe computer to handle it. Except
we didn't handle it all in the computer. We had
special hardware to route it from the disk to the
display without going through the computer.
Chuck