Today I felt I'd like to own a digital camera I could enjoy...

Indeed, traditional photographers did control and do control contrast from exposure /development BASICALLY. Not with darkroom... Ask them... After that (exposing for a planned development), a great negative gives you SEVERAL ways of printing it beautifully with different filters and multigrade paper... It's not about correcting wrong negatives' contrast with filters while enlarging: that gives less working margin from the whole system...

Cheers,

Juan

Do you often print in the darkroom, Juan?
 
Juan, surely you have to care about the sensor size, what's the point in using your quality lenses with a tiny sensor?

For street shooting with digital, I use a Sigma DP1 set to manual focus and guess the distance. Quick snaps with a very quiet shutter - simple and fun. I imagine the Ricoh grd cameras with the 'snap' mode are similar.
 
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Do you often print in the darkroom, Juan?

B&W, yes.

I know there's lot of room for less than perfectly exposed/developed negatives with filtering and multicontrast paper, but I also know I prefer better negatives if I can produce them. And I like to produce them.

And that game about producing them (as happens to lots of larger film size photographers developing just one scene...) is one of the things I like a lot about shooting film...

I don't want a camera deciding my contrast no matter if it does it well now or in the future for any kind of light... And if the same camera is able to judge -apart from light for optimal dynamic range- any situation and what's the best point of view or lens for getting a great composition (22nd century? :)...) I'm not interested either... THIS is what matters: to play the game... I don't want a machine to play my game: I want one allowing me to play my game quickly...

Sorry about having said in public I'd prefer a faster button for contrast control.

Cheers,

Juan
 
Juan, surely you have to care about the sensor size, what's the point in using your quality lenses with a tiny sensor?

For street shooting with digital, I use a Sigma DP1 set to manual focus and guess the distance. Quick snaps with a very quiet shutter - simple and fun. I imagine the Ricoh grd cameras with the 'snap' mode are similar.

Sure... I meant for street shooting I wouldn't worry if the sensor was APS-C instead of full frame...

Cheers,

Juan
 
Nah Juan, I'm ok with post processing in RAW later. It's no big deal to me.

Not a big deal to me either: I've done it a thousand times both for work and personal shots... It's just that film is funnier to me. If you don't enjoy film more than digital, I'm OK with that.

Cheers,

Juan
 
I hope you live for at least a century because you have a really, really long wait.

fdigital wrote:

"you can program the 'set' button on the rear jog dial to change the JPEG 'picture style'. So basically you set up two custom monochrome styles - one contrasty, the other with less contrast, and to change them whilst shooting all you have to do is press that 'set' button, scroll one click, and press the 'set' button again. I know it's not a switch, but it's no slower than a switch. Other dslr's can do the same, and so can most of the small mirrorless cams."

Looks like no wait at all... It's here... I really think other smaller cameras will offer programmable buttons (or the switch I wrote about) pretty soon...

Cheers,

Juan
 
If one records a RAW image, please explain how a digital camera body (forget the lens) has anything at all to do with the contrast.

That sentence was inside an example about a future camera: one able to see which kind of light was surrounding the scene and then be able to "think" as a photographer and decide the optimal dynamic range to use for that kind of light, and then just take a simple autocontrast decision: in that case, it would be a game played by that camera, and not by the photographer...

In my sentence I can't find the word RAW, but it is in yours...

Cheers,

Juan
 
I want it to record in B&W only, because color photography isn't really photography as visually it's too close to reality.

I can understand the reasons for wanting a pure BW Digital camera; as Chris stated. But the comment above that color photography isn't really photography is complete and utter bs.
 
Shooting RAW and using Lightroom gives you more flexibility than some of the best darkrooms of their days. The old masters used the most expensive and best equipment they could get their hands on. Nothing wrong with it today. Shooting digital is all about processing. Just like darkroom days. The best knew how to do it. If you wanted to really do it like the old days it would cost you a small fortune to do it and maintain it.
Digital photography is coming of age. Not so five years ago. This from someone who loves film. Technology is putting it in the hands of all, just like the Kodak instamatic did for my Dad.
 
Hi robbert, cosmonaut,

It's not about "avoiding" digital or color... I use them. It's that those, are "other things".

When photography was invented, it was a totally new game, and it involved three parts: first, the photographer had to compose with the contrast in mind only (B&W) and NOT with the colors in mind: those colors give in real life vision an emotive charge that we just discard when we go to that abstraction B&W is, and that act of discarding tonal emotions is what allows us to create a really new image: one that's different from a color recording of reality... Real photography, in its original meaning is an abstraction where there's no color. That's what's intense about it, and that's why when you hang a B&W image it gives a sensation of another world, and that's why B&W has always been considered artistic... It makes the viewer leave the real, colorful world, and makes him go into a new world.

The second part that game included, was a decision the photographer had to take regarding the amount of light he wanted to reach film or plate, and that decision was in close relation with the third part: the kind of development the photographer was going to do... It was (and is) really hard to do those three things quickly and well done! Some of us don't want a machine to do it: we like to think and decide! Photographers composed thinking of B&W contrast AND hit the shutter knowing about the scene light & contrast and the development time they had to use, ALL IN THE SAME INSTANT the hit the shutter. That's the game.

That's what in our real world meant -historically- the word photography. And that game is played by some people yet, and it's not played by other people.

When color film came, it was called color photography. When you do color photography or study color photography, dedication or study make you learn you have to compose differently for B&W and for color, because for the color photography game, it's required to think of color contrast, which is defined not by light contrast as in B&W, but by cool/warm tones contrast... That's why some of us consider absurd to compose for color and then go to grayscale "to see if it works", as we know what's important to think about in color is totally different from what's important to think about in B&W while composing... Shooting a lot in color, and then after some time checking in front of a computer if some of those images work in B&W is something some of us laugh about... If other people do it, we're OK with that... Personally I like a lot to compose for B&W... And of course composing for real color photography is something I enjoy too, because it's a different thing: more emotional than conceptual, although words are sometimes too short...

Then, a thing called "digital photography" came... Another game that allows other things when you create an image... You? Well, I'll let everyone answer that to themselves... But IN MY CASE I don't need to consider all those games are just the same game...

If any forum member wants to do it, OK...

Maybe this is a words&history thing, but color or digital photography are not photography, but color or digital photography.

Cheers,

Juan
 
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Juan,

Just stick with film for now. I am.:) And why not when you consider the cost of a digital M. The only downside to film for me is the cost of processing and scanning which I am hell-bent to do on my own soon.

I have been a hybrid (film and digital) for a long time but just sold my D40 to David D. and am now without a digital camera for the first time in 12 years. I don't miss it a single bit, oddly. But, I will get a digital M at some point in the future. Just can't afford it or the software or the new computer for bigger files, or the lens. Adding all of that up is about $5000 minimum for a decent M8 not an M9.:eek:

I can buy film for life for me at that rate. The tipping point for me is using M mount lenses on a body...an M body. Or a Barnack. For the price of an M8, I can buy a mint or new MP BP and still have saved $2000 or more.

And, no, I will not settle for less than an M body, I detest p&s digitals, small sensor digitals, 4/3 digitals, etc. Only an M will do. So, I will wait.:angel: Patience is a virtue and film is funnier! What famous person said that?
 
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If you are looking for a compact camera like your M you won't find it. I have tried a few of the new breed EVIL offerings but nothing to make me put my Leicas up from good. I think some landscapes scream to be in color and they can be made to look surreal and other worldly. Do what's in your heart you certainly have a passion I admire.
 
What I really want in a digital is not too far off your idea, Juan.

Ready? What I really want is a drop-in FF sensor, (even just monochromatic like you mentioned) with about 6-8 Mp in resolution, that will fit INSIDE my compact RFs. Guts attached to a film spool sized compartment for a battery and near-rf (radio frequency) transmitter - imagine being able to drop a chip into the frame recess of your favorite sidearm (oly 35 or cannot, maybe that pocketable ZI Contessa that likes to eat your sprocket holes...) with a ribbon that snakes out to a transmitter, and a little housing that screws into the tripod mount and holds a microSD card? Bare bones readout like what you can find in a DSLR vf window...

Can you imagine the look you would get from that Yashica Electro 35 DX 1.7? Can you imagine if it possessed realtime metering ability with the B or T shutter?

I dont' see that it should be that difficult - or have to be that expensive. A few hundred, maybe - Just very niche-y...not to be confused with Neitzsche.
 
It's funny to read this thread today. Last night, I discovered an iPhone app that applies the same idea to the iPhone camera:

http://totocaster.com/streetmate/

I tried it and it is a pretty cool app.

Imagine if camera makers released APIs to allow independent developers to do with digital cameras what they do for the iPhone…
 
It's funny to read this thread today. Last night, I discovered an iPhone app that applies the same idea to the iPhone camera:

http://totocaster.com/streetmate/

I tried it and it is a pretty cool app.

Imagine if camera makers released APIs to allow independent developers to do with digital cameras what they do for the iPhone…

I was just thinking while reading this thread: I wonder how long it'll be before folks are able to "root" their camera, and install their own firmware if they wanted too, much like what is happening now with phones.....
 
I wouldn't mind having a GF2 (I like the design/layout). It's very compact and I would be able to use my M lenses. There isn't much more that I can ask for.
 
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