Home Office: My Excellent Digital Photo Adventure
A $1730 camera, the Galapagos Islands, and a slew of tips.Steve Bass
I'm just back from the Galapagos Islands. If you'd seen me there, you would have instantly recognized me. I was the perfect geek: digital cameras were draped from both shoulders, a pair of binoculars hung from my neck, and I wore a T-shirt advertising a software company. I came back with 300 digital images. This week I'm going to tell you what I learned about digital photography.
Before I start, you might want to take a look at what I said last spring in two newsletters: "Want to Take Digital Pix? Read This First," where I talk about how to tackle managing a big bunch of photos; and "More on Taking Digital Pix," where I tell you how to display the pix.
A Dream Machine
I got lucky. The Nikon rep must have been in a fog--he agreed to let me use the company's $1730 D100 digital camera while on vacation. Yeah, I know it's pricey. Hell, it's crazy expensive; I swear that my heart stopped when the rep said yes. But the D100 is a sweet camera; for lots of reasons, it's worth the bucks. It's a single lens reflex camera, designed just like a 35-millimeter film camera. That means it's WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get), with a depth-of-field preview button that's standard on most SLRs, and I can use any Nikon lens with it. The settings are a professional photographer's dream: Among the zillions I could mention are white balance correction, white balance and flash bracketing, hue correction, and a super autofocus system. The Nikon uses a memory buffer for fast writes of about 3 to 5 seconds in uncompressed mode. And its battery life is stunning: I used one lithium-ion battery for the entire seven days.
There's more: Remember when you loaded your print camera with slow film for outdoors, say, ASA 64 (i"ISO" in digital photography), then walked into a low-light situation? You had to either change the film in mid-roll or suffer through under- or overexposed shots. The Nikon let me change the digital film speed from ISO 200 to 6400 on the fly. Very cool.
I suspect that "white balance" and "ISO" aren't terms many of you give much thought to when shooting digital pix. Well, maybe you should. My buddy Dave Johnson's "Digital Focus" newsletter is a remarkable piece of work--if you're not reading it, you're missing out. For instance, in Dave's "Shoot in Tricky Light Conditions," he takes some of the mystery out of both white balance and digital film speeds.
Okay, so I've said this before. It's worth repeating: Even though the Nikon's expensive, I think it's worth every cent. I've got to return the camera, but I plan to wait six months or so until the price drops, then buy one.
If you're in the market for something now, check out these sites:
- For more info on the D100, go to Nikon's site. Go to the PCWorld.com Product Finder for the best prices.
- See "How to Buy a Digital Camera" for everything you need to know about purchasing a digital camera.
- If you're in the market for a high-end camera, but don't want to spend $1700, see "Top 10 Digital Cameras, $500 and Over."
- If your budget is more constrained, see our recommendation for the best camera under $500, the 3-megapixel Olympus D-550 Zoom. This camera has great image quality, and it even made our "PC World Editors' Holiday Wish List." Our Product Finder has the latest prices.
Dig This: Have you ever taken a helicopter ride along the California coast? I didn't think so. Well, here's your chance. Hint: The more you click, the better it gets. [With thanks to Joe B.]
My Photo Lesson
Something critical I learned about shooting with the Nikon is to use the camera's RAW format. A RAW shot is unprocessed--it reads exactly what the camera's sensor sees, with no conversion or formatting. If you use even the highest JPEG setting, the camera compresses images and there's some loss of color, sharpness, and details. Think of RAW files as digital negatives; shooting in RAW format lets you use the camera's software to modify photos on your PC, giving you tremendous flexibility in image modification. Unfortunately, RAW isn't standardized yet and only a handful of cameras use this high-quality format. If you decide to take digital photography seriously, you'll likely end up buying a high-end digital SLR that uses RAW files. Do that and you'll need Bibble, a $99 program that dramatically enhances your ability to manipulate RAW files. Among other things, Bibble lets you quickly browse RAW files, modify white balance, change exposure, and save images in a variety of formats, including TIFF and JPEG. Bibble works with the Nikon D1/X/H, Canon D30, Kodak 720x/760, Olympus E10/E20, and Fuji S2Pro. The program is essential if you're going to shoot lots of images in RAW format.
Dig This: Someone once said the Web isolates people. No, it's actually getting more touchy-feely all the time. [With thanks to Gus S.]
Tour the Galapagos
Some of you may be intrigued by the Galapagos Islands. You can learn lots more about them from Public Broadcasting's "Voyage of the Odyssey" program. For an overview and background information, go to "Destination: The Galapagos Islands." For stunning photos and Real Audio videos, many including wildlife, visit "Galapagos Islands- Logs."
Next week? More on digital photography, including image manipulation.
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