practicalphoto.com

Okay, okay, I hear your screaming in shock over the suggestion to use digital camera. What about utmost quality? Colour saturation?

I agree, I agree. There’s only so far you could go with digital. If you do enlargements up to 12R, digital is still okay. If you go up to 20 inches, of course, something’s got to give. Unless your camera is 12 mega pixel but then that day might not be that far away.

However, the biggest gripe most serious photographers have with digital is not the number of pixels but colour rendition. For some reasons, certain colours just do not turn out right on digital. If our naked human eye can detect it, then it’s really bad! Some makes struggle with blue, while some can’t do green well.

Also, if you are seriously into photography, usage of external flash is a must. Using the digicam’s built-in miniscule flash can only bring you to a certain point. To go further in using flash, you need to use an external flash.

Buy a Digital SLR?
Nah, I’m not fond of this idea at all. To me, digital SLR offers the convenience of a true SLR system but just isn’t worth the expense bearing in mind you most probably already have a digicam. A film SLR doesn’t have that much appeal either.

My simple suggestion will be to go one step further. Go medium format.

Due to advancement in digital technology, film cameras have taken a HUGE back seat and may not fully reclaim its position again. Many folks have ditched their film cameras to take up digital, including yours truly here! Seriously it really doesn’t make sense to hold on to a film SLR camera unless your application really requires one. In fact, with falling film camera prices, this is the best time to buy a film camera. Go for quality! Go medium format!

There are so many to choose from! Here’s just a few: Mamiyas, Yashicas, Rolleiflexes.

Big is Beautiful
Through a friend, I acquired a 1960+ Yashica 635 twin lens reflex camera.
With negative size of 6cm by 6cm, this is a major step up from 35mm format! Forget about 12R, enlargements of 20R is still a beauty!

Alright, it’s entirely manual, with no light meter. And it doesn’t like shooting towards a light source. This is most likely due to its old lens coating, it doesn’t handle flare very well.

To shoot, knowing the Sunny 16 rule (every roll of negative has the Sunny 16 rule on the box) helps. For better accuracy, a light meter is needed. I went for an even better option - a digital camera with light meter readings!

Told you this is practical photo. : )