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Tools of The Trade
It won't come as too much of a surprise that we are going to start this chapter looking at the camera, obviously a rather important piece of equipment to own if you want to get into photography. Of course a blacked out cardboard box with a pin-hole, some egg whites, salt and silver nitrate are enough to create a rudimentary camera, but we are not going to travel that far into the history of photography - this is a book on digital photography after all. We do however want to take a brief look back to film cameras and find out what the modern digital camera has in common with its analogue ancestors.
A camera has one simple aim: to capture a moment in time as a visual image. It does this by using a lens to focus the light entering the camera to form an image on a light-sensitive device. The amount of light is controlled by the size of a hole in the lens (called the aperture), and the period of time is controlled by a shutter (a curtain which opens and closes very quickly) which exposes the light-sensitive device to the light when the photographer presses a button.
Everything in the previous paragraph applies equally to a film camera or a digital camera, the only difference being the light-sensitive device which is either a piece of photographic film or an electronic sensor.
Pictures taken with a film camera require the film to be developed before you can see the results. With the electronic sensor, the data from the sensor is converted into an image file that is stored on a memory card. This can be viewed immediately after taking the picture on the camera's LCD screen and later transferred to a computer for viewing, archiving and/or printing.
Film Versus Digital
Fundamentally a film camera and a digital camera are remarkably similar, however the table below outlines some of the differences between film and digital photography.
| Film |
Digital |
| Single ISO per roll of film |
Change ISO in the menu |
| It is only in the last few years that digital cameras have caught up with film |
High end cameras generally seen as better than 35mm film equivalents |
| Needed to have film developed |
Immediacy - see results, e-mail them around the world in seconds etc. |
| Costly in the long term |
Costly initially, but cheaper in the long term (no film/developing costs) |
| Price means you don't want to get too carried away |
Can shoot many more and just keep/print the best ones |
| Many techniques used in photo editing software are based on real darkroom techniques |
The digital darkroom - no smelly chemicals, no tripping over things in the dark. |
| Teaches you to be a better photographer |
Allows you to get better results |
Books on photography written before the days of digital would concentrate almost solely on how to take a good picture. It is a shame that many modern books neglect this capture-based approach and focus too much on processing on the PC. We are not dismissing the importance of image manipulation, however this sort of processing can never improve the quality of an image. It can make it more interesting, correct some basic faults, etc. but the overall quality will degrade at each stage of processing.
There are also many problems that can’t be corrected in software such as errors in exposure causing blown highlights, basic composition, out of focus, camera shake, etc. That’s why we have included a few chapters that explain how to capture the best image possible and making the most out of a situation.
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Photographs
This is a site about photography so I'm sure you are expecting to see plenty of pictures.
For now, why not take a peek at the flickr galleries belonging to the two authors of this site.
Colin's Flickr Page
Phil's Flickr Page
"No place is boring if you've had a good nights sleep and have a pocket full of unexposed film."
- Robert Adams
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